This was a stone sent to me by the client: she wanted it removed from the current setting (a very simple and clunky prong situation) and have it remade into a new little something-something. It’s hard to judge scale from the photo, but the stone is about 1 inch in diameter—HUGE!

The new something: a custom designed Apple Blossoms & Songbird pendant in 14K gold. It turned out so nicely!!

The entire piece was extremely three dimensional because the stone’s depth was something like 14mm. I didn’t want the back of the stone to poke out or have it roll from side to side when worn. But I also didn’t want the pendant to look overly bulky or weigh a ton, as the stone was already such a giant.

My original sketched design. It often surprises me how much the final piece actually ends up looking like my original sketches.

And a shot of the wax model right before casting. The red wax is softer so not as prone to snapping while I carved this (though I still managed to break it about 100 times during the carving process), and the green is my preferred carving wax, which I melted on when I needed to add or repair spots.