Check out this awesome tourmaline! My client sent it to me to build an epic and very personal solitaire carved with the zodiac signs of her loved ones: Chinese Year of the Earth Pig & Year of the Rat, as well as Taurus the bull. The ring is 19K rose gold and has a 2.5mm old rose-cut diamond set in the base on the side of the bezel.

As usual, I took about 50 million photos of this ring; it can be incredibly hard to capture in 2D a 3D scene around a bezel and band and these photos really do it only partial justice. I’m really happy with how it turned out, and pleased at how nice her stone looks in the setting.

Custom designed & hand carved Morning Glory ring set with this kick-ass brilliant purple cushion sapphire. 14K white gold and with a couple 2.5mm diamonds on either side.

This idea had been kicking around for a while. I had made a sketch in my notebook, and happily, it caught the eye of one of my long-time clients. I am SO glad I got a chance to make this ring at long last. I love how unusual it is, the way the stone floats off the top of the ring, the sweet faces of the cows with their cool droopy ears, and of course, the amazing Australian boulder opal (actually opalized fossilized wood) cherry on top. 18K.

Please excuse this weird pic of my red fingers; it’s the most accurate photo I felt like I could get of the opal that really showed how the colors looked in true life. It had these bright shocks of hot pink, purple, and chartreuse amongst the oranges and blues-turquoises-greens. Just awesome.

So many more pics of this after the click:

This is my low-profile solitaire altered to accommodate this lovely oval 1.3ct tanzanite. Oriented East-West on the finger, 14K white gold. I am really liking how this ring looks with an oval stone. (More pics below…)

Chinese dragon and phoenix chasing each other around the bezel of this solitaire, which is set with a juicy red ruby cabochon. 18K

Jellybeany! (Maaany more pics after the click:

This was a custom design: winged band with a peony. Inside the band are two tiny little intaglio-carved birds. 18K yellow gold. More pics after the click!

Dragon scale wedding bands in 14K gold, set with sapphires.

Navette-style ring set with three fancy colored, fancy cut diamonds and carved with an olive branch motif; 18K. Love LOVE how this turned out!

I can always rely on this client of mine to bring me the biggest and coolest opals to design pieces for, and this Australian boulder opal was no joke.

We decided to “go simple” on this one, you know, just a simple bezel setting, maybe a little action on the shoulders. I thought some detailing around the bezel might be cool since there was going to be so much bezel, so we decided to go with an inscription: “Astra inclinant, sed non obligant,” which means in Latin, “The stars incline us, they do not bind us.”

Just a veerry simple piece.

Turns out it’s hard to stick to simple with such giant opal awesomeness in hand. (A frillion more pics after the click.)