I see jewelry in every shape and form possible- old, new, well taken care of, sparkling clean, with globs of lotion stuck between the prongs, or plain dirty. No matter what I am working on with a client, I always make sure to clean every piece of jewelry that I work on for a client. A large portion of what I work with are engagement rings.

The first thing I do when a client brings me an engagement ring to be cleaned, resized, or maintained is to view the piece with my loupe. A loupe is essentially a small magnifying glass. It makes viewing small details of the jewelry much easier, and I don’t leave home without it!

In the above photo is my loupe along with a client’s beautiful solitaire engagement ring. In this particular case, she hadn’t worn the ring in a couple of years because it no longer fit her. She brought it in to be resized which would automatically come with a cleaning. As always I inspected the ring with my trusty loupe. I even took pictures with my phone, through the loupe so you can see what I saw! Check out how much this ring needed some love:

The client left her ring with me, I resized and cleaned it, and we set a date to get her ring back to her. That’s one of my favorite parts of working with clients. I love being able to see their faces when they’re getting their beautiful jewelry back. She was very happy with the work I was able to do to her ring, and she said it truly looked like an entirely new piece of jewelry! Take a look:

If you’d like to clean your own diamond jewelry at home, follow these simple steps:

1) grab a bowl some very warm water, a soft bristle toothbrush, dish soap, and a hand towel

2) put a small amount of dish soap into the warm water and mix it together

3) place your ring in the bowl of soapy water and leave it for 30 minutes

4) Remove ring and brush it gently with the soft bristle toothbrush

5) Rinse under warm running water, and dry with the hand towel

To keep your ring looking it’s very best, I recommend cleaning it once every week or two. For a more thorough cleaning, I recommend bringing it to a professional jewelry or Gemologist (such as myself) once or twice a year where it can be professionally cleaned and maintained. If you’d like your jewelry polished, resized, maintained after years of use, I’d love to chat with you! Click here to contact me!

Custom Marquise Engagement Ring

Emily Sole Jewelry | Houston Jeweler

What a fun engagement ring this was to make! Brad and I met a few months ago during an initial engagement ring consultation. He is an engineer and very artistic! He sent me a few sketches that he made before we met. How special that he is so talented and contribute to the process in such a unique way? Brad needed a center diamond so I sourced a few different shapes and sizes of diamonds for him to look at. Emily (his now fiancee!) had mentioned to him that she might want either an oval or marquise shape diamond, so we looked at both. This is one of my favorite parts of the process ~ I love educating my clients! After looking at many diamonds together, Brad and Emily chose this gorgeous D color marquise shape diamond.

Once her center stone was chosen we were able to design the setting. She knew that she wanted to incorporate sapphires in her setting so we drew a CAD so she could see what it would look like before making the ring. CAD (computer-aided design) software is used by architects, engineers, drafters, artists, and others to create precision drawings or technical illustrations. CADs really help my clients envision what their final piece of jewelry will look like before the physical jewelry is even produced. We made a couple of changes to the CAD along the way but Brad & Emily knew what they wanted. They added small sapphires in the gallery of the setting and beautiful baguettes down the shank. This was such a fun project!

CADs of the ring to help Brad and Emily see what the final product would look like

Their design came to fruition once they saw the wax of her new setting. All the fine details (scale, height, width etc) that I work on had come together!

Emily’s ring was ready to pick up just in time for her birthday. Brad came in and I was stunned to see that he made his OWN wooden ring box! In nearly 20 years in this business this was a first for me. What a treat! I love my engagement ring clients!!

Wooden box that Brad made just for Emily’s ring

If you’d like to get started on your own custom engagement ring, please send me an email to get started!