Designing My Sister's Engagement Ring

Designing an engagement ring for a woman when it's a complete surprise has its fun creative hurdles. When the woman is your younger sister, that creative challenge is even more interesting.

The pressure is greater due it being a surprise. Of course, I know her style well as does the husband to be. So we collated images of her current jewellery, scoured the internet for inspiration and made a mood board. 'Leafy, classy, Audrey Hepburn-esque' were the words that kept recurring.

When I say it was a complete surprise, my sister had naturally dropped hints to her partner... "I really like the colour of rose gold," and so on. The definites were the colour of gold and the main stone to be a cushion shaped diamond. To the sketch book I went.

We felt it needed more delicacy, so the halo of small stones were added in a graduating size around the main stone. To give the overall shape more fluidity, we angled the cushion stone. It also gave the design more of a unique statement impact.

The 'leafy' parts had to be incorporated in a way that would embellish the organic feel of the ring, rather than just being stuck on. After teaching myself a relatively new technique of chasing in this way on such a small scale and being heavily influenced by past masters of this field, the leaves came to life. The finesse of the ring really came from the leaves being made from gold belonging to our grandfather, which I melted down. A sentiment that would be sure to knock her off her feet and make her cry. Joyful tears. It did.