Custom Jewelry Design - Our Step by Step Guide
Welcome to the world of custom design of fine jewelry. Whether you are visiting us online or in our Bellevue showroom, you will be working with highly skilled artisans devoted to helping you design and create your dream piece of jewelry.
Expect Excellence.
The following explains our step-by-step process of creating custom design jewelry.
Custom Designed Jewelry - Step One
In-Store Consultation
Your free-of-charge consultation is designed to offer you comfort in a welcoming environment. You'll be meeting with highly skilled artisans who will devote their attention to understanding your needs, style and preferences. You'll see a variety of jewelry styles, and be shown examples of finished pieces that show a variety of precious metal qualities, their shades and colors, artistic techniques and finishes. Our artisans can create sketches or computer-generated images to show you how your design might look.
Custom designed jewelry is our passion. As a family owned and operated store, our core interest is your satisfaction with the final result. Joseph and Danny are the owners as well as designers with a combined 45 years of experience in jewelry making. They offer a wealth of information in jewelry making and have a vested interest in your shopping experience, potentially forging relationships that last a lifetime.
We offer an extensive range of loose diamonds, colored gemstones and pearls to choose from. If you have a specific need in anything we don't have on site, we will call to have the product you are interested in rushed to our shop for you to view at no charge.
Once your choice of design, gemstones and metal quality is determined we will be able to provide you with an estimate for the finished product.
We are confident your experience with us will be exhilarating; expect excellence.
Please be advised all estimates are for two weeks time. Prices are subject to change according to market prices of precious metal and gemstones.
Online Consultation
It doesn't matter where you live, the Joseph Jewelry website makes it easy to communicate and design extraordinary jewelry with your online account.
You can browse our website or the internet for pictures that show inspirations, techniques, finishing styles, metal colors, gemstone or diamond qualities and sizes. Then upload these images and add comments through your Joseph Jewelry account.
At this point we receive an alert indicating your interest, and a Joseph Jewelry artisan will quickly respond to work out some design possibilities based on your information. He can post sketches or computer-rendered images to your account to visually confirm the design. An email will be sent to you every time an artisan adds new information to your blog to notify you of the update.
This service might go back and forth a few times while your design is perfected. All these services, regardless of how long we might communicate or create designs for you, is complimentary. We want you to be thrilled with the service we provide. Once we have determined your design and content of the materials we move to the next stage of the process which is to provide you with an estimate of the total cost.
We are confident your experience with us will be exhilarating; expect excellence.
Please be advised all estimates are for two weeks time. Prices are subject to change according to market prices of precious metal and gemstones.
Custom Designed Jewelry - Step Two
In the first step we focus on gathering information from you and working out the major details of your design. In this step we start actually building the 3D model of your design on the computer.
Assuming you accepted the estimate and gave us approval to move forward with the 3D file we ask for a $250 to $1000.00 down payment, depending on the complexity of your design. Your down payment is 100% applicable toward the total cost of your project.
Once the down payment is received, a Joseph Jewelry artisan will begin creating a 3D model of the design we started in step one. During this step you can still make any changes or modifications to your design – having the 3D model allows us to visually confirm any changes made at this point. It doesn't matter how many changes you make, there will be no change to the original estimate as long as we are working on the original project without adding gemstones or materials - if we are adding any material or gemstones then an adjustment to the original price will be made accordingly.
Rendered images of your 3D model can be emailed directly to you, posted to your online design blog, or can be viewed in person by visiting the store. The computer-rendered images allow us to show you realistic views of your design as it will look when finished in the exact metal and gemstones (if any) you have chosen.
After you have made all your design adjustments and have viewed the rendered images of your design we will ask you for your final approval of the 3D model. On approval we will then use stereo lithography technology to "print" a full-size wax version of your design. This technology allows us to create the most intricate and complex details possible in the jewelry industry, within an accuracy of two hundredths of a millimeter; this means you can literally expect perfection of workmanship.
If you would like to see the wax prototype, you are welcome to stop by for viewing or we can mail it to you anywhere in the world, this prototype is full-scale and will show you the exact detail and dimensions of your project.
Our commitment to you is excellence in workmanship and service. If you have approved of the wax prototype then we are ready to move to the third step.
Custom Designed Jewelry - Step Three
By this time both the 3D model and the full-scale wax prototype have been fully approved by you. In the final step we begin creating the piece, either through stock metal fabrication or metal casting - which ever will yield the finer quality to compliment the complexity of the design.
Our highly skilled jewelers each possesses at least 15 years of experience and they are masters at what they do. We don't have any jewelers with just a few years of experience and that's why Joseph Jewelry is able to offer unparalleled craftsmanship and assure our clients the highest standards for artistic merit and intrinsic value on all of our custom designed jewelry.
Fabricating a Piece of Jewelry
If your design is demanding this form of mastery, we start by tracing your design on a stock metal, then we cut out the traced part and then move to shape it or forge it according to your design. In some cases multiple pieces must be cut and shaped then soldered together. Other detail-oriented techniques like filigree, repouse', inlay and others might be required in order to form the finished product.
Casting Your 3D Design
Joseph Jewelry uses a state-of-the-art computerized casting machine that negatively vacuums all oxygen out of the casting chamber and replaces it with released argon gas to purify the environment for casting. This closed environment eliminates all porosity that would otherwise occur naturally due to oxidization. Porosity (tiny air bubbles in the metal) is a sign of an inferior casting and is normally seen on the surface of high-polished metal and will always occur during open-air casting. This is why our argon-gas vacuum chamber is so important.
This high-technology casting machine also allows us to pre-program the perfect temperature for any given metal to prevent the overheating of the metal we are casting. Because different metals become malleable at different temperatures it is important to be precise when heating. Too much heat could damage the metal, while too little could produce an incomplete result. Our computerized casting machine eliminates all of the guesswork that would otherwise occur when a jeweler is casting, creating a perfect casting of the chosen metal every time.
After we have cast your design our experienced jewelers will use tried and true bench techniques to finish and polish your piece. Many styles of finishing could be applied to a piece of jewelry, the most common is a high-polish finish but the list is countless, like matte finish with various grades of texture or vintage hand-engraving with various patron and so on.
Your diamonds and gemstones are set by our most experienced jewelers and you receive a beautiful one-of-a-kind piece of heirloom-quality jewelry that you can enjoy for generations.
Custom Design Policies
Life-Time Warranty
Any custom design jewelry created by Joseph Jewelry comes with a life time warranty against manufacturing defect. Every piece of jewelry must be inspected every 6 months by Joseph Jewelry and signed for by Joseph Jewelry, if it is determined that your jewelry need repair or maintenance due to wear and tear or damage, then you must follow the recommendation for the necessary repairs or your warranty will be void.
Joseph Jewelry will fix or replace any trim diamonds (not center diamonds or gemstones) that are lost due to normal wear and tear at no charge to you. Any damage or abuse to the original quality of the jewelry will void the warranty.
If you lose your center diamond or gemstone due to a manufacturing defect, Joseph Jewelry will pay up to $600 of deductible to your insurance company to replace it.
Replacement must be paid by your insurance company to Joseph Jewelry and performed through Joseph Jewelry only. It is the responsibility of the jewelry purchaser to insure their jewelry under their home owner's policy or renter's policy against any damage or loss that might happen.
If there is any damage, abuse, modification or alteration to the center diamond or gemstone all warranties through Joseph Jewelry become void.
100% Satisfaction on any Custom Design Jewelry
Joseph Jewelry offers 100% satisfaction on any custom design jewelry. If we produce a piece of jewelry through our custom design business we stand behind it. If, for any reason, you don't like your piece of Jewelry within 30 days of purchase, Joseph Jewelry will remake the piece at no cost to you. This could be repeated if we are at fault and didn't follow the written instruction of your order.
Joseph Jewelry reserves the right to cancel any custom design order due to abuse or unreasonable demands by the purchaser.
No Refunds on Custom Designed Jewelry
Due to the intensive labor involved in custom design jewelry no refunds will be issued to any custom design work. One solution we provide to canceled orders is the following: Joseph Jewelry will issue in store credit toward any showcase product of equal or greater value. If the value is greater we ask you for the difference.
Buying Diamonds and Gemstones Through Joseph Jewelry
We offer an extensive collection of diamonds, colored gemstones, and pearls to choose from. If you have a specific need for any gemstones or diamonds we don't have on site, we will order the product you are interested in for you to view in our shop at no charge.
If you choose to purchase a product that we ordered for you, whether it's a diamond, gemstone or any piece of jewelry, then our vendor will be notified of the purchase.
Joseph Jewelry asks for the full payment of the ordered product, since all ordered products are vendor owned. This is because all vendors ask for the final payment of their merchandise within two to four weeks.
If you choose to return the ordered gemstone or diamond within 30 days from the initial order, Joseph Jewelry will issue in-store credit toward a new design or any product in the showcase of equal or greater value.
We offer a 30 day return policy on any in-stock diamonds or gemstones purchased from Joseph Jewelry. The return policy will be void if the stone is altered in any way, damaged or missing any documentation. All products must have original receipts and documentation.
