How to Create a Nature Inspired Engagement Ring
Green sapphire and diamond handmade nature inspired engagement ring
A guide to designing a nature inspired engagement ring
Over the last few years, nature-inspired engagement rings have become increasingly popular with our clients.
Drawing inspiration from nature offers a unique alternative to the standard engagement ring, allowing you to add personality to the design while creating a beautiful, timeless, one-of-a-kind piece of art to wear every day.
Nature-inspired engagement rings are one of the most difficult styles to pull off. Not only are they challenging to design, but they are equally difficult to manufacture.
With flowing vines, delicate leaf detailing, and organic shapes commonly found in nature-inspired rings, creating a piece that feels refined rather than overworked requires a high level of skill and experience. When made well, they become truly unique pieces of heirloom quality jewellery.
The best way to manufacture a nature inspired ring
Modern manufacturing techniques such as CAD have limitations when it comes to creating a nature-inspired ring. The curved surfaces, flowing shapes, and fine details can be difficult to properly file, sand and polish using jewellers tools.
Because of this, a hand-made nature-inspired rings will often achieve a higher level of detail and refinement compared to a purely CAD-created design.
Shop | Green Tourmaline Forest Ring
How to design a nature inspired ring
Like any quality design, working with an expert is the best place to start. Before contacting a jewellery designer to help bring your vision to life, spend some time thinking about the types of natural inspirations you would like to incorporate into the ring.
Below are four listed steps to help you on the path to create a nature inspired ring.
Step 1 | Research phase
Collect images of nature and nature-inspired jewellery that you love. This could be anything from mountain ranges and forests to flowers, leaves, or twisting vines. These reference points will help guide the overall feel of the design.
Think about the specific natural elements you would like incorporated into the ring, such as leaf shapes and sizes, vine detailing, textures, gemstone variety, colour, and stone size.
Green sapphires are one of the most popular choices for nature-inspired engagement rings. They are durable gemstones, making them ideal for everyday wear, and they come in a wide range of tones — from light and mossy greens to deep olive and vibrant grass greens.
Blog Article | How to Choose a Sapphire
It’s also important to have a budget in mind early in the process. As a guide, a bespoke nature-inspired handmade engagement rings generally start at 6000 AUD.
Step 2 | Engaging a jewellery designer
Finding the right jewellery designer to create your ring is one of the most important parts of the process. When researching jewellers, read their reviews and look through past projects to ensure their style aligns with what you are looking for.
From there, have a conversation with them to see if they understand your vision and approach to the design. Most importantly, trust your instincts.
Step 3 | Design collaboration & development
Send through all of your design research to your chosen jewellery designer. From there, your ideas and their expertise will come together to create the ideal nature inspired ring design. Initial sketches or concepts will be drawn up for your feedback.
During this stage, it’s important to be open and honest with your feedback. Even the aspects you don’t like help guide the design process in the right direction. Don’t worry about offending the jewellery designer — all feedback is valuable feedback.
Step 4 | Your nature inspired ring comes to life
Once the final design is approved, the ring is made.
Nature inspired engagement ring | Case study
Oliver was looking for a nature-inspired engagement ring and wanted a green sapphire as the centre stone, either in a pear shape or marquise shape. Both of these gemstone shapes work beautifully in nature inspired designs due to their soft, leaf-like appearance.
The first stage of the design process was sourcing a sapphire in the right tone of green and shape Oliver was looking for. We sourced two sapphires for him to view, from which he selected the beautiful 3ct marquise-shaped green sapphire pictured below.
Once the sapphire was confirmed, Oli discussed his design ideas and inspirations with our head jewellery designer, Lisa.
Oli wanted an asymmetrical design with fine vine detailing flowing up towards the central sapphire. He also wanted diamonds sprinkled through the shoulders to give the ring a more classic engagement ring feel.
View Our Custom Engagement Ring Portfolio
Once the ideas and inspirations were discussed, Lisa sketched an initial design concept for Oli’s feedback. From there, a few additional diamonds were added to the design before the ring was approved for manufacturing.
The ring was then handmade at the Set Together Jewellery Studio on the Sunshine Coast, QLD.
Working with us FAQ’s
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Yes, we serve clients based all over Australia, Europe and the United States.
Please see our page on working with us remotely
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The price to create a nature inspired engagement ring starts from 6000AUD
This amount covers the design phase, the ring made in 18ct yellow gold including a green sapphire up to 1ct in size.
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If you don’t love your ring, we are happy to alter the finished piece to suit your wants at no extra cost to you.
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A nature inspired ring incorporates elements from nature like vines, leaf detailing and textural elements. These forms can be subtle or obvious.
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The best gemstones to use for any engagement ring including nature inspired, is either sapphire or diamond.
These gemstones are tough and durable to withstand everyday wear and tear.
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No, we do not work with moss agate and other quartz materials due to their brittle and soft crystal structure.
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All our nature inspired rings are handmade, ensuring each design is unique and finished to a high standard
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Our jewellery studio is located in the Sunshine Coast, QLD at B4/354 Mons Road, Forest Glen, Lower Level, Kurrajong Building.
This blog article was written by Jewellery Designer, Goldsmith and Gemologist, Lisa Clune.
Learn more about Lisa and the Set Together Jewellery brand here.
