Once you have decided to have a custom designed piece made for you, the first step is to come up with the basic design. It is important to consider several factors such as: your lifestyle, how often you will be wearing the piece, visual aspects, as well as durabilty and your own personal taste. Incorporating unused jewelry and gemstones is strongly encouraged. By using items that you already own and no longer wear you are lowering the demand for mining new materials as well as keeping your final cost down.
Traditionally designing has been done by sketching out ideas with a pencil and paper. Hand drawing can work but it does leave a lot of room for misinterpretations of an idea. Hand sketching often appears unrealistic and can leave you unsure of what the final piece will look like.
At Bauble Patch Jewelers we create designs with our clients using our Digital Goldsmith software. This allows you the client, to view your design ideas two-dimensionally on the computer screen. While using the Digital Goldsmith software one can easily move stones around, change already existing pieces, and ultimately show you what pieces would look like once they are created. The only restriction with the two-dimensional program is that the design is strictly the top view, it cannot be seen from all sides until we create a rendering using our state of the art Cad/Cam rendering software. Both softwares are email friendly so no matter where you live the drawings will reach you for your approval. Once you view the 3-D rendering it is at that time you can make any necessary adjustments.
After customer approval, we then produce a wax prototype of the piece we will be making. The process that we use to get the wax model into metal is the Lost Wax Casting. Casting was the second major breakthrough discovered by prehistoric metalworkers. They realized that molten metal could be poured into the negative spaces of crude molds. Whatever was at hand served in fashioning these molds-stone,sand, clay,wood. Upon solidifying, the metal formed the positive shape desired.
Compared with most enterprises, casting has changed very little in the last 4000 years. The materials have been improved and the scale has grown, but the process is virtually intact. The wax model is mounted on a wax rod, called a sprue. The sprued model is mounted onto a base and fitted with a watertight open-ended cylinder called a flask. Steps are taken to remove bubbles from the mix. The investment is dried and then burned out in a kiln to remove all traces of the model. While the mold is still warm from the burnout, molten metal is poured into the mold, where it assumes the shape of the original model. After a brief cooling, the mold is quenched in water, which breaks it open and releases the casting. Our jeweler then finishes the newly designed piece skillfully hand setting the stones in the design. 
GREEN INITIATIVES
Recycling has never been more important than it is today. It is not only an option but a responsibility that we have to ourselves and the generations to come.
Throughout history jewelry has been intimately interwoven in the human culture. Unfortunately, mining methods of jewelry’s most precious metals damage the earth’s crust and ecosystems.
Recycling gold is one of the most ecologically and socially responsible choices you can make!
Gold is valuable enough to provide an incentive to recycle, although significant amounts of gold sit idle, while mining continues at a pace of 2,500 tons a year. In fact, there is enough gold that has already been mined to satisfy all the demands of the jewelry industry for the next 50 years. Much of it sits in bank vaults and in the form of old and unused jewelry. Recycle, and the demand for new resources is lowered. There is little regard for the environment during gold mining, that is why it is so important to use the resources that you already own.
The custom design process starts in our studio and ends in our studio. Nothing leaves our premises.
