Archive for October, 2009

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Three Interesting Facts About Heart Engagement Rings

October 30th, 2009

Heart engagement rings are so named for the simple fact that the metal placed on the front part of the ring is heart shaped (the heart in question here being the ovalish shape that has come to be considered as being representative of the human heart).

 

Now the first interesting fact that you may not have heard of before, with regard to heart engagement rings, is that they are among the most popular types of engagement rings. The popularity of the heart engagement rings is perhaps attributable to the symbolism in them (seeing that the heart shape is also considered the shape of love, and engagements are all about professions of love). And since engagement rings are typically bought by men for their women (women who are always complaining that men don’t ‘understand love’), it follows that purchasing a heart-shaped ring engagement ring for your woman can go a long way in showing her that at least, you are not one of the men said not to ‘understand love.’

 

Another interesting fact about heart engagement rings is that although they are defined by the heart shape on the front part of them, there is nonetheless a huge variety of specific ring styles that are considered as ‘heart engagement rings’ – with the criteria used for classifying the heart engagement rings being things like ‘heart circumference’ (where we have fat heart engagement rings and elongated heart engagement rings as examples). In other words, heart engagement rings are not monotonous; there is plenty to choose from even after opting for this variety of engagement rings.

 

Yet another interesting fact about heart engagement rings is that they come in a great variety of rocks, so that if you are a fan of either diamond, gold, gemstone or any other precious metal, you can quite easily get heart engagement rings in your metal of choice. Indeed, even besides these precious metals, there are also heart engagement rings made from other plainer metals like aluminium and copper – so that even if you don’t have a liking for the ‘precious metals other people are so much after’ that wouldn’t mean that you can’t get heart engagement rings in the plainer metals. In other words, heart engagement rings are not metal-specific.

 

From the fact that heart engagement rings come in all metals, it can also be inferred that heart engagement rings come in all prices, as the third interesting fact about them. Even if all you have for an engagement ring is an amount less than a dollar, you can be still – with some luck – getting an aluminium heart engagement ring going for that less. On the other hand, if what you have as you go searching for a heart engagement ring is one that costs ten thousand dollars, and you go searching at the right price, you can find one that costs that much (and which actually has features to justify the price tag). In other words, heart engagement rings are not budget specific. Whatever you have, you can be sure that there is a heart engagement ring for it: only that you get what you pay for.

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Three Important Things to Keep In Mind When Going Out to Buy Engagement Rings

October 26th, 2009

Okay, let’s say that you have finally garnered enough courage to pop the big question to the woman in your life, possibly with one knee bend. So and so, will you marry me, you ask – and to your amazement, she almost jumps up with excitement, and tells you ‘yes of course.’ If you are the one being described, and even if the acceptance from the other party was less enthusiastic, chances are that you the next thing in your mind will be to buy an engagement ring and present it to the lady in question – as a reminder to her, and to other men who might be having intentions about her as well, that you have already ‘booked’ her, and you are only waiting to tie the knot with her.

 Now as you head out to buy an engagement ring to celebrate this stage of your relationship, there are a number of important things you will need to keep in mind.

 One of the most important things people going out to buy engagement rings are advised to keep in mind all the while is their ladies’ preferences, with common advice in this regard being to let those preferences to be the chief guiding factor in their shopping. This is to avoid the unfortunate situation where a man buys a woman an engagement ring, only for her to take it hesitatingly or to reject it outright if she is the ‘tougher’ variety of woman.

The idea is to get her something that is in line with her sense of style – so that if your woman is the contemporary variety that looks down on classic things, getting her a classic ring (which might cost you quite a bit) could see her still unhappy with it, not because it a bad ring per se, but because it is simply out of sync with whom she is. Ideally going together with your woman to buy engagement rings would be the best way to go about it, but it often turns out that if you want the ring to be a surprise to her, this would obviously be a good way to ’spoil the fun’ – hence the reason why most men find themselves having to second guess their loved ones.

 Another thing men going shopping to buy engagement rings are advised to keep in mind is the need to look beyond the money in their shopping – that is, not to let money be the main guiding factor in their shopping. The danger in letting money be the only guiding factor when shopping for engagement rings is that, for instance, if you are just keen to get your woman an ‘expensive’ ring, and nothing beyond that, you could end up paying a lot of money for a ring that offers no extra value to justify the extra money that you have to pay for it, yet you pay that much for it just because you wanted an ‘expensive’ ring.

Finally, the third thing that men going to buy engagement rings are advised to keep in mind is the reason as to why they are buying the ring (is it to impress the woman more, is it to just to celebrate that milestone in their relationship…and so on), and then start their shopping with end in mind, so that when all is said and done, they don’t end up with a ring that turns out to be out of sync with what they were trying to achieve through it, a situation which unfortunately too many men find themselves in.

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The Two Main Reasons as to Why Diamond Necklaces Cost What They Do

October 22nd, 2009

It is often said, in jewellery circles, that if you go shopping and you chance upon some diamonds necklaces being sold very cheaply, you need to raise your ‘authenticity antennae.’ This is in recognition of the fact that genuine diamonds necklaces are not expected to come cheap, so that if people see you selling such items at ‘truly low prices’ they are likely to become suspicious, rather than rushing to take advantage of the ‘offer’ as would probably be the case with other types of products.

 

So why are diamonds necklaces expected to cost that much?

 

Well, the reasons as to why diamonds necklaces are expected to cost a lot can be as falling into two categories, namely the objective reasons that have to do with the diamond necklaces (and precisely the material they are made from), and subjective reasons that have to do with the reputation of diamonds necklaces.

 

Taking the objective reasons as to why diamonds necklaces cost what they do, it is an undeniable fact that, for starters, diamond is a rare mineral, present in very few places on the world – and this scarcity makes it a rather dear material. After all, useful resources that also happen to become scarce are likely to see their prices hike, and this is a basic fact of life about which nobody can really do anything.

 

Rarity aside, it is worth mentioning that even in the few sites where diamond is to be found in the world, getting to mine it is usually quite a tricky idea (as very deep mines, typically running into thousands of meters below the ground have to be dug to reach the diamond). Now to get guys to go into these types of mines, you have to motivate them with good sums of money, because coming out after going in is not always guaranteed! It is a huge risk they are taking for you, in going there. And once the diamond is gotten, it cannot typically be used in its ‘raw’ form, meaning that it has to undergo some processing, again at not very small cost. With most mining products, refinery would be the last major cost component that goes into determining what they are ultimately sold for. In the case of diamond, however, other post-processing issues, things like the transportation and storage of the diamonds necklaces ultimately made out of it, all add to making them quite expensive. This is because items like these diamonds necklaces are ‘high risk’ items, particularly prone to theft, which means that they can’t be stored ‘anyhow.’ They have to be transported and stored under top security – and all this adds to what they are ultimately sold at.

 

Turning to the subjective factors that account for what diamonds necklaces cost what they do, we would be looking at things like the fact that one of the benefits that people purchase the diamonds necklaces in search of is exclusivity (which basically means having something that not everyone has) –and this can only be obtained if the diamonds necklaces are sold at higher prices. So we have a situation where even if someone was to discover a way of making diamonds synthetically at a much lower cost, the necklaces diamonds would still have to be sold at hiked prices to main the ‘exclusivity’ – also called prestige.

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The Three Stone Engagement Ring Explored

October 21st, 2009

The three stone engagement ring is often considered as being in a class of its own as far as engagement rings go, with most people who can get one seeing it as their first choice of an engagement ring.

 In terms of symbolism, the three stones that make up the three stone engagement ring are seen as representing the three stages of a relationship (with the whole ring itself celebrating the second part of such a relationship), seeing that it is given at engagement time, after the first (acquaintance) stage of the relationship, and before the ultimate (marriage) stage of the romantic relationship. There are also those who see three stone engagement rings as being representative of the fact that the engagement stage – at which they are presented, is the stage at which the couple gets to reflect the past experiences, present state, and future outlook of their relationship, three stages that are represented by the three rocks on the ring.

 Also called trinity rings because they are made of three stones, three stone rings also find widespread use in other occasions, besides engagement, examples of these other occasions celebrated with trilogy rings (as they also called) being the likes of anniversaries. Surprisingly though, trilogy/trinity rings are rarely used as wedding rings.

 As the name suggests, it is the presence of three gems, arranged on a row on the front side of the ring that defines it as a three stone engagement ring. Of course, while it is the presence of these three stones on front of a ring that qualifies it to be considered a three stone ring, it is worth mentioning that the three stone engagement ring comes in a variety of styles, depending on the size of the stones employed on it, their shapes and their types.

 Looking at the size of the stones employed, we may have one variety of the three stone engagement ring where all the three stones employed in making the ring are of one size, with another variety of the three stone engagement ring where the two outer stones are smaller than the middle stone of the ring (which symbolizes the present stage at which the relationship is), with the later variety being more common than the former variety where all the stones are of the same size.

 With regard to the shapes of stones employed in making the three stone engagement ring, we have a huge variety, with the commonest shapes being circular and square. Other commonly employed stone shapes in the three stone engagement ring include emerald and marquise – though the square and circular shapes, because of their easy alignment, are to be more commonly found on the three stone engagement ring.

With regard to the types of stones employed in making the three stone engagement ring, we tend to find most rings of this variety having only one stone type all through (say three diamonds, three gemstones and so on) – though there are some ‘eccentric’ couples who may refer their three stone engagement ring to be made of three stones of different types, like say gold, diamond and gemstone, all on one ring.

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In Modern Online Jewellery Stores, An Opportunity to Design Your Engagement Ring

October 19th, 2009

Are you considering going out to buy an engagement ring to celebrate that crucial milestone in your relationship? Are you keen to get a truly great ring – seeing that if your relationship turns into a success; it is the only engagement ring you will ever get to purchase in your life? And are you put off by the ‘one size fits all’ approach employed in the factory made engagement rings that are the most commonly available – so that you are asking yourself whether it is possible to have an engagement ring made to design, just for you and your loved one? Well, in that case, you will be glad to learn that in modern online jewellery stores, that is indeed a possibility: to get an engagement ring made to design, just for you.

 

The emergence of these online jewellery stores that are willing and ready to design an engagement ring just for you can be traced back to the peak years of the dot com boom, when online stores of all varieties were emerging and when many found themselves really struggling to stay competitive in an online market that was bereft of some constraints (like the geographical constraint) that somehow hinder the other types of markets competition-wise. Faced with this unhindered type and level of competition, many online stores tried to compete on the price-front alone (by undercutting one another, setting up price wars which no one could really win…and so on), but it soon became clear that this was an unsustainable way of doing business.

 

It is in the search of more sustainable ways of competing that things like the situations where the various stores started exploring competition by things like ‘value-addition’ arose – and in the case of jewellery stores, that was through something like the arrangement where customers have the opportunity to design their own engagement rings, exactly as they wanted them, so that all that would be left for the store would be to supply them with what you told them to.

 

How exactly does the arrangement work, you ask.

 

As it turns out, getting to design your engagement ring on these online jewellery stores is not really hard. You just have to make up your mind what it is exactly that you want to come out in your engagement ring, as the first step in this easy process. Having made up what you want in your engagement ring, you describe it to the online store – typically through a form where you define the engagement ring of your dreams in terms of things like colour, style, metal, size and so on. Most even have a software system where you can actual sketch the ring of your dreams, and then upload it to them – to ensure that they really get it right (sometimes including some personalization features, like having your name engraved on the rings). Typically, the online jewellery stores that allow you to design your engagement ring will demand for some deposit before they can start work on it. And surprisingly, most of these stores that allow you to design your engagement ring don’t charge you too much for the ‘privilege’ – and you could find yourself actually paying for the rings you design just as much as you would have paid for the mass produced, ‘one size fits all’ variety.

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Factors Behind the Allure of the Marquise Engagement Ring

October 16th, 2009

There is no denying that marquise engagement rings are among the most popular types of engagement rings. But which are the factors behind the popularity of the marquise engagement ring?

 

Well, for starters, marquise engagement rings ooze elegance all through, and this is one of the factors why many people love them. It is probably about subliminal communication really. Take into consideration that the people buying engagement rings are people who are trying to win the hearts of their women completely, as they approach marriage. Take into consideration too, that the women for whom engagement rings are being bought are also trying to ’size up’ the men. Under this kind of setting, it would not be hard to see why marquise engagement rings, which ooze of elegance through and through would be so much loved, seeing that a man buying such an engagement ring for his woman would be sure that he would most likely be seen as an elegant man, a huge plus on the endeavour to win the woman’s heart, given that elegance is one of the factors the woman is likely to be ’sizing’ him on.

 

Talking of elegance with regard to marquise engagement rings, and digressing for a moment, it would be worth mentioning that the elegance of the marquise engagement rings comes out most clearly when the ring is of the bigger variety – seeing that is in such a bigger ring, the luminance (which is many people’s outward manifestation of the elegance) comes out most clearly.

 

Besides elegance, of course, we have the fact that marquise engagement rings come in all cuts as another factor behind their popularity. As it turns out, very few other types of engagement rings come in as many stones as marquise engagement rings – meaning that whatever stone happens to be your jewellery stone of choice, you can be sure to find a marquise engagement ring in it. Most other types of engagement rings, on the other hand, tend to be very ’stone-specific’ so that if you find the style in diamond, for instance, it becomes very hard to find it in another stone, like say gemstone.

 

The fact that marquise engagement rings come in different stones means, by inference, that they also come in literary ‘all prices’ so that we have marquise engagement rings going for just a few dollars at the lower end of the scale, with marquise engagement rings going for as much as a few thousand dollars at the higher end of the scale. What this means, then, is that whatever your budget when going shopping for the engagement rings, you are sure to find a marquise engagement ring for you. This availability of marquise engagement rings in all budgets, while potentially off-putting to the people looking for exclusivity, can mean that more other people from ‘all walks of life’ (both the well endowed financially, and the modestly endowed) can get to use them, hence their popularity: in a situation where everybody gets what they pay for, but it still turns out be a marquise engagement ring.

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Exploring the Allure of Emerald Cut Engagement Rings

October 15th, 2009

Examining the shopping trends in many jewellery stores, it turns out to be rather clear that for quite a good number of couples, emerald cut engagement rings are considered to be the very best, so that we have couples who will really go to great lengths to ensure that they get one such emerald cut engagement ring, when they could more easily get another engagement ring style. What then, explains this allure of the emerald cut engagement rings?

 

Well, for starters, few people will argue with the fact that the emerald cut engagement rings tend to carry with them a certain ‘feel’ of class which they confer to anyone who gets to wear them. It follows, then, that most men who happen to be aware that their ladies appreciate sophistication and ‘classy’ items tend to find the emerald cut engagement rings highly alluring, knowing that an ‘investment’ in them is likely to be well appreciated by the ladies in their lives.

 

Class and sophistication aside though, there is also little argument about the fact that emerald cut engagement rings are truly beautiful in their own right, so that even a couple that may not know about the class and sophistication associated with them could still find themselves drawn to buy such emeralds for the beauty in them alone. The way the emerald cut comes to be is that a practical ring is made in circular or oval shape (depending on the couples preference with regard to the functional part of the ring), with the emerald coming out on the embellishment on the front part of the ring. By definition, the emerald cut engagement ring is basically a rectangular type of design, with the edges somehow tapered to infuse the sophistication described earlier (and with a flashy rock typically being employed on this front part – hence the aesthetic appeal in the emerald cut engagement ring).

 

Sophistication and aesthetic appeal aside, another factor explaining the allure of the emerald cut engagement rings is the fact that they come in so many designs, so that for the traditionally (read classically) minded, we can have, for instance, the emerald cut coming out as a solitaire, with more contemporary designs for the more ‘modern minded’ couple. The idea here is, whatever a couple’s preferences in terms of design, they are sure to find an emerald for themselves. Now this is huge plus for the emerald style, when compared with some other styles which tend to be very design specific, so that you can only find them in only design, while remaining absolutely unavailable in other types of engagement ring design.

 

Then there is the fact that the emerald style, although originally developed for the rocks known by the same name (emeralds) has toady found application on other stones, so that whatever your preferences in terms of jewellery stone, you are likely to find an emerald cut in it, provided it is a stone that is ‘workable’ into cuts. Of course, the emerald cut comes out best in diamond – but you can also find it in other stones as well.

 Finally, another factor behind the allure of the emerald cut engagement rings is that they are generally not too expensive, so that a couple looking for a sophisticated engagement ring, but lacking too huge a budget to spend on it, can find a reasonably priced, yet highly sophisticated option in the emerald cut engagement rings.

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Why So Many People are Spotting Right Hand Rings

October 13th, 2009

Once upon a time, rings were only supposed to be worn on the left hand ‘ring’ finger. It was generally a man who bought his woman a ring, so that the moment you set your eyes upon a woman wearing a right (on the left hand, of course), you automatically knew that she was someone else’s lady. The long and short of it is that rings were always worn on the ‘ring’ finger of the left hand, and that they were always bought by men for their women to signify that they were either married to them (in the case of wedding rings) or that they were about to marry them, in the case of engagement rings.

 

Fast forward to today, and we see more and more women spotting right hand fingers. The way it works is that a woman pops into a jewellery store (the online or brick and mortar variety), gets a quotation for a nice ring, buys it for a herself…and then starts wearing it on the ‘ring’ finger of her right hand, lest the meaning in the ring be misconstrued. So what could be behind this trend where more and more women are buying the right hand rings for themselves?

 

Well, behind the trend where right hand rings are becoming more and more popular is the ‘women’s liberalization’ wave, where women are coming to realize that they don’t have to live in desolation just because no ‘knight in shining armour’ came their way and gifted them with a ring…that they can just as well pop into a shop selling rings, buy themselves one, start wearing it on their right hands – and still feel as good as their counterparts who have been given the rings by their men. In other words, in the right hand rings, we find a message to the effect that a woman doesn’t necessarily need a man to be happy, and that a man (who would gift her with an ordinary left hand ring) would only be coming in to complete her happiness, but that she would already be happy on her own even before his entry into her life. Of course, someone might ask why the woman in this case then can’t wear her ring on her left hand then, and the answer to this question would be that she wears it on her right hand so that she doesn’t end up distracting and discouraging men who might have some sorts of intentions  about her. Such men, seeing her wearing an ordinary left hand ring, might get to imagine that she is either someone’s wife or fiancée, and thus keep his distance. This way, the women in question could very easily end up without a man in her life for the rest of her life; and clearly that is not the intention here.

 

Another factor that could account for the increased demand for right hand rings, besides the increased liberalization of women, is the fact that the wearing of the right hand rings by a number of celebrities and ‘opinion leaders’ in women’s circles has led many to start wearing the right hand rings, not because of the inner message in the rings, but rather just because they are the ‘in’ thing.

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Shopping for Fashion Diamonds: What to Lookout For

October 12th, 2009

Fashion diamonds, whether presented on engagement rings (which is the commonest presentation of them), or on any other form of jewellery are basically shopped for with aesthetic appeal as the most important shopping consideration. The idea is to come out with truly fashionable diamonds. Of course, the term ‘fashion’ is a highly dynamic one, so that what is considered fashionable today may not be that fashionable tomorrow. Now while it is true that what is considered ‘in’ fashion or ‘out’ of fashion with regard to fashion diamonds tends to change less often than what is considered ‘in’ or ‘out’ of fashion with regard to other main clothing items, this is not to say that fashion diamonds are absolutely immune to such time to changes.

 

Then again, what fashion diamonds lack in terms of what may be referred to as ‘time dynamism’ (fashion changes caused by simply the passage of time), they definitely make up for in terms of what may be referred to as ‘individual dynamism’ – that is, what various individual buyers of the fashion diamonds consider fashionable and what they consider unfashionable. One person’s idea of fashion diamonds, for instance, might be that of ‘big’ carat diamonds, so that any small diamond is definitely ‘out’ – with another person considering the small so-called ‘cute’ rocks to be the essence of fashion diamonds.

 

What is essential when shopping for fashion diamonds is to take a little time, and look beyond the aesthetics, because although the aesthetics are what define fashion diamonds, they are nonetheless not the only consideration one would need to make when shopping for diamonds (or any piece of jewellery for that matter).

 

One of the essential things that one might do well to look at, removing the eyes from the aesthetics for a moment, is the genuineness or otherwise of the fashion diamonds in question. Not everything that glitters is gold (and someone might add that not everything that sparkles is diamond). There have been innumerable cases of people focusing their attention on aesthetics alone when shopping for fashion diamonds, to the exclusion of other essential attributes, like the genuineness of the rocks. This can turn out to be a terrible and expensive mistake, when you reach home, only to learn that what you got were cleverly cut pieces of glass. Indeed, when shopping for fashion diamonds, and any other type of jewellery, one should first take steps to ascertain its genuineness before even starting to think of factors such as aesthetics, because if a jewel does not make the mark as far as genuineness goes, there would be no point going any further with other shopping considerations for it. That is, unless, it is ‘replica’ fashion diamonds you happen to be shopping for, of course.

 

As alluded to earlier, too, it is important when shopping for fashion diamonds to go for a product that by virtue of its cut, styling and so on, can withstand the test of time (especially if it is something you are looking to be wearing on a day to day basis). This is because when all is said and done; fashions can be very dynamic and prone to very sudden changes.

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Principles that Top Jewellery Designers Work With

October 9th, 2009

(For views of top designs try “DesignsbyIndigo.co.uk”)

Many people wonder how the various exquisite items of jewellery come to be, and who actually makes them. Starting with the second part of the question, we would discover that the various exquisite items of jewellery we so much admire tend to be made by jewellery designers, these being individuals with backgrounds in the visual artists who have specialized in the art of making great-looking jewellery, so that in the final analysis, the jewellery design becomes a form of artistic expression. And turning to the second part of the question, as to how the jewellery designers do it, it turns out that they are able to come up with the beautiful works of art through the use of certain established principles of jewellery design.

 

Now while different schools of thought in the jewellery design fraternity have different views with regard to what the principles of jewellery design actually are, it is generally agreed that for a jewellery designer to come up with a truly appreciable piece of work, he or she has to keenly pay attention to the composition of the item, the ‘movement’ in the item, the ‘form’ in the item and of course the technique to be employed in the making of the item. Under this way of looking at things, composition, movement, form and technique can be seen as the principles of jewellery design, principles which the jewellery designers make use of in making their work.

 

Looking at one of these principles of jewellery design, composition, this turns out to be principle that guides the jewellery designers with regard to things like rhythm in the items, the relationships between the planes on the jewellery items they make, the distribution (statistical) of the materials employed in making the items, as well as the pointers on the items of jewellery. It is also under composition that jewellery designers look at balance and dimensionality in their work.

 

Turning to another principle of jewellery design, the one called ‘movement’ this turns out to be the one that deals with fluency in the items of jewellery so produced (where they are supposed to flow), while also dealing with the torque and drapery in the items. Without observance of this particular principle, the jewellery designers run the risk of coming up with pieces of work that look drab to the eyes of a person getting to view them, not because of what they are made from but rather because of poor workmanship. Indeed, it could even be mentioned that without observance of movement in jewellery design, it is quite easy to come up with products that look like ‘fakes’ to the viewer.

 

Under form, as a principle of jewellery design, we examine things like the functionality of the items made by the jewellery designers (because there is no point, for instance, coming up with a very beautiful ring, that is unfortunately uncomfortable or downright impossible to wear for the end user.

 

The moral in all these, to the people who are not jewellery designers, is that a lot of labour and skill goes into the making of the small-looking pieces of jewellery they buy in the jewellery stores ready made.

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