I Designed My First Piece of Jewelry with Ana Luisa!
I am so excited to finally talk about a project I’ve been working on since December of last year. You all know how I feel about Ana Luisa, so when they reached out to me about a design collaboration, I responded ASAP with an email along the lines of “YES HOW DO WE START?!”
If you’re impatient and just want to see the product, HERE IT IS!!!!
If you aren’t familiar with Ana Luisa, it is a luxury jewelry brand that focuses on sustainable and responsible production. They use recycled gold, responsibly grown diamonds, and they produce all their products in small batches. The latter means that you might see their products are often ‘sold out’ but that means that they sold the small batch they made and are making another small batch soon. That way, waste is reduced and they only make as much as they need. They also are honest about the pricing and don’t overcharge even though they use the same designers and some materials as luxury brands.
My first call with the team was a breakdown of the timeline. I was given complete creative freedom for my designs and I got back to them with my initial drawings and inspiration. They asked for as much detail as possible so that they could understand my point of view.
Here is what my first mood board looked like back in December 2019:
I wanted to play around with the idea of balance and duality. How some days we feel strong and extroverted, sometimes soft and introverted. We’re loud and quiet, energetic and chill, happy and sad, sometimes all in the course of an hour or two. I wanted us to celebrate that complexity and to be able to choose if you’re feeling like the sun or the moon on any particular day.
After this, I had a call with the CEO and their head designer who were immensely patient with me and explained so much to me about how the jewelry business even works. For example, I initially wanted mother of pearl as the “moon” material but sourcing that responsibly and in the small amount I’d want (not to mention it would be impossible to make uniform because each piece of mother of pearl is totally different) made it a very difficult material - we opted for cubic zirconia. They took my mood board and came back to me with two designs that I absolutely adored (picking between the two was so hard!)
As you might be able to tell, chose to head in the “Antique Skies” direction, but we all agreed that the piece looked better without the crescent moon and we decided to move that part of the necklace around a bit.
The final result before sending it off to make a prototype was:
Then, it was about a month of waiting before I could hold it in my hands. Like with anything you create, I went through a period of thinking that it wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t being creative enough, other peoples’ designs were so much cooler than mine - but once I held the prototype in my hand all that doubt faded away. It was exactly what I had hoped :’)
I got back to the team immediately and said I didn’t have any changes I needed to make, so we were able to jump right into production!
Now, nearly 6 months after starting this project, I can finally share it with you all!
My sun and moon two-sided necklace was released today and I can’t thank you all enough for allowing me to do this. Without your support I would have never been given this opportunity and this little project has brought me so much joy. Thank you to the Ana Luisa team too, who was so kind and truly thoughtful during this entire process. Anni, the lead designer took my messy scribble of an idea and made it into something I will treasure forever!
You can find the necklace as well as some more information HERE and once again, thank you!
5% of each sale will be going to Rainforest Trust which focuses on buying back pieces of land from companies destroying the rainforest and give it back to the indigenous peoples and the animals that rely on the forest to live (as we all do!)
