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Custom Design: Platinum Mother-Child Knot Pendant

Platinum Mother-Child Knot Pendant

The Request

Recently, a customer contacted me on Etsy who wanted a custom design. He wanted a platinum Mother-Child Knot Necklace. His wife inherited a diamond ring. He wanted to take the diamond from the old ring and mount it into a pendant. He saw my version of the Mother-Child Knot Necklace with birthstones on Etsy, and wanted a version of it with the diamond in the center.

The Design of the Platinum Mother-Child Knot

Up to now, I had not designed anything with prongs. I wanted to be cautious about this because he also wanted the pendant made from platinum. Therefore, the pendant would cost quite a bit. Because of the expense, there was no room for error.

First, I had to figure out how to design the prongs. The customer got me the basic dimensions of the diamond. I took that information and created a rough 3D model of the diamond. Then I got a tip from a fellow designer on Shapeways. He recommended I check out a web site called Wizegem. From that, I got a prong model from that was very close to the correct size. I then downloaded it and brought it into Blender, and scaled it a little bit to make it the exact size I needed.

At that point, I shared screenshots of the first attempt with the customer to see if it looked like what he had hoped. He requested a couple minor changes. Once those were done, we ordered a plastic version of the pendant and it was sent it to him. He verified that the diamond fit in the prongs perfectly. Finally, we placed the order for the platinum version.

The Finished Product

The version in the picture attached to this post does not have the actual diamond. It has a Swarovski crystal, which is a bit smaller than the real diamond will be. I placed it there just to give an idea of what it will look like when it is all done.