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So, back in the late spring/early summer a new regular popped up in the League of Legends subreddit. His name was /u/Xplo85 aka ThatJewelryDesigner(more properly known as Christopher) and he was doing a kick ass job designing jewelry based on champions from League of Legends (and now other games too).

I thought about it a bit, and realized this was my chance to finally one-up my girlfriend, Victoria (@Aoitsukihime), on all the PAX presents she has gotten for me each year and put myself in the black on the balance for a long time to come. 😉
So, I reached out to Christopher and we started a dialogue about what I had in mind. In short, I wanted something Sona inspired, with blue sapphires (blue being her favorite color and appropriate for the design).

Sona, for those who don't play LoL

He got to work on some initial ideas, and came back with some amazing renders. I opted to go the route of white-gold, given that she is most prone to wearing that over yellow gold, even though the yellow is more in line with Sona’s color scheme. (This, by the way, explains why for months now people on Reddit have been begging him for a Sona inspired design, but he keeps deferring the requests for “reasons”… he didn’t want to spoil the surprise!)

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I gave him some feedback and he noodled over the design a bit more, and after a while he came back with an excellent rendering of the ring that I was totally sold on: The crown is covered in filigree that represents Sona’s etwahl (her instrument that doubles as her weapon). The outer edges of the band is covered in similar designs that match her instrument as well as her clothing. The interior of the band itself is covered in a chain of her iconic hair pieces that hold her pigtails, and while the outer band in the original design had a row of Tears (Fully stacked Tears of the Goddess!) they were omitted from the final for practical reasons. Lastly, the gems… the original design called for yellow-gold with blue sapphires, to evoke her gold and blue color palette of both her and her etwahl, but as I said I opted to change the gold to white-gold for practicality, as my girlfriend does not really wear yellow-gold. (As some have pointed out, Blue, Purple, and Green gems to represent her key abilities would also have been neat.. but as I was going for an every day piece to wear I wanted to keep it simple to her favorite color and gem.)

At the time, he was working at a jewelry store back in GA not far from where I used to live in Atalanta, so I quickly commissioned them through him to make it a reality!

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They made an initial run of the materials, and came back with a casting that was not ideal, but a great first attempt to help them find some of the flaws in the design. This allowed him to refine things a bit and retool it for maximum awesomeness. After some changes, they were subject to yet another processing run. About this time, Chris moved on to freelance on his own to take his new found passion of gaming-inspired designs to the next level, but he was absolutely amazing in making sure this was not lost in the transition and worked tirelessly to keep tabs on the project with the store long after he left.. a true dedication to the craft. From there, I continued working with the owner of the store, Angie, directly.

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After the subsequent run, some of the issues still remained and it became clear the design had some inherent flaws. Namely, there was just too much filigree and wire-work and not enough substance to hold the structure soundly or the gems in place. This was not really Chris’s fault and I can’t blame him. He was a burgeoning designer and as a 3D printing Maker myself, you learn quickly that a lot of the limitations when designs become reality are not inherently obvious and you only learn how to anticipate them from trial and error over time based on pure experience. Angie, the owner, was great about resolving this and enlisted the service of a master craftsman the shop has used for decades to retool the design into something a little more amenable to the laws of physics. Sadly it meant losing some of the pure filigree and converting it to a decorative surface on a solid materials, but none of the sexy lines or slimness of the design was lost! They sent over some gorgeous re-designs, (seen below), and I was happy to approve them for what was hopefully going to be the final casting.

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The result? Well… it made her cry so that’s a good start! I think it’s gorgeous and so does she. (The video doesn’t show it cause she hid from the camera squealing, but she began flapping her arms like a happy little penguin, and orbiting around me while simultaneously twirling in place like a cute little moon, giggling nonstop. It was adorable.)

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The only problem?

I really painted myself into a corner with how high I set the bar for a future engagement ring…

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J. "Sargonas" Eckert


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Sargonas ://: J. Eckert

Completely making it up as I go along

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