Ask A Gem Girl Anything…
Who: Leah Ashley
What: custom jewelry designer, business owner, Leah Ashley Designs
Like so many businesses, it starts with a customer disillusioned by the mass-produced market.
A customer in search of a unique wedding band, a one-of-a-kind necklace, or a redesigned setting for an antique gemstone isn’t going to get very far in a world of big-box jewelry stores. Instead, they must seek out individual designers, like Leah Ashley, whose business is about meeting that need and creating customized jewelry designs.
After several years of working in jewelry stores, and with industry-specific education under her belt, Leah and her husband, Nick, a web developer, launched Leah Ashley Designs. Nick assists with site maintenance, backend development, and marketing, while Leah interfaces with clients, develops the designs, and arranges for manufacturing and production.
Her main service is in digitally rendering a client’s concept, generating a perfect three-dimensional visual reference for the finished piece. Her designs are then cast in metal by a specialist before being polished and set by a professional jeweler and shipped to the customer.
“My main goal is not to sell pieces that are finished – it’s to make custom pieces for people,” said Leah, who sat down with Shout! to shed some light on her niche business and talk about the many facets (pun absolutely intended) of the custom jewelry industry.
Shout!: How did you begin making jewelry?
Leah Ashley: I was a studio art major in college [at the University of Iowa]. I took every class I could that was in sculpture and every class that I could that was in metalwork. So it wasn’t a lot of jewelry until, probably, the third class I took, where we got to actually cast, and then we were encouraged to use sterling silver and buy stones if we wanted, but we were poor college students, so we didn’t really get into the expensive high-tech stuff. But I know how to cast, I know how to finish. I wear a ring that I made.
What did you do after college?
I decided I wanted to be employable. Studio art major with a business minor doesn’t really get you a job. I wanted to be a bench jeweler, I wanted to be the person who would set the stones and finish the jewelry, so I started looking for schools that would get me employable in the jewelry industry. I found the Gemological Institute of America which is in Carlsbad, California, and they are the foremost school for anyone working in jewelry. I signed up for [their] design program, so I learned how to draw out designs, which is how they used to do it before computers, and then I learned how to do computer-aided design. I also took classes in wax carving, just so I [could learn] more than I did in college about casting, mold-making – I know a lot about the manufacturing process from that class.
Did these classes get you into the industry as you expected?
Well, while I was in that program, I got offered a job by a jewelry store in Carlsbad that was looking for a computer-aided designer. The job was really good. My boss was really intense and he was really into moving forward and learning what he could do as far as manufacturing, so he’d throw a lot of different things at me. I learned very quickly that what you learn in school is not all you need to know. By a long shot. So I learned as fast as I possibly could, made mistakes, but he always backed me up, which was really great…I helped manage the stores, managed inventory, and if someone came in looking for a custom design, then I did that. That’s where I discovered my love of gem stones, and I learned how to look at diamonds. I’m not a certified gemologist, but I know a lot about it, enough that I’m confident in buying stones for people and for myself.
What brought you to Omaha?
My husband and I, who were living together at the time but not yet married, decided that we were done with California and did not like it. He’s from Carter Lake and I’m from Wisconsin, and we wanted to come back to the Midwest. I actually worked from home for that company in California for a long time, doing design. I created several lines for them that they probably still carry in their stores…Then I decided I needed to meet more people and get out of the house, so I quit there and got another job here.
Doing jewelry design work?
No. I started at the bottom of the totem pole – tagging jewelry at a small, family-owned jewelry chain. And then I worked my way up to where I was buying jewelry for them. I created programs for their stores to carry, and placed orders, and talked a lot with vendors, and made a lot of great relationships. But I decided that I really wasn’t going to be going anywhere in that job, and I wasn’t being paid what I was worth, and I wasn’t doing what I wanted to be doing – which was the design, the creative part of it. So I decided to quit my job and start Leah Ashley Designs, almost a year ago.
Is there any consistency to what clients request?
There’s no consistency at all. Sometimes I’ll get in a day a client who’s looking for some little charm pendant and they only want to spend $100, and someone who wants an engagement ring for over $5,000. It just depends. I’ve had several people contact me where they already have an engagement ring and they’re looking for a wedding band to complement a ring that’s hard to complement…Probably the biggest thing I see is people coming for engagement rings that are different. They don’t want a diamond as a center stone, they want different stones to represent different things, a ring that’s really different – which is awesome, because I love doing bridal stuff.
What have been some of your favorite projects?
I recently did a platinum band for someone and they wanted it braided, with one of the strands as diamonds. And I didn’t think it was going to be so hard to make a braid in the computer, and it was, so it was really rewarding to see it finished. And to do it in platinum with really nice quality diamonds – it was really fun. The other favorite was doing the wedding set for my father-in-law and his wife, where they said, “These are kind of our ideas, but we don’t really know what we want.” So I actually got to buy a diamond for them and create a setting for her and for him. She had said, “I don’t like jewelry, I really don’t want anything big.” And the reason she said that was because she’d never been shown all of her options to find something that she actually liked.
Do your clients generally determine your design aesthetic, or is there a “Leah Ashley” look?
Both. I liked very clean lines. I like a lot of metal, which is not what a lot of people like. So if you look at designs that I put together not for clients, then I definitely think that there is a look that’s very clean, modern, not a lot of embellishment, or if there is, it’s done in a very clean way. But if I’m doing work for clients, ultimately the client decides the aesthetic. I do my best to make something that will look good and is durable and is a nice, solid piece of jewelry that the client will like.