Repurposing and Heirloom Restyling

 

 

Repurposing and Heirloom Restyling - a sentimetal choice but not always the "cheapest"

 

If you have a special heirloom stone we do encourage you to design with it as the most ethical choice for making a new piece. Emily treats all restyling projects with a creative approach, but there is groundwork to cover before taking on such a project, which we need you to send in before we chat about design.


Send clear photos of your jewellery to us, with specs about the stones if you have them.   The karat of gold, color of gold, an appraisal of the jewellery (old or recent), approximate size in milimeters of the stones, and a clear well lit natural light photo are super helpful and require less initial consulting therefore less cost to you.

If you do not have specs about your jewellery, and you want them or suspect the piece is valuable, we can recommend an appraisal service for you to make an appointment and bring it in for evaluation. We do not do this onsite.

We do not accept stones purchased from other vendors because they were  "cheaper" a lab diamond purchased online from another vendor does not qualify for "heirloom restyling services" we have many suppliers with whom we work and can facilitate the entire sale start to finish, and at reasonable prices.


We only receive stones that are dropped off in person, because would like to have a close look and inspect the stone before accepting them for use and advise you of any risks of resetting or reusing some stones. 

 

We do not recommend repurpose soft stones, such as pearls, opals, and will warn you and have waivers signed for all materials left that damage is not our responsibility. Our recommendation is to only re-use diamonds, corundum (sapphire or ruby) or other harder gems for repurposing projects. 


 We do not re-work only diamond melee (chips) but if they are part of your ring with a larger stone, we are happy to incorporate viable small stones into the design. Small stones can be easily misplaced, go flying when removed from jewellery, break, or be previously broken and hidden in heirloom settings when we work on removing them from your existing jewellery. They are also often uncalibrated (all different sizes) even when you think they are all the same, and this is very hard for our gemsetters to work with, measure and design new pieces. It is time consuming and hard to price fairly for the amount of work that goes into such small items. For this reason we do not like to accept only small stones for restyling, but are happy to incorporate a few into your new piece if you are also providing a larger center stone.


If you drop off your stones in person, we can absolutely ship the finished piece back to you, if you are flying in or driving a distance to work with us. We can ship your finished piece back to you once complete, fully insured up to 50K USD

As of 2025, the minimum design and production cost of a restyled piece of jewellery is $1500CAD. This covers removal of up to 20 stones from a ring ($5 per additional stone removed after 20), 2 design meetings with Emily (up to 1 hr total), email correspondance about design (usually 3-4 emails back and forth is typical), 3 design concept layouts, 1 3D model emailed, 1 tweak to the model if needed, and the cost of a dedicated flask for your metal if you are reusing it. It does not cover the cost of supplemental gold, gemsetting labor, shipping, additional in person meetings if needed. If there are to be extra costs, Emily will let you know.