Design Your Own Ethically Sourced Jewellery with DIWAH

A few years ago, way up in the North of England, entrepreneur and jewellery designer, Janet Stansfield came up with a great idea: source semi-precious stones from ethically sound sources and let the customers design their own jewellery; then have it made by jewellery designers right here in the UK.  That was back in 2012 and finally this year she realised her idea with the launch of bespoke jewellery design service DIWAH.  She’s supported by a great team of jewellery designers up in Newcastle making the jewellery as the online orders come in.

As part of their launch, DIWAH invited me to try out their bespoke jewellery design service, and I’ll admit I just couldn’t resist it.  We don’t currently do sponsored posts here at Our Little Organic Life, but once in a while we do like trying out a product or service that our readers might like and sharing it if it meets our ethical and environmental standards.  Obviously here at OLOL we try to not encourage mass consumerism, and so buying no jewellery at all, or buying jewellery from the charity shop is more environmentally friendly than the service which DIWAH offers.  However, I happen to love jewellery – its my #1 weakness – and feel that having one or two pieces which I’ve had a say in designing and which really match my capsule wardrobe is okay with me.  So I said yes please, that I would love to try their service, and in turn, they agreed that they were happy for me to share my story here with you.

It’s a pretty simple process to design your own jewellery with DIWAH.

Step 1:  Go to https://www.diwah.com and click on the ‘start designing’ tab.  A variety of templates and design options will come up with different looks, but if you want to have all of the 1500+ design components available to work with, you can do that too.  (That’s what I did!)

Step 2:  Once you’ve chosen your template and your design elements, just start designing by clicking and dragging the stones and clasps of your choice onto the online template.  The pieces are priced by weight, so I balanced off the heavier stones in my piece by using lighter design features to keep my piece within my chosen budget.

Step 3:  When you’re done, just check out and within around 10 days your necklace will be completed and sent to you.  Before its sent out you’ll get a lovely email from your designer with a photo of your piece as its being created and as a final piece.  They’ll also write you a personalised note card which will accompany the piece when it arrives in its luxuriously packaged box.

I ended up designing two necklaces.  The first one was a very neutral piece with some bold statement semi-precious gems, a thick gunmetal chain and copper clasp with copper detailing.  I called it COPPER HEART.  The second piece was more bright and fun, designed to match my new electric blue summer dress.  It featured natural turquoise, coral and what they call ‘potato crystals’ which are in fact glass beads.  I love this piece and I named it after my daughter, E*** GOES TRIBAL.

Here’s the photographs I received from my jewellery designer before the item was shipped out to me:

And here is the unboxing of the pieces when I received them.

I loved that my request for particularly dark smokey agate was taken into account and the paler ones used in the first mock up of the necklace were replaced with darker ones.  That’s the beauty of bespoke!  In the end, I found the copper entwined crystal pendant was just too heavy a look for my small frame, so I clipped it off and it sits amongst the collection of natural stones and shells I look at while doing yoga.

DIWAH is a nice, small, British company making very fun bespoke costume jewellery.  Its made with decently sourced components by folks right here in the UK being paid decent wages (which is more than I can say for the jewellery available from many overseas based eBay sellers). I’m happy to share news of their launch here on this blog and to recommend them for their fun bespoke jewellery design experience, nicely made pieces and great personalised customer service.

 

 

27 thoughts on “Design Your Own Ethically Sourced Jewellery with DIWAH”

  2. Amanda-Jaied Wathern

    Is it weird to say that just reading your blog makes me feel so grounded! I love your whole ethos, and your taste in bespoke jewellery, both these pieces are so pretty and I think I would definitely pick turquoise as it’s supposed to be good for healing and God knows I need that. x

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓
    1. Our Little Organic Life Post author

      Thank you so much for your kind words! It means a lot to me when people genuinely enjoy what I have written and appreciate the principles I try to adhere to in life and on this blog. And turquoise is my favourite stone! For some reason its the one I’ve been the most drawn to over the years. Just looking at it calms me immensely. I didn’t realise it was associated with healing – I must look into that.

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      Reply ↓
    1. Our Little Organic Life Post author

      It is and its not too expensive either. I think the brightly coloured one with natural turquoise and glass beads came out to around £18 or so. The other was was pricier because of the large smokey agate stones and the crystal pendant.

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