When I had completed Eleanor's old cut diamond earrings our next project together was to design a series of stacking gold rings with the remainder of her diamonds.

Eleanor's gold ring provided enough material for one of the new bands and I bought new 18ct for the other two bands and tubing for the settings. Diamonds are brilliant little things not least for their hardness, but they can also be heated without shattering like most gemstones would. This means that I was able to set each stone before soldering those settings into the bands. An added bonus to presetting the diamonds is that I could play with the arrangement of the stones as I went - creating a suitably random effect.

I love this style of stacking ring and every time it's worn the arrangement looks just a little bit different. Stackers give great flexiblity, with lots of scope to add new elements, even a couple of plain silver bands, down the line.