I'm often told by people they would like to design jewelry. Of course, this is often told to me by people who have never attempted to make any type of jewelry. While it's easy to come up with great jewelry design ideas, executing them is a whole other ball of wax. This excerpt from an article written by jeweler Richard Alan talks about the issues he deals with afterwards when customers come to him with jewelry design problems and tried to offer advice for jewelry lovers to consider before making your jewelry purchase:

A ring that is top-heavy or bulky will always slip to the left or right if improperly designed.

All pendants require first finding the center of gravity to assure it hangs correctly on a chain or omega necklace.

Naturally, rings, bracelets and even pendants with clusters of stones requiring multitudes of prongs will snag clothing and such endlessly.

Prongs also require constant inspection and maintenance, the loss of one prong on four prong settings will result in stone loss.

Designs that incorporate channels or bezels to hold diamonds are absolutely snag-proof; there are many ways to hold gemstones in jewelry without the use of prongs.

I'm not saying that I'm against using prongs, in many design applications they are required to achieve a certain look.

As long as the prongs are strong and not high up in the air they are less likely to snag.

One of the worst design mistakes is actually attaching a pendant directly to a chain or omega.

Shaping it to a "V" at the center of the chain makes it even more dreadful, the chain should be split with some kind of movable link on either side of the pendant to avoid flipping and twisting.