Jewellery News

Nancy Shevell has been Sir Paul McCartney’s girlfriend for nearly four years now and two weeks ago, he proposed to her with a massive stunner of a diamond ring. The diamond engagement ring cost nearly £400,000 and it has a diamond at the centre which is a round cut and it is set in a platinum band. Obviously, the diamond is large though the design seems to follow the classic style. The wedding date has not been announced but the news is that it’s going to be in the Hamptons, New York because that’s where they met.

Nancy is Barbara Walter’s cousin and she is a New York businesswomen as well as a socialite. Fifty one years to McCartney’s sixty, she is fun loving and loves the outdoors, very much like his first wife Linda did. She is also a breast cancer survivor. His children are also very fond of her, we hear and his daughter Stella is very thrilled. She is the head of her family business which is trucking and hauling and according to reports, she is very rich. Which is why perhaps, there is no pre-nup agreement.

Paul McCartney has been married twice before and while the first one was a very happy marriage which ended sadly with his wife dying, the second was traumatic. A vegetarian, the ex-Beatle is probably thrilled that his fiancée has also turned vegetarian for his sake. Knowing both of them, the wedding will probably be a discreet affair. They’ve both been spotted around town, living it up and obviously very happy.

Jessica Marais, the Australian television star has just finished shooting for a campaign for Linneys jewellers and it is said to be stunning. Earlier, the ones who were the face of Linneys were Ernie Dingo and Melissa George and they apparently chose Jessica just a short while before she announced her engagement. They got engaged in October and of course, it is a Linneys engagement ring that she is wearing.

According to the top honcho in Linneys, she and James Stewart came into their store in Perth together to pick the engagement ring. So there was no hush-hush thing about it – it was all very open and not a secret. So did they pick the ring because she had been signed up? Well, she could hardly wear a ring from another jeweller considering she has just become the visible face of Linneys, can she? And apparently she had quite a bit of say when it came to choosing the ring. And why not, considering she is the one that is going to be wearing it.

As to the engagement ring, the spokesman for Linneys feels that it should be Jessica who should be announcing the details so he won’t say anything except that it is a classic design, very beautiful with a very special diamond. So we’re guessing that he is leaving the intricate details to her to be revealed like how much the diamond weighs, is it platinum or gold or maybe white gold and what shape and cut the diamond is.

Such a good idea actually – a website to find a lost engagement ring. When Karen from Manchester lost her engagement ring, she was so upset that she asked her brother to set up a special website in the hope of getting it back. It happened on Easter Sunday in Heaton Park where she removed her rings to put sunscreen on her little three-year old daughter. That was in the afternoon. When they got home in the evening, she suddenly realised that she had forgotten to put her rings back on again.

The engagement ring was set in platinum and it had a square princess cut diamond. Karen and Mark got engaged three years ago and she says the ring means so much to her and she’s offering £100 to anyone who finds and returns the ring. She had placed them on a low wall – the diamond engagement ring and a cheap ring she wore with it – on a low wall while she applied the sunscreen. When she got home and found they were missing, they hurried back to the park to look for the rings but they weren’t there.

Her brother lives in New York and he’s put up a website for her – lostengagementring.com. They are all hoping that someone who took the rings would see the website and return the rings to her. It isn’t easy losing something so precious especially when you know you have been careless. So many women seem to lose their rings when they remove them to apply cream or sunscreen.

She didn’t make a big to do about it – no big announcement, no press interview. It just so happened that she was on the Today Show and Matt Lauer saw the huge diamond ring on her finger and asked her about it. And Kate said that she was waiting for someone to ask her to announce her engagement. So she’s engaged at last to her baby’s father, Matt Bellamy, frontman of the Muse.

According to Kate, they got engaged last week and they didn’t announce it but just waited till people realized she was wearing an engagement ring. The ring she is wearing is an emerald cut diamond which is around five carats surrounded by baguette diamonds and set in a platinum band. Together, it all seems to add up to around nine carats. Kate was being interviewed about her latest film Something Borrowed which she has been promoting. The film is based on two women who are vying for the attention of one man. The film is set to launch this week and this talented actress, winner of so many awards is looking forward to a period of rest after this.

Kate feels that this pregnancy is different from her first. She has a son from her previous marriage to Chris Robinson called Ryder who is seven years old. This time, she feels, this baby is wild and eager to make its appearance into the world. The baby is due in July.

The price rise seems to have hit all metals and it is not just the price of gold that is flying through the roof. Whatever the precious metal that most people use for engagement rings and wedding rings, the prices are going up, up, up, be it gold, silver, platinum, tungsten or titanium. Which is perhaps why many couples are thinking twice before rushing into an engagement or marriage.

Why is this happening? Economists feel that it’s because the dollar is weakening and people who want to invest and beat inflation are putting their money into these precious metals. Add that to the deficit that a lot of countries, especially in the Western world, are facing and you’ll see why metals are so attractive to anyone who is in the financial business.

So where does that leave couples who wish to get married? Considering there’s a royal wedding on today, more couples will surely want to tie the knot as well in the near future. It’s like engagements and marriages are in the very air we breathe. However, with a tight budget, this might have to be postponed by many because the costs of engagement rings and wedding bands are steadily increasing. With most jewellers having put their prices up, there’s little a couple with a limited spending capacity can do buy wait and hope that the tide turns.

India has not been a potential diamond market though most of the diamonds pass through this country to be cut and polished. However, recent trends have seen a surge in demand for diamond jewellery and the new diamond brands with innovative and young designs are raking it in.

India has for long been a gold market but with the population becoming younger, there seems to be a change in old habits and attitudes, Today’s couples are looking at platinum when it comes to engagement rings and of course, diamonds. Economists feel that in a couple of years, India could well be buying up 10% of the world’s diamonds. Today, the diamond demand in India is pegged at over £12 million and it looks like one can safely predict a lot of growth.

This could be due to more than just the age demographics – it could also be due to the fact that the economy is booming and there is a lot more disposable income when it comes to the younger generation. Urbanisation and the consumer bug have bitten a lot of people, it seems, all over the country and it seems to be reflected in the diamond jewellery sales. Even the rising process of gold and platinum do not seem to be a deterrent in the surge in sales.

Carrie Ann Inaba, the Dancing With The Stars star has a very special engagement ring. The diamond ring was chosen after a lot of selection and care by her boyfriend, Jesse Sloan. He felt that his girlfriend was already in such a glamorous show that he had to put his all into selecting a diamond ring to match and to fit in with all that glitz. He and Carrie have been together for over two years now and the way he went about choosing the ring, it seems like nothing is too good for her. Some girls have all the luck!

For the ring, Jesse went to Rafinity Jewellers in Santa Monica and Ann Mancini described his quest and the ultimate choice of ring to People Magazine. She showed Jesse different diamonds and after a lot of thought, he chose a 2.5 carat diamond which had a princess cut and was a D colour diamond. The diamond ring was set in a very simple platinum setting. So was that it? Not quite. Ann Mancini convinced him to do a bit more to make it unique and to also make sure Rafinity got its signature design into that ring.

Inside the ring, hidden from view are two birthstones – both Jesse’s and Carrie’s – that is what makes this engagement ring so unique and special. Carrie’s birthstone is a garnet and Jesse’s is a diamond and they are both embedded in the ring. It shows a symbolic bonding of the couple. Jesse was thrilled and he then went and proposed to Carrie over live television.

Time was when you hunted for Easter eggs and all you got was just that – Easter eggs. We have come a long way, haven’t we? Today an Easter egg hunt can mean you find a lot more stuff – and expensive stuff at that! Like this Easter egg hunt that is being organised in a place in Florida in America where the prize is a thousand dollars as well as three diamond rings. That’s right – three of the eggs will have diamond rings inside them. What a dazzling Easter egg each one will be for sure!

This Easter egg hunt is being held by the Highlands County Humane Society and it will be held on their grounds in Sebring. It is to be a fundraiser for the society and it will be held on the 23rd of April. The hunt will begin at 7 in the evening and the entry is ten dollars per person. So the whole hunt will be held in the dark. There will be a number of prizes but the main ones are the cash prize and the diamond ring prizes.

There are eight thousand black eggs to be found and hidden inside them will be the prizes. They have called the cash prize egg the platinum egg, the diamond ring ones the diamond eggs and there will also be gold eggs where there is gold to be won. The other prizes will also be very good and the first three hundred will get a drink and a special bag. All those who wish to enter the hunt will have to bring their own egg containers as well as their own flashlights.

Kate Middleton’s finger is obviously a bit too slender for the ring of rings that has been the inspiration for so many jewellers and designers today. The famous sapphire and diamond ring which belonged to the late Princess Diana had been slipping around her finger and she was terrified in case it slipped off and she lost it. It doesn’t even bear thinking about.

So she approached the jewellers, G Collins & Sons to come up with a solution. Instead of getting the engagement ring resized, the jewellers came up with a wonderful idea – putting in two platinum beads which were fixed to the inside of the ring so it stops the ring from turning around on the finger or slipping off. It’s a lot better to adjust the ring so it stays firm on the finger and feels comfortable without having to turn it around all the time so the stones stay in front.

According to jewellery experts, this is a common problem with rings that have heavy stones in them. They tend to keep twisting around on the finger if they don’t fit absolutely perfectly and this can be annoying as well as uncomfortable. This is why fixing platinum beads on the inside is such a good idea because it just keeps the ring in place and there is no need to adjust or resize the band. In this case, the huge sapphire as well as all those diamonds around it must be heavy to manage if the fit is not perfect. Well, it hopefully is now and when she walks down that aisle, we’re hoping that ring feels that a part of her.

There have been so many daring thefts of jewellery all over the world but the one that took place at the Tiffany’s store in Paris recently took the cake. It was done with a minimum amount of fuss, the shop people still can’t believe it happened. There are times when a theft comes along with knives, guns and violence. Not so here because it was done very deftly and the salesmen and women were left realising that they had been cleverly duped.

Just how was it done? Three men had walked into a store to look at jewellery and they were intent on a platinum ring with a three carat diamond. The diamond ring was worth £220,000 and it is still amazing how they managed to walk out of that store without any fuss. What they did was to pretend that they had chosen the ring, then ask for the certificate of authenticity. While the sales person went to get the certificate copied, the three men walked out of the shop casually and were not even stopped by the security personnel at the door.

One of the men had showed the sales person his passport before he went off to get a photocopy. This Tiffany counter was at the Paris department store called Printemps and a more daring robbery in Paris in the springtime is yet to be seen. While the store personnel are pretty quiet about the incident and seem to be keeping their mouths shut to the media, sources say that the authorities are looking at the video surveillance tapes for any kind of clues they can gather.

It’s not often you lose your diamond ring on a golf course and find it again but this woman golfer did and she’s so thrilled. She was playing golf in Florida, USA and the ring must have slipped off her finger somewhere along the course and even though they spent days looking for it, they just could not find the ring.

The ring was a platinum and diamond ring and the diamond was all of two carats. When the lady lost it, she was so distraught, she just could not bring herself to tell her husband. The couple were from Chicago but they were on holiday. They looked all over their hotel room and in the car but there was no sign of it. For the husband, the two day delay was something he could not understand.

Then another golfer couple who were playing on the course saw something and when they bent to pick it up, it was a ring. At first, they thought it was a fake because it was so big but when they looked closer, they realised that they were wrong and it was actually a platinum and diamond ring. So they asked the people at the course and they found out just who had lost the ring. For the couple who found their ring, it was such a joyous moment. Like the husband said, it is only one in a million that returns a lost ring like this and he was so surprised to see that it happened.