Elizabeth Ryan began designing jewelry under the name Looka Jewelry in 2006 after falling in love with metalsmithing in college. She finds that one of the joys of being a jeweler is “creating something that others hold on to and find sentimental value in.” Ms. Ryan’s design for the contest was inspired by what she herself would want in an engagement ring. “As someone always working with my hands I liked the idea of creating a special ring that could be very wearable but also felt unique and handmade, perhaps something other artists might like to wear,” she says. The winning ring design features two birds on either side of a 5mm white topaz stone, a design choice Ryan says was inspired by a love of cute things and nature: “I liked the idea of two love birds as a representation of love and partnership."

Cathy Heinz can’t remember a time when she wasn’t creating jewelry and has been selling her creations professionally for the past 11 years. She describes her style as refined, modern, simple, and feminine and says that her favorite part of being a jeweler is having the ability to create any design she can imagine and making pieces that strike an emotional chord with people because “being able to participate in [people’s] lives that way is something special.” The design Ms. Heinz submitted to the contest, featuring a stone rising out of a round lake of silver, was inspired both by the legend of the Lady of the Lake and by her customers. “I’ve done quite a few engagement ring makeovers,” she says, “I wanted to make something timeless that would look just as good on the 25th anniversary as it did at the wedding.” 

Heather Perry moved to Maine from Baltimore, Maryland, where she had earned her BFA in sculpture. She came to Maine for a change of pace, and she can now be found tucked in a distant corner of Maine, where the Eastern seaboard of the United States bumps up against Canada. Heather shares her home in Robbinston, Maine with her husband and 12-year-old son. Robinston is near the woods and the rugged Maine coast that inspires her work, but pretty far from everything else. So Heather’s trips to the “big city” of Portland are punctuated by visits to music stores, Japanese restaurants, and other treats she and her son can’t get in their hometown. Heather approaches her truly awe-inspiring jewelry designs as sculpture, and hand sculpts each design in wax before it is cast in recycled precious metals.