eMeraki, 8 Years Later: What Has Changed - and What Hasn’t

2026 marks eight years since eMeraki became a registered trademark.

But the story didn't begin in 2018.

It began years earlier with jewelry assembled from ready-made components, polymer clay earrings, glued gemstones and a series of problems that kept pushing us to find a better way to make the things we wanted to make.

Looking back now, almost everything has become more refined.

But surprisingly, some of the ideas at the heart of eMeraki were already there.

eMeraki WRAPPED SAPPHIRE BANDS - 2018 and 2026

Before eMeraki, there were three other names

I started making jewelry in 2010.

At first, it meant ordering different jewelry components, putting pieces together and selling them at local fairs under the name Impressions by Kady.

I opened an Etsy shop under the same name and began selling polymer clay stud earrings there.

Then new ideas started arriving.

The next shop was CharmStone, and my attention increasingly moved toward rings and natural stones.

There was one problem.

I had never trained as a jeweler.

The stones on those early rings were glued into place. People liked the designs - some even wanted versions in solid gold to use as wedding rings but I knew the construction wasn't strong enough for what they wanted them to become.

If a ring was going to be worn every day, perhaps for decades, the way it was made had to change.

One problem created an entirely new direction

The first solution I found was copper electroforming.

It allowed metal to grow around the stone rather than relying on glue to hold it in place.

The jewelry became more durable.

But it also changed the aesthetic more than I originally wanted.

There was another limitation: not every gemstone could safely go through the electroforming process because some stones could be damaged by the solution.

Still, that experiment led somewhere unexpected.

I found a way to replace copper electroforming with silver electroforming. At the time, there weren't many sellers offering jewelry made this way, and the shop did extremely well.

That direction eventually became AttractionArt.

And unlike many other early experiments, it didn't disappear.

Today, it continues as eMerakiGalaxy, our shop dedicated to electroformed jewelry.

But the original problem still wasn't solved

Electroforming created a new kind of jewelry.

What it didn't do was give me exactly what I had originally been looking for:

a way to keep the raw-stone aesthetic while making the jewelry strong enough for lasting wear.

That required learning something completely new.

Traditional metalwork.

Soldering.

Constructing settings rather than attaching stones.

And eventually, finding ways for metal to physically hold irregular gemstones securely while leaving their natural forms visible.

That process led to the raw gemstone wrap rings.

 

The goal was no longer simply to make the jewelry more durable than a glued-stone ring.

It was to make pieces that could be worn as wedding rings, lived in for years and designed to last for generations - perhaps becoming heirlooms themselves.

That meant learning how to keep the part we loved - the raw stone - while becoming much more precise about everything around it.

By 2018, eMeraki was already in transition

We had actually begun using the eMeraki name around a year before the trademark registration was completed.

The previous shops gradually came together under one family of names:

Charmstone became eMerakiStudio.

AttractionArt became eMerakiGalaxy.

Studest became eMerakiiLLusion.

And on September 25, 2018, eMeraki became a registered trademark.

Looking through eMerakiStudio orders from that year now is interesting because 2018 wasn't a clean dividing line between “old” and “new.”

Both existed at the same time.

We were still selling some of our most popular turquoise rings with glued stones.

At the same time, raw gemstone wrap rings were appearing.

Prong-set rings and earrings were becoming part of the collection.

And some of our first prong-set cut salt-and-pepper diamonds had arrived.

GLUED GEMSTONE RING FROM 925 STERLING SILVER AND 14k GOLD FILLED

 

 

GEMSTONE WRAP RING EXPERIMENTS IN 925 STERLING SILVER AND 14k SOLID GOLD

 

 

SALT AND PEPPER KITE DIAMOND PRONG SET IN SOLID 14k YELLOW GOLD

Some of today's eMeraki was already there

One of the most interesting discoveries when looking back is how recognizable some of the jewelry still feels.

The raw stone wrap band was already becoming important.

An Aquamarine wrap ring from 2018 combined raw stones with one cut stone - the design that, eight years later, would become the starting point for The One.

A blue Sapphire version followed the same idea.

We also made a pearl wrap ring, although without the single cut stone that would eventually define The One.

And the wrap ring itself never disappeared.

It is still one of our most popular ring styles today.

 

What changed most wasn't the idea. It was the control.

Raw gemstones create an unusual challenge.

We don't want every stone to look identical. That would remove much of the reason we use them in the first place.

But a customer ordering a ring from a product photograph still needs to know what they are going to receive.

That balance has taken years to refine.

Today, if you order one of our made-to-order raw gemstone rings, the individual stones will naturally vary.

But the metalwork, number of stones, approximate stone size and shape, placement and overall proportions can be reproduced much more consistently.

The result doesn't have to be identical to be recognizable as the same design.

That is probably one of the clearest ways to describe how eMeraki has changed:

the raw part stayed raw. Everything around it became more refined.

If you're curious about why raw stones themselves can never be completely standardized, we explain that in What Makes Each Raw Gemstone Truly One of a Kind.

 

The materials expanded too

In 2018, we worked with roughly ten different gemstone types.

Today, there are more than 30.

Raw black Diamonds, which have since become an important part of eMeraki's visual language, weren't part of the collection then. We did have some raw white Diamond rings, while cut salt-and-pepper Diamonds were only beginning to appear.

The metal selection evolved as well.

When we introduced gold, we started directly with 14k gold.

Later, we expanded into 18k gold in different colours.

Today our core options are 14k yellow, rose and white gold, 18k yellow gold and 925 sterling silver.

 

The price changed because the jewelry changed

In 2018, one of our glued-stone rings might have cost around €60.

An early wrap ring might have been around €150.

Today, our most affordable wrap rings start at around €200, while the collection extends much further into fine jewelry.

That change isn't simply about making the same object more expensive.

The construction changed.

The materials expanded.

The level of consistency changed.

And the role people ask the jewelry to play changed too.

The early experience of customers asking for our designs in real gold to use as wedding rings was one of the reasons durability became such an important problem to solve in the first place.

Today, someone choosing an eMeraki ring is often making a more considered purchase - something intended to stay with them rather than simply being an inexpensive accessory.

That is also why the distinction between appearance and quality matters so much to us.

 

Some things were surprisingly early

Looking back also reveals things we think of as part of today's customer experience that were already there in 2018.

For example, we already offered a rush-order service.

At the time it cost around €30.

Today, depending on the piece, rush service is around €100–€150.

The details have changed, but the underlying idea hasn't: sometimes the customer doesn't only need the jewelry.

They need the jewelry for a particular moment.

That changes what service around the product needs to do.

eMeraki RUSH ORDER LISTING FROM YEAR 2018

Even the horseshoe nail rings were already here

Another design that has lasted surprisingly well began around the same period.

A friend who worked with horses wanted to offer horse-related jewelry to her customers.

Together, we developed different jewelry ideas based around the shape of a horseshoe nail.

Some of those designs are still part of eMeraki today.

Eight years later, the context around them has changed, but the original idea remains recognizable.

HORSESHOE NAIL RING FROM YEAR 2018

HORSESHOE NAIL RING NOW

What hasn't changed?

Probably more than we expected.

Raw stones are still central to what we do.

We still want natural variation to remain visible.

We still want a design to be repeatable without pretending that two natural stones can ever be exactly alike.

We still look for ways to make unusual materials and irregular forms work as jewelry meant for lasting wear.

And some of the designs we were making eight years ago are still being made today.

The difference is that we understand them much better now.

The goal was never to make raw materials look perfectly uniform.

It was to learn how to work with their differences precisely enough that the finished piece could still feel intentional.

Raw, but refined.

Eight years after the eMeraki trademark was registered - and sixteen years after the first pieces were made - the jewelry looks different.

The materials are broader.

The construction is more precise.

The team has grown from the same core two people to three.

The photography has changed.

The price point has changed.

But the problem we keep returning to is remarkably similar:

How do you preserve what makes a natural material individual while refining everything around it?

We're still answering that question.

Just much better than we could eight years ago.