January 2021

New year, new goals right? Ever since I founded Leliamae in 2019 I've been plotting & sketching designs I wanted to release. For 2021 this was a new year goal I had for my business & luckily I came in contact with a jewelry designer to get things shaking. Sent her some sketches, she took them and ran with with it!

March 2021

A few zoom calls later, she completed the renderings for Nisi & some other pieces of our collection. I was so hyped how everything had came together-like I'm really doing this?! Now-onto finding a manufacturer that I could trust & more importantly provided quality work.

May 2021

My favorite part eva-getting samples! My ethos will forever remain in quality, integrity and doing right by the environment. My goal was to make all of our designs sustainable & to only work with ethical manufacturers. So the hunt began and it took some time finding the right match. I finally located 2 manufacturers that offered sustainable practices & got samples made by each one.

 June 2021

Samples arrive for most pieces & immediately I begin wearing them, testing them out for quality. Wearing them in the shower & pretty much never taking them off. (please don't do this, lol) After a few weeks I noticed green skin with one manufacturer & that's never a cute situation. 

They opted to send a replacement with a thicker coating of gold but a few weeks later the same thing happened again.Yes, AGAIN. That was a hard pass. Meanwhile the other manufacturer pieces held up very well, no green skin & faint scratching even with the amount of wear I was putting it through-a clear winner. I connected with the winning manufacturer to adjust some of the portions and requested new samples.

August 2021

I immediately realized the size was way too large to sit comfortable on the ear. I love an overstated earring, but at this size it wasn't functional to wear. Back to square one-tuh. So I work with the manufacturing designer to scale back the earrings to a size that makes sense & kept the integrity of the overall design.

December 2021

I reduced the size and weight-she turned out more elegant & unique than I had originally imagined. I'd never seen anything like it & she was finally ready for her debut January 2022 :)

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-xx