Dalia

"I use a lot of blues, purples, yellows and greens [and the jewelry tends to be] more springy, but I'm hoping that a lot of the pieces work in the fall and winter. You can wear orange and purple and yellow in the winter, so it works both ways," Alfandary said.

All of the pieces are made by hand because of the textures and techniques that Alfandary chooses to use in her designs. Once a design is complete, she sends it to her production manager who organizes the piece's construction in various shops in Indonesia. Multiple shops are used because each hires employees whose skill or technique varies.

"I'm at my happiest place if I can just sit and design," Alfandary said. "People talk about writer's block, but I don't have that."

Creating custom jewelry

Dalia Alfandary said she does not just create jewelry to sell in her Bee Cave store; she also designs custom pieces for clients.

However, she said many people who come to her for a one-of-a-kind item are not sure what they are looking for.

"Most times they don't know what they want, so it's really intuition. It's reading them and trying to get an idea, a basic idea, of what they're thinking," she said.

She said she relies heavily on what she is able to observe about her clients: the jewelry they currently wear, their personal style and other cues she picks up on during a consultation.

After a consultation Alfandary will draft multiple concepts and bring them back to the client. This is when she is able to take a deeper look at the client's likes and dislikes and understands the reasoning behind someone's personal taste, she said.

During the custom creating process Alfandary said she is able to combine someone's own stones or diamonds with different metals and textures to bring new life to the jewelry and have the piece better match the client's style. This design process is what she said she enjoys most.

Most pieces that Alfandary creates use older jewelry and add a modern twist, such as taking an oval- or marquise-shaped stone that runs north to south on a ring band and making it run east to west. She has even made over pieces of her own design by giving stones different cuts or shapes and setting them on a more feminine ring band.

Dalia, 3900 S. RR 620, Ste. 105, Austin, 512-263-9929, www.dalia.us