Unwrapping the Holidays with New Stuff from Cecile Raley Designs
Holiday season really IS my favorite season. While I’m not a fan of winter, holiday traditions are the best way to transition into the cold part of the year in my view. You change to fall colors, start decorating, figure out your list of “stay at home” activities, and think about gifts and gifting. In New York, and even more in the Diamond District, holiday season is especially fun. We move quickly from Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to Diwali, Halloween,Thanksgiving, then Hanukkah and Christmas, then Orthodox Christmas, New year and Chinese New Year. It just goes boom boom boom from orange and yellow and red, to blue to red and green and everything else in between. One simply cannot keep up!
For this year's season of celebrations, we’ve selected three themes we want to share with you: Gifting (of course), DIY, and Personalization.
Gifting
As every year, we are giving stuff away! Any order over $200 gets a free calendar, and our most frequent buyers get one without even asking. If we run out, we'll order more! This year's calendar includes images of the pieces that won this year’s design contest; Toby graciously made space for them, so he won’t be featured in the December slot this year.
In the spirit of gifting this holiday season, we also added the perfect stocking stuffer for that jewelry lover on your list:
Grab our new gem and jewelry cleaning kit here:
As always we are going to have sections for gifts under $100 and gifts under $200. Already we are populating the shop with new stacking rings, post earrings, and beaded jewelry (including more bracelets). And don’t forget those gift cards, especially for last minute shoppers!
We ship everything as quickly as possible and starting 12/12, we will upgrade all U.S. orders to priority shipping. All orders over $200 now ship for free!
Oh and I should mention our gift wrap! We usually include our CRD gift boxes anyway but just ask us if you’d like it to be a little more special. No need to purchase any wrap from us; we will make sure that everything going out in December receives special attention so that it can be offered as a gift. We have organza bags, extra cleaning cloths and green tissue paper, as well as gift coupons, magnets and business cards that we can include for you.
DIY
Want to give a gift that cost you some of your own sweat? Consider beading something yourself! We have been stocking up the beads and gem lots section as fast as we can, but those items seem to be flying out the door! Upon request, we are happy to supply you with free sterling silver crimp beads, jump rings and a clasp (even some wire and silver spacers if you ask) so that you can string your strand of beads for a friend or family member. We can’t do it all ourselves here, so we encourage you to do it. Making a beaded necklace is the simplest thing in the world and you can do one in less than an hour. All beaded items and bead strands will be on sale from Thursday November 21 until Sunday November 24!
A less involved DIY gift we offer is a stacking ring. If you order by Monday November 25, we can get you a finished stacking ring for your loved one in time for Christmas Eve! 14 kt gold stacking rings are $220 and silver ones are $120 in your requested size. We will create a listing for stacking rings this weekend and we will be offering some of our stacking ring gems on sale from the 21st to the 24th of November. Stay tuned; we are working as fast as we can!
Personalization
Personalized gifts are the IN thing this season, and rightfully so in my view! It’s so much nicer to receive an item with your name on it or a personal message than something generic. So we decided to join the fun with a personalized option ourselves: adding initials or a name to our rings. We offer this service for free, but we need a few extra days for turnaround time because I have to get the ring laser engraved.
For our regular clients, we want you to know that we can offer this service anytime, we just need to be sure that the item has room for engraving. We need about 2.5mm in width and 5-6mm length for initials, so earrings or pendants are generally out of the question. We also need a flat or lightly curved surface. I added the personalization option to any ring that I thought would work for this, but for custom orders, just ask us and we'll let you know if we can do it! For just a few letters there’s no charge, but be aware that anything long has to be made so tiny you won’t be able to read it.
Happy shopping. Stay tuned for more holiday news!