I know every guy says the same thing, but I wanted to be sure that the diamond engagement ring I got for my girlfriend was something truly special. There were certainly a lot of beautiful rings to choose from, both rings that were on their own as well as sets that included the wedding band (and even some that had bands for both the bride and groom), but with all of them, I still had that nagging voice in the back of my head that someone somewhere would be wearing the same rings. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Build Your Own Ring[/caption] It didn’t matter to me that the odds of me running into that person were somewhere between slim and none; I knew it was a possibility and that was enough for me. Thankfully, the kind sales associate at my local jewelry store finally asked me – on my third or fourth visit – what it was that I was looking for. When I told her I didn’t know because I hadn’t seen it yet, she replied with something I never thought of; “Why not just make it yourself?” I assumed she didn’t mean for me to go to my basement workshop with a piece of steel and a blowtorch, but I didn’t really know what she did mean and told her so. She told me that they had several craftspeople working at the store who, in addition to being able to fix just about any piece of broken jewelry, could also create custom design handmade jewelry, for just about the same price as traditional jewelry. Before I could ask any more, she mentioned that the most popular piece of jewelry they made were diamond engagement rings. I met with one of the craftspeople, told him what I was and was not looking for and how much money I had to spend. In just a few minutes, he created a working model of it on his computer. Being able to see it for the first time like that helped me visualize the little things I could add to it to make it the perfect ring. When we settled on a design, it was both well within my budget and would be done in plenty of time for when I wanted to make my proposal.