About Us
We Make Jewelry. We Also Have a Lot to Confess.
VAEL Designs started in 2006 in East Windsor, NJ with a workbench, a serious problem with beautiful rocks, and a single breast cancer awareness bracelet made to honor my mother's fifth year as a survivor. I put it on my website not expecting much. Within weeks, people were reaching out asking for bracelets to represent their own fights, their family members, their losses. Every request was a story. The collection grew because it had to.
Nearly two decades later we are still the same small studio. Every piece is handmade by us in sterling silver. We source gemstones we actually care about, do our own lapidary work cutting and polishing many of the stones that end up in our pieces, and approach every design as a GIA-AJP certified artisan with real gemological training behind every decision we make.
What changed is how we share it. In February 2026 we started showing the real process on social media. The overflowing drawers. The mystery stones from a retired jeweler's collection. The thrift store finds that become something unexpected. Over 4 million views and a growing community later, we are still the same studio. We just have a lot more people watching now.
What We Make
Every piece at VAEL Designs is handmade in sterling silver. We work with genuine gemstones, natural crystals, freshwater and cultured pearls, semi-precious stones, Cape May diamonds, sea glass, fossils, and one of a kind specimens that cannot be replicated. Nothing here comes off an assembly line.
Our Cancer Awareness Collection donates $5 to the American Cancer Society with every purchase. The collection grew from that first bracelet in 2006 and now covers over 30 cancer types. It is personal. My mother is a breast cancer survivor and my husband is battling a rare blood cancer. These are not products we make at a distance.
Our Confessions Collection is made entirely from stones sourced from a retired jeweler whose inventory carries decades of provenance. Every piece in it is genuinely one of a kind and can never be exactly reproduced.
The Content Series
Confessions of a Jewelry Designer — What happens when a retired jeweler sells off her life's collection of gemstone packs? We open them on camera. Every pack is a mystery. Some hold treasures. Some hold surprises we did not expect. All of it is real, unscripted, and past Part 36 and counting.
Stone Stories — A gemstone education series for the curious. We dig into the science, the lore, and the beauty behind specific stones. A GIA-AJP certified artisan talking about gemstones the way they actually work, not the way marketing copy does.
Thrifted and Transformed — We find jewelry at thrift stores and bring it back to life. Every piece gets reimagined into something new, and 20% of every Thrifted and Transformed sale goes to Habitat for Humanity. Good materials should not end up forgotten on a shelf.
Where to Find Us
We are on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook at @vaeldesigns. New content goes up regularly across all platforms.
Everything is handmade in the USA. Every piece ships from East Windsor, NJ. Every order is packed by the same hands that made it.
Browse the full collection at vaeldesigns.com or start with what brought you here.