Spoleto Designs

Well…this was a pretty special surprise. 🥹💎✨
So honored to be WJA DFW’s 2026 Shining Star.

Couldn’t be more grateful for this community…or more excited about what we’re building next. 🥂

Krista Cavanaugh
Women's Jewelry Association DFW - WJA DFW

✨ Every year, Jewelry Night Out celebrates our chapter and honors one of its members with our Shining Star Award. This year, we're thrilled to recognize Krista Cavanaugh of @spoleto_designs Congratulations, Krista — and THANK YOU for pouring your time, energy, and passion into our chapter. We're so grateful to have you 💎🌟 . . #shinningstaraward #wjajno26 #womensjewelryasscociation #wjadfw

Okay, DFW. THAT was a night. 💎

Monday’s WJA DFW Jewelry Night Out was packed, loud in the best possible way, and full of exactly the kind of people we want to keep bringing together.

New connections were made. Headshots were taken. Raffle prizes disappeared into very happy hands. The food was beautiful. The room was buzzing. And more than a few people stayed much later than they probably planned.

That’s a win.

Now we’re working on the rest of our 2026 calendar and already throwing ideas around for 2027.

So, a little advice for anyone who watched this one from the sidelines:

Join us now!

Become a WJA member, come to the next event, bring someone with you and get to know this community.

And if you’re sitting there thinking, I have ideas for what WJA DFW should do next… excellent. We might have a board seat with your name on it. 😉

To everyone who attended, sponsored, donated, volunteered and helped make Monday happen: THANK YOU. You gave us one hell of a way to celebrate Jewelry Night Out.

And to everyone who missed it?

We’ll give you a chance to redeem yourselves. 😏💎

https://www.womensjewelryassociation.com/

Jewelry doesn’t always feel like an asset that needs to be managed.

Until something changes.

A parent passes away. A marriage shifts. Appraisals are decades old. Pieces end up scattered across different places. Nobody knows where the paperwork is, what’s insured or what the next generation might actually want.

That’s when the questions come.

What do I really have? Is any of it valuable? Is it properly documented and insured? What should be kept, shared, redesigned or sold? Where do I start?

The first step isn’t making those decisions. It’s creating a clear record of the collection and understanding what’s actually there.

Good documentation doesn’t force a decision. It gives you the information you need to decide well when the time comes.

At Spoleto, we help individuals and families understand and organize their jewelry before decisions are made.

Our founder, Krista Cavanaugh, wrote more about why jewelry is becoming increasingly important in the transfer of family wealth for Newsweek:

https://www.newsweek.com/americas-124-trillion-wealth-transfer-brings-focus-to-jewelry-assets-12238721

If you know someone who has been putting off organizing a jewelry collection, this might be useful to share.

💎 DFW JEWELRY COMMUNITY — JEWELRY NIGHT OUT IS ALMOST HERE!

Join us Sept. 21 for WJA DFW Jewelry Night Out — an evening to connect, build relationships and increase your visibility across the DFW jewelry community.

Jewelry + jewelry-adjacent professionals are welcome. You do NOT need to be a WJA member, and women AND men are invited!

📸 COMPLIMENTARY PROFESSIONAL HEADSHOTS with our event photographer, Uliana. Come camera-ready!

🎁 OUR RAFFLE LINEUP:

💎 GemGirl — Special jewelry piece
✨ VIO Med Spa Plano — Facial + Red Light Therapy & goodies
💻 Ascent Social Capital — LinkedIn Profile Audit & Optimization
🎥 Get Noticed with Video — Digital Authority Strategy Session
👗 Elisa Rodriguez — Personal Styling Session
💼 SinclairQuinn — Bottleneck Session
✨ Silhouette Society — Non-Invasive Silhouette Mami Makeover
🧖‍♀️ BSHARPE — Spa Basket + Coaching Session
🛁 Suarez Soap & Style — Self-Care Basket
🧠 The Dementia Docs Co. — 90-Min Virtual Consultation with Dr. Angelica Catusco
👗 Pennie Beauchamp — Cabi piece + Personal Styling
☕ First Choice Brew — Coffee Beans & Grounds
💼 The Talent Practice — 1-Hr Executive Coaching Session

✨ HELPING MAKE THE NIGHT SPECIAL:

🌸 Dear Madalynn Florals — Custom floral décor
🎥 Persephane — Content creation
📸 Uliana — Photography + headshots
📍 The Girl Cave Collective — Our fabulous host location

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS

Dr. Gold Jewelry & Diamonds — SIGNATURE SPONSOR
drgolddallas
The Wealth Boutique — FRIENDS OF WJA SPONSOR
tonyiacleaver
🥂 W**e + light bites | 📸 Headshots | 🎁 Raffle | 🤝 Connections

📅 Sept. 21 | 6–9 PM
📍 The Girl Cave Collective | Plano
🎟️ $50 through Sept. 14 | $65 after

REGISTER:
https://www.womensjewelryassociation.com/ev_calendar_day.asp?date=9/21/2026&eventid=2584

Come for the headshot. Stay for the people. Leave with a bigger network — and maybe a fantastic raffle prize. 😉💎

Additional sponsorship + raffle opportunities are still available. DM us!

Women's Jewelry Association DFW - WJA DFW
wja_dfw
womensjewelryassociation

I was talking with a friend in Portugal about my work and she mentioned something I hadn’t really considered—that in her experience, jewelry was sometimes passed from mothers to daughters as a form of financial security. But the part that stuck with me was that the privacy around it could be completely intentional.

Jewelry is personal, portable, and discreet. A woman could pass something of value to her daughter without it becoming part of the family’s larger conversation about money.

I see a lot of inherited collections with almost no documentation—no inventory, little appraisal history, no record of where pieces came from or what they meant. I used to think of that as a problem to solve. But now I wonder if sometimes that missing paper trail was actually the point. Privacy that served one woman well becomes a mystery for her daughter, which is its own kind of problem.

It’s made me care even more about capturing the stories alongside the pieces themselves, not just the objects.

Most people don’t think much about their jewelry until life forces the question: an inheritance, a move, a divorce, retirement, a parent downsizing, an insurance review. Suddenly you’re asking what you actually have and whether any of it is valuable.

The first step is understanding the collection: what’s actually there, what each piece represents, and what your options are, before any decisions get made.

Our role is to help people get that clarity: what they have, what it’s worth, what it means, and what their choices are. After that, whether they keep it, redesign it, sell it, or pass it down is entirely their call.

One question I hear a lot is, “Why did I get two completely different values for the same piece of jewelry?”

The answer is usually pretty simple: they were created for different purposes.

A value for insurance isn’t the same as a value for an estate. Neither of those is the same as what a piece might realistically sell for today.

That’s why I always tell people not to get too attached to a number until they understand what that number actually represents.

Melissa Scarani, G.G., FGA, ASA put together a really helpful graphic that explains the four primary appraisal value types. It’s a great reminder that context matters just as much as the valuation itself. Thanks, Melissa, for letting me share it.

This is also why I spend so much time encouraging families to understand what they have before making decisions. An appraisal is incredibly important, but it’s only one part of the picture. Knowing what’s in the collection, how it’s documented, whether it’s properly insured, and how it fits into an estate plan are just as important.

Jewelry is often one of the most meaningful assets a family owns. It deserves the same thoughtful planning as everything else.

Graphic created by Melissa Scarani, G.G., FGA, ASA and shared with permission.

gemology_resources

We are excited to share that we were recently featured in Newsweek discussing a topic that’s at the heart of what we do at Spoleto Designs.

As America experiences the largest wealth transfer in history, most conversations focus on stocks, real estate, and business interests. Jewelry is often overlooked, even though it can be one of the most financially valuable and emotionally significant assets a family owns.

Too often, important decisions are made before anyone truly understands what they have.

Whether jewelry is being inherited, documented, insured, redesigned, shared among family members, or eventually sold, the first step should always be understanding the collection itself.

Thank you to Newsweek for including our perspective in this important conversation.

Read the article here:
https://www.newsweek.com/americas-124-trillion-wealth-transfer-brings-focus-to-jewelry-assets-12238721

💎💜

Collection Diaries | Part 20

Cabochons. Faceted gemstones. Modern design. Vintage influence.

The best collections aren’t built around a single style. They’re built around pieces that are impossible to forget.

📸 Serena Cavanaugh

Collection Diaries | Part 19

Every collection teaches me something.

One of my favorites in this group is the blue-green sugarloaf cabochon tourmaline. Unlike a traditional faceted gemstone, a sugarloaf cabochon has a smooth, domed top that highlights the depth of color rather than sparkle. As the light moves across the surface, the tourmaline shifts between rich shades of blue and green.

Another ring caught my eye because of its beautifully engineered openwork gold basket. The setting allows light to pass through the transparent gemstone, creating reflections that become part of the overall look. It’s a great reminder that a well-designed setting can be just as important as the gemstone itself.

And then there’s the final ring. The brown stones have wonderful life and character, but I can’t confidently identify the gem. That’s actually pretty common. Color, cut, and mounting can all influence how a stone appears.

It’s one of the many reasons I enjoy this work so much. Every collection offers something new to study.

📸 sjcav6 Serena Cavanaugh