Judi Powers, Russell Jones Unleash Joy With New Collaboration

Hudson, N.Y.—Jewelry designers and partners Judi Powers and Russell Jones have launched their first collaborative project, and it’s all joy.

Little Pet Portraits by Russell Jones & Judi Powers combines Jones’ skills as an artist—he worked as in illustrator and graphic designer for decades before launching Russell Jones Fine Jewelry—with Powers’ skills as a goldsmith and the aesthetic of her eponymous jewelry brand.

“Animals, they make everything more joyful and every time we make one of these, it’s the most joyful thing,” Powers said in a recent interview, noting that the pieces either help people memorialize a pet they just lost or celebrate the pet they have now.

“In both cases, it’s just such a rewarding and happy experience.”

The seeds for Little Pet Portraits were planted in 2020 when a friend contacted Jones about taking a Zoom class on Indian miniatures via The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts (now The King’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts) in the United Kingdom.

Jones already had experience with miniatures—he’d been painting lover’s eyes for a while—but this class focused on painting animals, a craft he was interested in perfecting. 

As a gift for Valentine’s Day 2023, Jones painted a portrait of Powers’ beloved Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Lulu. He presented it to her not as a piece of jewelry but as a painting stored inside a little jewelry box.

While the portrait of little Lulu remained tucked away, Jones and Powers began collaborating on the first pieces for what would eventually become Little Pet Portraits, making jewelry for friends who were gutted over the loss of a pet.

Powers recalled the first piece they did together: a pair of cufflinks for a couple who had two cats, Molly and Edie, one of whom tragically died young.

Then, in October 2025, everything shifted.

Lulu crossed over the rainbow bridge, and Powers experienced the inevitable pain every pet parent experiences: the feeling of losing your best friend.

The week after Lulu died, Powers turned Jones’ portrait of Lulu into a circular pendant accented with a brown diamond on a gold chain, sobbing all the while.

Shortly thereafter, she wore the pendant to a trunk show at The Phoenix in Washington, D.C. and, as Powers recalls, customers kept asking her, “What is that?”

“I called Russell that night and said, ‘We need to get on this.’” 

Before they unleashed this new endeavor, they had to ask themselves a couple of questions.

First, did they both have the bandwidth to add a second business to their lives? Could they run another jewelry company together while also maintaining their respective brands?

And, if so, how could they make their new brand different from existing pet portrait jewelry on the market? Italian designer Francesca Villa has “Being Furry” while Irene Neuwirth has been doing custom pet portraits for more than a decade. Both involve carving the animals into crystal quartz and then hand-painting their portraits.

“We really treated it like a business,” Powers said. “We sat down and had serious meetings about what our priorities were.”

Jones is known for working with color in his jewelry, and he brings that to his pet miniatures, incorporating jewel tones in the animal’s eyes or as the background color. 

He uses water-based paints and works on vegan vellum to create his portraits, which are painted from pictures submitted by the client.  

The picture, Jones explained, is about 90 times bigger than the ultimate miniature, so he starts out by making a large loose pencil sketch, then scans it and shrinks it down. 

At this point, he assesses the animal’s positioning, adjusts if needed, and then shares the sketch with the client. Once they give the OK, he shrinks it down again and prints it onto tracing paper. 

From there, he starts over again. Jones said he uses a few lines from the tracing paper as a size guide but, basically, creates the pet portrait miniature from scratch. 

“It’s just straight-up art from there,” Powers said.  

Before he adds the final touch—the whiskers, the point of no return in the world of animal miniatures—Jones shares the portrait with the client for final approval.  

When painting a portrait of someone’s beloved pet, “You’re really looking for those very small details that create that minute image,” Powers said—the markings or little imperfections that make each cat or dog unique and add to their distinct personality.  

Jones recalled the difficulty he had in capturing the spirit of a Siamese cat named Charlie, who, like many Siamese cats, is cross-eyed.  

“I kept making the eyes straight, but it didn’t look like him,” Jones said. 

Little Pet Portraits are sold direct to consumers and can be commissioned via the brand’s website, as well as through retailers who carry Judi Powers Jewelry and/or Russell Jones Fine Jewelry. 

The portraits are available as pendants, pins, or cufflinks. (Jones said they do not offer rings right now because he uses water-based paints and they haven’t figured out a way to make the ring completely waterproof.) 

They can be crafted in 14-karat green, rose, yellow, or white gold, or 18-karat green or yellow gold. 

Clients also have their choice of gemstone accents, and their pick of three bails for the pendant: a soft round bezel, the lacryma (teardrop shaped), or a star-shaped bail.

Pricing starts at $5,500 for pieces in 14-karat gold.

Powers said when she and Jones decided to launch Little Pet Portraits, they agreed that a charitable component had to be part of the brand’s foundation.

Little Pet Portraits donates a minimum of $200 for each piece sold to an animal shelter, rescue, or charity in the client’s area.

If they don’t have a preference, then the donation goes to an animal charity of the designers’ choosing, which usually changes with each portrait.

“We just default to whichever one is making us cry the most on any given day,” Powers said.