Since I just found out this category exists I figured it would be a nice place to share thoughts, progress, products and such on here.
Bit of history:
I’m one of those many creatives out there that decided it would be neat to bring their creations to the market. At some point not long after I (re-)found the hobby, I stumbled upon a yoyo design contest here on the forum: Mk1 Design Contest
My entry:
I still plan to run this yoyo so fingers crossed, this will happen somewhere in the not too distant future.
This contest and the fabulous reactions inspired me to produce a yoyo which eventually became the Gemstones: Gemstones YoYo by Arc1 – YoYoExpert
Mk1 Mark did the final CAD and came up with the spintop caps (he already had that concept and I guess Gemstones can be seen as the test bed for them
).There’s still stock by the way
Next I envisioned a yoyo that curved out and in on itself sort of turning it inside out. This turned out to look beautiful but the manufacturer I chose was unable to machine these to perfection unfortunately. The first prototypes were all a different weight with if I remember correctly as much as 5 gram difference between the lightest and the heaviest. The ano was amazing though and I also had planned to give the option to customise the yoyo with screw in rhinestones and such so hopefully I will find a manufacturer that can replicate this ano and not mess up the design.
Here’s a sneak peek of the first proto run: Proto sneak peek
By now I guess it’ll be obvious to most that I tend to be a little less conventional with my yoyos. I prefer to see them as functional art than attempting to hit any performance goals.
So that’s the short history that leads us to the latest prototype that should become the next release 
(No, I don’t know when it will be released, I haven’t yet ordered the main run so I expect somewhere in 2024.)
Meanwhile, here’s another nice picture of the proto version:
