[18K gold and Akoya pearl ring]

You may remember the pearl ring I made for my sister-in-law Ghezal. The pearl came from a pair of earring studs that she never wore. Here’s where the other pearl went.

[14K white gold domed poppy ring with diamonds]

I’ve been experimenting with my photography of my jewelry. I think I’ve vastly improved upon my lighting and now I’m starting to snick at my background and staging.. Before I used a book for my main ‘glamour’ shots (a 1905 edition of Tennyson’s poems, which I found at a garage sale and bought because I thought it was pretty—I have to admit I’ve only read like 10 lines out of the thing; I’m not a huge poetry fan..) and a nice piece of linen for my all-around photos.

Which looks nice.

BUT, I kind of feel like the white background is less distracting, less contrived, and makes the jewelry piece show up better (rather than show bumps from the fabric reflecting, say).

I don’t know. What do you think? The white background is also colder, more impersonal.

But .. Preeeeeetttttyyyyy… Argh. Dilemma.

Hand-carved mistletoe wedding band with wide ocean wave and tree band. 18K white gold. Kirsten loved the mistletoe motif but my 11mm band was a little too much.. So I carved one 6mm—and I designed a mistletoe solitaire to match. She had a kick-ass old-style cut family diamond to set in the top.

I wish I got better photos of these rings. I reworked my photo-taking setup and the improvement is obvious. I had been diffusing the light at the light source rather than at the piece; it makes a massive difference. Photos from now on will be much much better. But anyway..

First sketches had a solid bezel with sprigs of mistletoe climbing up each side. However, we were concerned that the solid bezel might limit the bling factor from her old-style cut (modern brilliant cut diamonds return all light that goes in; older cuts sometimes did not..). So, I re-worked the design and opened up the bezel, letting light into the sides of the stone. The mistletoe leaves would hold the stone in place.

The wax shows that the solitaire does not actually sit flush with the band, as is usually the fashion, but is instead tapered gently up near the top. Not everything that is in fashion is the best and this is a way better design, trust me.

The stone is a lavender CZ I stuck in place to pretend. It’s only a tiny bit smaller than her diamond would be.

See? Graceful! (Not stumpy.)

The finished mistletoe band. It measures 6mm in width. It’s an odd thing to think about but as I carve more and more, I get better (it’s hard to call it “practice” since I’m doing it for real, so to speak). Not only am I more efficient and exact in my carving, but my designs are more sophisticated. My 11mm mistletoe ring is one of the rings I wear the most & I love it to death but I have to say, the design on this one is better.

The finished solitaire. Kirsten was too paranoid to send her stone all the way from the UK in case of possible loss by the post office so she had the stone set in the finished ring once she received it. I photoshopped a photo of an old-European cut diamond in where the stone should go just to get a nice photo of the final piece.

OCEAN RING:

Mark wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted but knew that he preferred a nice wide band. He is into surfing and outdoorsy stuff and liked the water motif on Jeff’s ring. I sketched the following:

All was a go and here’s the pics of the final ring. Each third of the ring has a different motif: gnarly old beach tree with water, water with breaking wave, just water. You can turn the ring around depending upon your mood.

The ring has a matte finish with a mirror polish on the rounded inside. I think it turned out beautifully.

After I finished the ring, it occurred to me that I had carved essentially the Lone Tree of Carmel. Nuts!

18K white gold solitaire with .60 ct diamond engagement ring with rosy diamond eternity band.

I’ve finally carved a solitaire ring to match my carved bands. It’s very sleek and simple with a tapered band at the top and thicker, wider band at the bottom. This helps keep the ring balanced on the finger (keeps the stone UP and not flopping around) and I think gives a really simple design a lot of grace. It doesn’t fit flush against the carved bands like you usually see engagement ‘sets’ but I think that’s what makes it look unique and cool.

[The diamond is REALLY awesome. It’s G color and SI1 clarity with ideal cut and polish/symmetry; the SI1 inclusion is singular and unobtrusive and 99.99% of the stone is perfectly clean. A really great diamond I think.]

I will probably carve a straight banded solitaire as well but I love the look of the tapered band the best.

Here’s the pair of rings I often wear together:

I began wearing it just because an 11mm wide band wasn’t really giving the impact I was looking for… And then I realized how cool the tapered band looked paired against the carved ring.