Wide ginkgo band with multi-color blue sapphires. Lovely lovely lovely.
Archive for the ‘Rings’ Category
quinn’s ring
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010poppycock
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
[This is what my hand looks like this morning; I feel very decadent when I do this.]
I have a couple of new pieces to show off today: the Poppy Eternity Ring and the Peacock Ring! I’m quite excited about the two pieces and have been wearing them (one, the other, and now this morning: both!) nonstop this past weekend.
First, we have the Poppy. I carved this actually a long time ago as a wedding set for some friends. I only now decided to re-work it to offer in the shop. I decided it might be cool with a few diamonds and so I re-did the poppy buds to hold little 2.5mm diamonds.
I’m really happy with how it turned out. It’s now listed in my Etsy shop.
The other ring I just finished is the Peacock Ring. I LOVE it.
This probably looks familiar.. I carved a similar more petite version for Caty’s wedding ring. Carving her ring inspired me to dig out my old peacock ring wax (started years ago but never got very far) and give it another go. The design was a little different though in that I had the peacock’s body on one side, the feather (pretty much like it is now) on the other. It is a lot wider than Caty’s ring but narrow at the base for comfort; I also left the bottom of the ring bare and uncarved. I picked and scratched at it a little and finally decided to cut out the bird altogether, which was just looking a little too scrappy and messing with my clean lines. I recarved it wider on top and made it domed slightly (it’s hollowed out lightly underneath). I’m pretty pleased with the result.
I agonized over whether to put the blue diamond in or a more traditional white one and in the end, I decided that the blue diamond is just so peacocky and cool and used it. It’s 2.5mm—fairly understated but still packs a lot of sparkle.
I don’t want to take it off.
mimi’s ring
Saturday, June 26th, 2010
[18K white gold and diamond ring.]
My grandmother “Mimi” died a number of years ago and though we never lived geographically close, we were close in the way that grandmothers and their granddaughters are. I idolized her and thought everything about her was mysterious and magical.
Mostly I have all those homey odd memories about her that I collected over my childhood. She had curly white hair and wore enormous bifocals. Her house always looked exactly the same, year after year. Her bathroom was all porcelain and tile and felt wonderful on your feet as you walked in off the carpeting. She was a master knitter and all her knit things (we always got something hand-knit for Christmas) smelled a certain way—Woolite, my mother told me it was, which she hand-washed all her knits in. Her cooking was heavy on the baked goods (as a grandmother’s should be); she made these wonderful cookies every Christmas (Mexican wedding cookies) that were always just OUT on a table for anyone to snack on throughout the holiday but they contained nuts and as desperate as I was to eat them all, I actually disliked walnuts so much that I only ever managed to get through one or two. She lived in Tucson, AZ, and drove a car that had over the years all but disintegrated from the UV exposure. She loved the song by Stevie Wonder that went, “I just called, to say, I love you. I just called, to say how much I care…” and when I was in sixth grade it played on the radio all the time. We’d turn it up in the car and she’d sing along in her warbly voice.
It’s funny how when you are a child, you have no concept of other people ever having been young. Or that they once had a different life other than the role you know them in, namely, “grandmother.” I always thought it odd that my mother was so testy around her.
I only know snippets of her life now. She was born in a town in the midwest and spoke only German; she didn’t learn English until she was sent to school. She worked as a nanny when she was very young. She married an abusive alcoholic (my grandfather, a man I never knew, but who was a very well-respected lawyer) who was much older than she was. She never had a job after marrying until after he died, when she suddenly had, like, four—and she did a lot of volunteer work. And her hair was actually not naturally curly; she had it permed.
After she died, my mother (the only daughter) was given her wedding ring. It was old and worn and bent so she sent it to me to make something with, using the diamond.
This was a photo of her from her first communion, I think it was. Anyway, I had never seen a photo of her in her youth. Old photos are always so interesting—the people with their rigid expressions and fantastic outfits. When they are of your own grandmother in her early teens, well, I was pretty fascinated.
The whole feeling of that old photo of her inspired my design for this ring, from the ruffles of her dress and the off-tint color, to the art deco era. My mother now wears Mimi’s ring.
Now I understand it was only a small piece of her that I knew. A fragment. I don’t find it sad or think it’s a bad thing though; her life was her own and I’m grateful to have participated in the parts that I did.
caty and justin’s rings
Sunday, June 6th, 2010
I got a recent commission for a matching pair of wedding bands with perhaps a fish theme (the owners had a sweet story about a minnow). I did a couple of sketches of minnows wrapped around a band. Then it came up that the peacock feather was the design theme of their wedding. Maybe we could work that into the ring…
A fish and a feather. Ooh!
[I may not know how to spell "lacy" but I do know my feather anatomy!]
I really had a fun time carving these rings. A while back I sketched a design for a big ol’ peacock ring (peacocktail ring?) but never got around to actually carving it. Maybe I’ll dig it back out now because I love how the feather motif worked on the ring.
I start out evenly: cut waxes, cut out basic shape with file, scratch in design with something scratchy… Then I go to town. I try to keep continuity by carving on both rings, not getting ahead too far on one or the other, but inevitably at some point I lose myself and focus on one ring until I’m essentially finished.
As usual, I carved the first ring (hers) and looked at my rough scratches on the second ring (his) and said to myself: “Oh bother; how can I make this one as good as the first?” This happens every time. And every time the same thing happens.
I carve the second ring… and I like it even better than the first.
Then I feel bad for the first ring.
But after a short time my feelings equalize and I really find in the end that I don’t know which one turned out “best.”
Because they both turned out perfectly.
pheigi’s ring (wax carving process)
Sunday, May 23rd, 2010
18K gold custom rose and ginkgo ring. This is a recent custom order I finished for a woman in Japan.
First I sketched a potential design. Once this was okayed, I could start in with the wax carving.
To start with, I hacked off a slice of carving wax the width of the proposed ring. I bored out the inside to the proper ring size, filed the sides parallel, and filed down the top to an even thickness. This step used to take me a ridiculously long time but now I’m pretty good at it and can brute out a general ring shape in no time. I typically carve a thick ring; rings feel better to me when there is some substance to them. I start with 2.5mm thickness generally and whittle down from there. The final ring will usually be around 2.25 thickness.
I measured out my three rose groupings so they would be even and balanced. Then I started to sketch out my design by scratching it onto the wax with a dental tool. I often have to adjust my design once actually laid out onto the wax since it always fits differently than it does on a piece of notebook paper.
Here I’ve bored out the holes between the ginkgo leaves and cut away excess wax. I use a regular twist drill and exacto knife to do this.
Neatening the openwork and starting to shape a little. Once I get the shape right, I start carving contour with a dental tool. I have a number of dental tools but I really only use one, which I’m absurdly dependent upon. I got it from my dentist years ago and sharpened a new, pointier point onto it. I broke one end of it off a few years back and I’ll be severely irritated if I ever break off the remaining end, which has thee perfect angled tip and the perfect amount of springiness and flexibility.
Here I’ve roughed out the shape on the leaves and started to form the roses. I’m going for a lot of movement on this ring, high relief.
The wax carving is almost complete. I go over and over the piece to neaten up edges, clean up my scratch marks, and make sure the continuity is nice between the outside carving to the smooth inside edge of the band. I often use 1200-grit sandpaper in this step, which is pretty much crazy time, but I always thank myself later when I don’t have to sand irritating scratches out of metal.
Once I’m finished with the basic carving, I do the finishing texture and details. Here I’ve done a bit more work on the rose petals and added the ginkgo leaf texture. The wax model is complete.
The glamour shots. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine the ring when it is purple wax… I’ve been experimenting with removing the color, etc. I can’t decide if it really helps though.
I’m still working on getting the lighting just right in the new studio. I took the finished gold photo before I got my diffuser working right. Unfortunately, it’s the only one that really worked and I didn’t get any others of different angles of the ring, showing more of the roses. Oh well.
art nouveau and mistletoe rings
Friday, May 21st, 2010It’s kind of ridiculous how long it took me to carve these rings.
[18K white gold mistletoe ring.]
[18K gold art nouveau ring.]
I based the art nouveau ring design on a photograph of an embroidery by Swiss designer Hermann Obrist (1890s). The image was in an art nouveau book I saw once and I just fell in love with it.
[Hermann Obrist, "Whiplash" embroidery of cyclamen.]
I finally got molds made of these two rings. Even so, there is still a lot that needs to be done to prepare the waxes for casting (not even counting sizing…) in that they are just very complicated designs. Both are really awesome though; a couple of my favorites.
Both the Mistletoe ring and the Art Nouveau ring have been listed in my etsy shop.
alisha’s ring
Sunday, May 16th, 2010
This is the wedding set I carved for my (old—sniff!) studiomate Alisha. It’s the most low-key ring I think I’ve ever carved (fat diamond notwithstanding…). She had a very specific idea in mind and wanted it to be something that could definitely take a beating. In fact, by the time I got around to actually photographing the ring, she had been wearing it nonstop, the past weekend while demo-ing a pidgeon coop and garage interior at her new house. I think the dings and scratches rather become it really. I wasn’t comfortable setting diamonds yet when I made it and so she took it to a professional setter. It turned out pretty damned awesome!
Here I’ve paired her solitaire with one of my carved bands (the rosebud band). Sweetness!
jeff’s ring
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
Jeff is my father in law. He spends a large portion of his life at sea. When my husband was a kid, Jeff spent nearly 10 years building a large trimaran sailboat (a Jim Brown 40) on the Oregon coast, then sailed it to Texas. He now has a Condor 40, a racing tri which he recently got from a salvage. He also works at sea; half of the year he spends on a massive ocean-going tug hauling loads across the Indian Ocean, the North Pacific, Southeast Asia, between Northern Siberia and Japan, off the west coast of Africa. Lately he has been working between Kuwait and Iraq and Durban, Africa, a tricky section of ocean notorious for piracy.
The turquoise came from his mother; he sent me the piece and asked if I could make something with it. I decided to carve something ‘oceany’ and this is what I came up with. I’ve always loved the Hokusai print.
Anyone who has been at sea long enough encounters waves like this (minus Hokusai’s excellent visibility perhaps..). About five years ago Jeff went through a typhoon off Japan. He was in port at the docks when it was coming but the port officials told them they had to get out because they were afraid the large boats and barges would tear up the port when the typhoon hit. He and two other tugs motored out to sea and for twelve hours, they pointed into the wind and bashed into the hurricane seas at half throttle. They made time backwards at something like 12 knots, their tows thrashing around in the sea one kilometer behind them at the end of a huge tether.
melissa’s ring
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
This delicious pearl hails from the warm and balmy South Pacific islands. I bet it’s beautiful there.
palladium pearl ring
Monday, April 19th, 2010
I found a place that can cast palladium and I’m terribly psyched. Here’s what I made! I’m loving it and have been wearing it every day.
That awesome 10.5mm Tahitian pearl was sent to me by my good friend Antonia who sailed her sailboat with her husband across the Pacific, stopped at a small atoll where thar be pearls me mateys, and traded a bottle of scotch and some cash for a bunch of ‘em. I was hugely jealous—and also hugely pregnant at the time—but her stories of the never-ending sea/morning-sickness she suffered while crossing the big bad ocean helped me to suck it up a little.
I about died when I opened the package and saw this lil’ beauty! It took me long enough to make The Ring for it but here it is.
I just listed it in my Etsy shop (a custom version, that is, with a pearl of your choice—this one is mine)!
Palladium is in the same elemental family as platinum and looks very similar; maybe a tiny bit ‘whiter’ than platinum. It’s much lighter in weight however, more similar to 14K gold perhaps. Happily, it wears more like platinum, with the curious trait of ‘displacing’ metal with wear rather than rubbing off, which is what gold and silver do. (I wonder if the tendency to displace metal as it wears is because the atomic bond between the palladium 950 alloy is so much stronger than the bonds in gold alloys?) It is very hard to finish, harder than 14K or 18K gold, and the casting plaster leaves a very rough texture, therefore requiring a lot of filing, sanding through the grit strengths, polishing with different grit wheels, then working my way through the buffing compounds… whew. I wish I had a buffing machine at times like these. But it takes an amazing polish, mirror finish really. I’m a glutton for punishment I guess because I’m definitely looking forward to making more pieces with the metal.
