[Platinum, blue diamond, and palladium.]

One of my good friends from way back in high school (hello Facebook!) got a hold of me with a ring idea for her husband. They had been married for some years but never really got nice wedding bands; she thought she would surprise her husband with one for christmas and began scheming up ways to sneak-measure his finger size without him noticing anything. Amusingly, about a week later, he suggested out of the blue that they buy themselves wedding bands for their christmas present that year. Karen, evidently, needs to take lessons in subtlety.

Karen and Jon are both total sci-fi geeks and she thought a spacey sort of theme might be interesting, so I started sketching ideas. I found design inspiration from vintage science fiction cover art—you know all that awesome stuff of dudes in round globular helmets and retro spacecrafts with toggle switches and orange square buttonry, comets flying by in the sky with maybe a ringed planet, red rocky outcroppings, pointy cities.. um, and stuff. (I do love me some retro cover art.)

["Space Workers" by Gennady Golobokov, 1973, Russia. I'm digging the pointy helmet.]

[Isn't this awesome? It's Jeffrey Jones' cover for the Amazing Science Fiction magazine, September 1970.]

The rings are laid out in three sections: ringed planet, spiral galaxy, and comet—with lots of flowy wavy designs between. Karen’s ring is in platinum with a little 2.5mm blue diamond in her comet, and Jon’s ring in palladium (the two metals are almost identical in color but the palladium is not as heavy and not as expensive; for a man’s ring, this helps immensely in keeping the cost from getting ridiculous). Animated gifs of all sides of the rings are here: Karen’s ring and Jon’s ring.

It was the first time I’ve worked the two metals side-by-side and it was interesting to compare how they felt and finished up. Though platinum is a harder and denser metal, I would say that they were equally difficult to finish; palladium is more “sticky” perhaps, and platinum more “dry” feeling. From what I have read, palladium has extremely similar wear characteristics as platinum, which makes it pretty much the perfect white jewelry metal (aside from the hard-to-finish aspect). Both took about a million years to file, sand, sand finer, polish, polish finer, etc. I know Karen has a soft spot for heavy metal so I surfed through my mp3 player for some inspirational music to help pass the time whilst sand-sand-sanding away.

[Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles cover. I also like the Fahrenheit 451 cover; it's not really spacey, but I liked the look and the abstract reflections in the helmet.]

More totally cool retro cover art from the former Soviet Union & eastern bloc countries here. And some German art here.

Chinese turquoise, diamond, sterling silver, and 18K gold. The silver has been patinaed a deep gray and then brushed bright silver on the outsides of the ring. The band is rounded on the inside and has an adorable little ginkgo leaf stamp that I had made a million years ago but haven’t used too much. I need to use it more because it is pretty cool.

Finally, I’ve finished the ring using this awesome turquoise. I think it looks like a Japanese lily pond, maybe photographed using an infrared filter. Anyway, I just love this piece and hope I’ve done it justice with the ring mounting.

The bottom is pierced with a floral pattern so you catch a glimpse of the lilypads on the bottom of the stone and the whole thing floats off the three-cornered band by a couple of millimeters.

A thought regarding the ring shot being worn. So far, I have been just taking a photo of my hand against the same linen backdrop I use for the rest of the shots. I was taking outdoor photos of necklaces the other day and took a few worn ring shots while I was at it and am liking the results. Any thoughts? Do you think the ring being worn taken against the body vs. against a backdrop is better?

Here’s what I mean:

Or the rose ring I finished recently..

I finally got my rose-cut black diamond set in my new ring. Setting a rose-cut stone was harder than I thought. I think I was thinking it would be like a faceted diamond, only easier—more like a cabachon. But no, it was all wobbly and kept flipping around and popping out of the bezel as I tried to set it. I got it in eventually, but it took some figuring out. I’m happy with the look. The black faceted diamond makes me think of Victorian jet. Cool!

This ring would look great with another band of just the tiny leaves.

(Edited to add:) ABOUT THE BLACK DIAMOND: Black diamonds are real diamonds that are mined out of the ground, etc. However, they are treated with radiation to make the color black, which is in fact a super dark green but so dark that it appears totally black. (If you shined a really intense light at the edge of the diamond where it is thinner, you could probably see that it is in fact green in color.) Diamonds do occur naturally with a black color but that color is because of numerous carbon inclusions, which make the stone mostly black and opaque (well, they are more like deep gray with flecks; they do not look perfectly jet black like this stone). Unfortunately, so many inclusions make the stone prone to fracture, and affects the stone’s surface quality (because inclusions usually reach the surface, creating blemishes and affecting the sparkle).

I think that usually, they start with a diamond that is included but not overly so that it would affect it structurally, and maybe it’s also kind of an ugly color–yellowish brown or greenish brown, say. So, they irradiate it and turn it this intense black. I’m not a purist when it comes to cool, so as long as such treatments are plainly disclosed I’m happy to use treated gems. They are usually way cheaper than their naturally occurring counterpart and look just as good (if not better).

It’s been forever since I got to play around in the studio and make cocktail rings! This one has been percolating for a while and since I’ve been working on another rosy ring for a customer, I slipped this one in too. I’m pretty happy with it; I’m especially liking the patina. I don’t even know what it is (I’m assuming it is liver of sulphur though); it has a very subtle french gray color. The back/bottom is deeper gray and the top is a bright brushed silver. Edges are burnished bright and shiny. I set a 1.6mm diamond in 18K gold in the center of one of my roses. The band is forged a little to mediate the clunky factor and give it some interest. I’m digging it!

My camera batteries ran out last night while I was trying to take photos of it for Etsy and this is only as far as I got. I should get the rest of the photos today and hopefully have it listed in the shop tomorrow. It fits size 7-8 easily (this ring is very generous with sizing because of the shape).

[14K white gold carved poppies]

This was a piece that was made to fit up against an engagement ring that I never saw in person. It was a large square citrine center stone surrounded by a bunch of tiny diamonds, with diamond pave running down the sides of the band. I didn’t want to deprive my client of her engagement ring so I had her send detailed measurements of the ring. And then I had her buy some Fimo modeling clay, press her ring into the clay from a couple of angles, and send it to me. When I got it, I poured hot wax into the mold and recreated a passable model of her ring, using her measurements to be sure I had the shape and size more or less correct.

I know. BEE-autiful, isn’t it. Nothing says “I love you” like red and purple wax.

Looks MUCH better in gold. And it fit! I was so relieved.

[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!