first jewels

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Oh my poor, poor neglected blog. Sorry folks for the dramatic pause in pretty pictures.. I have actually been very busy and have not had enough function left in my brain to keep my blog populated. I bought a “fixer” house, moved, had a nasty bout of colds/flues that rampaged through the household, tore apart and remodeled the bathroom, and now am working on the kitchen. And we had family visiting. And I got way behind in my orders doing all of this.. (But I’m caught up now!) Whew. Onward.

I have a number of custom pieces I have made over the past few months and I will get them posted here over the next week. For now, I just wanted to point out how amazingly cool Michelle Obama’s jewelry was at the recent Correspondent’s Dinner. I usually think her formal ensembles are pretty great and whatnot but this time her jewelry picks were completely AWESOME AWESOME and AWESOME!!!

The three layered necklaces. The pewter color scheme here is really nice and unusual and goes well with the dusty purple color of her dress. All pieces are pretty sweet: the chain lariat choker that hangs over the lower necklace of interesting metal beads.. But what really makes this for me though is the heavy cable chain on top. Too cool.

Here’s a close up of the bracelet stack. Snakes! I love it when people wear snake jewelry.

(I have no idea who designed any of this; if anyone does, please mention it in the comments for me? Thanks!)

The entire ensemble. Did I mention how awesome I think this is? Check out her snake ring too. The earrings are whatevs; I don’t have anything to say about them.

Anyway, I was super impressed with her jewelry choices (her stylist’s jewelry choices? Does she select her own clothing/jewelry for functions like these? I really have no idea how these things work) and I think she looked flipping gorgeous.

EDITED: I found out who the jewelry designer was: Irit Design for all pieces, including the earrings. Sterling silver and diamonds! LOVE it all!

tucson gem show 2011

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[Blue cultured Sea of Cortez pearl. It’s pretty amazing, not only because it is gorgeous, but because it is from the first ever cultured pearl farm in the Sea of Cortez. Previously, it had been understood that culturing the “Rainbow-lipped” oysters in the Sea was impossible. But three guys figured out how and now they have a small farm in Guaymas.]

Well, the gem show was overwhelming and hectic as usual. Two days to buy everything I think I might need for the next year is pretty nearly impossible—but I do give it my damnedest. At least I feel like I made some decent contacts.

Mostly, I bought pearls (some things do not change). The Cortez pearl above was the fanciest/rarest I’ve ever purchased. I will definitely have to visit the farm one of these days; it’s only a five-hour drive or so from my parent’s house. I’ll write more in depth about the various stones I got in a later post. For now, I’ll just post a little eye candy.

Mmm: lovely round and semi-baroque Tahitian pearls. Gorgeous peacocky and magenta colors.

South Sea pearls from Myanmar, except for the upper right round pearl, which is a Chinese freshwater.

I actually bought these at the last year’s show, but never got a nice photo before. Chinese freshwater rose/peach round pearl and keshi of various colors.

Turquoise! I can never resist buying this stuff. These are all from Nevada I believe (maybe a couple pieces from New Mexico—will have to check) and are discovered, mined, cut, and polished by two of the nicest people. All their turquoise is non-stabilized and un-enhanced, and it is lovely stuff.

Rose-cut diamonds! The largest is 1.6 carats, the smallest is maybe 1/2 ct. Coolness!

* * *

And I did not watch the Grammy’s on TV but I did peruse the blogs this morning to see what everyone wore. So far my favorite jewelry piece was the Lorraine Schwartz snake bracelet: gold and platinum with large diamond slice ‘spots’ and pave white and yellow diamonds. It looks like it has ruby eyes too. (You can get a huge blown-up version here.)

karen and jon’s spacey rings

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[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.

pavé class

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[Poppy ring by Faberge (modern). Multi-colored diamonds, padparadscha sapphire, blingy-bling, platinum, gold, etc.]

I left for my pavé setting class (at Revere Academy in San Francisco) with all sorts of grand ideas about what I would make the moment I got home. I even sketched designs on the flight over. Of course, after one day of class, it was sharply clear that I will need to practice for MANY hours before I will be even near confident enough to offer pavé set stones in my pieces. Pavé is hard! I can’t believe it!

But it is also kind of fun. In a super-neurotic hyper-detail-oriented sort of way, which is my specialty. I acquired a bunch new tools, including lots of pokey sharp gravers, and one of those opti-visors so now I can look like a grouchy old man when I set my stones. It was a long time coming and I have to face the facts: my eyes are not spring chickens anymore. My husband has been telling me this for years.

[Another modern Faberge design. Doesn’t it look like FUN to set all those little diamonds? I’m assuming this is a ring and that it was made by a hoard of nimble-fingered fairies.]

This was also my first real introduction to engraving using actual engraving tools (I had previously only done sort of half-assed engraving using scavenged tools modified for the job and, you know, it’s just not the same). I was surprised to discover I really like engraving. Engraving = carving metal, essentially, and so I suppose it should not have come as a surprise. Unfortunately, it’s WAY harder than carving wax so my engraved attempts were totally wonky and my lines wobbly and gougey and too deep/thick/everythingelse. But with some practice, I think I’ll be able to add engraved design elements into my pieces. Hopefully engraved designs paved with wee sparkling diamonds. Yay!

[Massive crazy ruby-encrusted ring (also modern Faberge). I’m generally not a huge ruby fan but, you know, I’d totally wear this.]

[Rene Lalique: top is the centerpiece for a pearl “dog collar” style choker with molded glass reed players and diamond folliage. The bottom is an enameled pansy choker centerpiece with pavé diamond accents.]

I can’t even imagine how long it took to set all the stones in some of these pieces. I used to think this sort of thing was gaudy but I have since amended my blasphemous ways. I am especially fond pavé-set stones of varying color and size, and the way Lalique uses pavé in his designs is my absolute favorite. This is pretty much what I set out to do when I started making jewelry: make stuff as cool as Lalique.

And lastly, because this is after all Portland, OR (where we love everything cephalopod), I present to you the diamond encrusted octopus:

(Squids, shocking though it may seem, are grossly underrepresented in the diamond jewelry world. I hurt.)

deco-inspired pendant

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This art deco-inspired pendant is cast out of palladium (in the platinum family, very similar in look and wear properties, but it is not as heavy), is set with three small 1.6mm diamonds, and has an oval sapphire drop. This is the first time I’ve attempted constructing palladium (i.e., soldering and forming).

I had to buy welding goggles to protect my eyes from the high temperatures required to solder the metal (cool!) and I ended up using 18K palladium white gold hard solder (recommended by the metal supplier for color match). The only problem I really had was that I was told (well, I researched it on the internet; the INTERNET TOLD ME!) not to use any flux. Which is fine but the flux is very helpful in simply holding the tiny bit of solder onto the piece when soldering.

What I did was this: place a minuscule bit of solder on a jump ring (a rounded, curved, non-flat surface, mind you) and watch it fall off. Do it again. And again. Do it three more times and finally, somehow, it balances without falling off. Take a deep breath (but don’t let it out! It might knock down the solder). Check to be sure the solder is still there (it is. Whew). Put on my welding goggles, flip up the dark part and start my torch using my striker. Finally get the torch started, adjust the flame, and bring it back to my piece to start (oh! after I flipped down my dark visor, that is) only to see that in the meantime, my solder has fallen off again. Turn off torch, take off visor. Hunt around my charcoal block for errant piece of solder. Repeat.

I think I did this whole try-to-solder-only-to-realize-that-the-solder-flew-away-in-the-meantime routine a good 20 times. And that’s not to mention the few times where it actually was still there by the time I got around to applying my big bad flame. Only to have the wind from the torch blow it off my piece. Chalk up another 10 or so failures to my 20 above.

There was much swearing though I managed to remain admirably calm through this utterly absurd routine. I actually used up the entire flint on my striker (and I didn’t have another) and had to make a run to the hardware store to buy a new one. The new one, unfortunately, is just as hard to use as the old one. Blast!

In the end, I reigned triumphant.

There’s got to be a better way. Perhaps using a little flux won’t actually end life as we know it on this planet. Because I see this deco piece as a pair of earrings with pearl drop dangles. (Oh yeah!) I will figure this out.

back to 2011!

multi-stone cuff bracelet

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These stones started as a few rather, ahem, “dated” rings and pendants. The lapis was an individual stone that had been in the family for a long time. I picked all the stones out, recycled the metal, and we tossed around ideas for a bracelet, then a pendant, then a ring, then finally just decided “use up all those random stones and make one big SOMETHING!” So, here’s my something: a cuff bracelet with etched and engraved floral motif set with lapis (from Afghanistan), Persian turquoise, and a smattering of diamonds ranging in size from 3.5mm diameter to 1.6mm.

As usual, I stressed unduly over my design since it had been about a zillion years since I had etched anything (did I still even have the stuff?) and also my engraving skills revolve around guesswork since I’ve never been formally trained in any of this. I relied on the etching of course for the main design and then neatened it up where I needed to with the engraver. I should do more engraving—it’s kind of fun!

Here’s my sketched design. Originally, I had planned to make the bracelet straight-sided but during the process of soldering on the largest bezel (each bezel had to be carved on the bottom to fit the contour of the bracelet exactly so they could be soldered down), I got a little close to the edge with the pointy end of my torch and melted it all up. I totally freaked out, paced about a bit, took some deep breaths and surveyed my screw-up. I hammered it back as smooth as I could but couldn’t really get the metal to smoosh back out to form a nice clean edge like before. But then it occurred to me that I kind of liked the way the edge swooped in; I added more swoops and I think it improved the overall look and design. I re-engraved the part of the design I had obliterated with my torch and hammering and in the end, it is all but invisible unless you know where to look. I felt very lucky and the rest of the bezels, including all diamond bezels, went on with no trouble at all.

I put a deep french-gray patina in the design grooves and around the edges of bezels to give it more depth and polished the rest of the bracelet to a bright satin finish.

faceted cigar band

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[Faceted Cigar Band, sterling silver, carved/cast, and oxidized a nice French gray.]

[Tapered Faceted Cigar Band, sterling silver.]

Hi there all! Sorry it’s been a while since my last post.. I’ve been busy.. And lazy. And we got the fourth season DVD of Mad Men. Yep, that pretty much sums it all up right there.

But of course I’ve still been working and making some new things.. I’m going to list these rings on the Etsy shop here soon.. I will offer a straight version and a tapered version, and each will be hand-carved from scratch, custom to fit each order. Here is a photo of the rings I have been wearing together lately…

Yes, I only own one shirt. The gold ring is of course is the black rose-cut diamond in 18K (Victorian Solitaire) and the silver is a sterling silver carved faceted cigar band. It’s domed and tapered and surprisingly comfortable. I think the two look really great together.

I know. Isn’t that festive? It’s not even December yet and we have a tree already. Until last year actually, we had never gotten a tree, or decorated in any way for Christmas (or any other holiday for that matter), but you know? My two-year-old LOVES the tree. She spends just about all her time underneath it (we even have it bolted down to a big heavy box so she has lots of space to hang out under it) re-arranging all the lower ornaments, wedging her stuffed animals in the branches. She’s been busy. Originally we had no ornaments to speak of so I went crazy and made a bunch out of fabric and felt; so far this year, I’ve made three new ones.

Here’s the typical scene:

She is in the process of shoving all the bird ornaments deep into the heart of the tree where they will be lost forever if I don’t remember to retrieve and count them all nightly before I go to bed. You can see various debris all over the floor: less tenacious ornaments and a host of stuffed friends waiting their turn.

(She has no idea that the plastic comes off those candy canes.)

new turquoise cocktail rings!

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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..

custom order deadline!!