New ring to see

Back on January 11th I posted a picture of a sapphire ring propped up with another ring to take the photo. Here is the process for that ring: a winding vine with hand hammered leaves and a labradorite cabochon. It's been worked off and on for the last couple of weeks in between other projects, and I started to polish it today.

Here are the leaves - hammered and in place next to the vine with solder bits ready for the torch. Next everything is wrapped around the mandrel to form a ring shape.

I like the way the vine undulates and seems to beg for something to

be added for ornamentation where the two ends meet. So, after a few minutes of thought and searching through gemstones, I added a bezel to hold a round labradorite cab, and then set the stone. The blue flash in the stone is a little hard to capture on camera, but I tried! Enjoy the pics. :)

Wedding rings - awesome photo

The photo of the wedding rings just came last week and I finally had time to pull if off the disk. What a beautiful pair of rings!

Enough snow, ok!?

The winter wonderland was really magical... can we have summer now, please? Here's a view from my studio:

The newest thing on my bench is this beautiful sapphire ring with a vine pattern similar to the wedding rings. One picture shows an unusual way to solder the prongs on (I was experimenting). The other shows it fully put together with prongs cut and leveled. The ring is resting on another ring design I'm playing with to see if I can get a more open design.

Then there's the photo of the ring completed and waiting for a final polish. The stone is a unique cut of sapphire, cleaved along the chatoyance, I suspect. In other words, I think it's been cut alongside what would normally be a ray from a star sapphire. The end result is a deep, dark blue with a wonderful flash along the face of the stone that makes you look twice! I really like this one...

Happy New Year!

Just a quick note to wish you all a Happy New year and all the best in 2010! One of my resolutions is to post more frequently to keep everyone up to date on studio work and shows (yes, it's a carryover from last year *smile!*). It's a new year - let's go!

~Jeni

Signed, sealed, and delivered!

I'm happy to say the rings are finished, photographed, and on their way to the happy couple! What a relief to make a short deadline with beautiful results, don't you think? I'm looking forward to peaceful sleep now, no more fitful nights working out how I'm going to place this piece of silver or keep this other area from heat damage.

Ahhh... that's a good feeling! As soon as the final photos are sent to me, I'll post them here. Until then, only the bride and groom get to see what they look like. ;)

~Jeni

prongs added, new updates

This project has me jumping! Sue's prongs are on the ring, seats for the diamonds are cut and all leveled. The piercing design is drawn, drilled, and sawn out on her ring. All that's left are the lots and lots of filing, sanding, and polishing stages. Jon's ring is about halfway through all the stages, and both rings will be finished by the end of the day.

My photographer had to postpone until tomorrow, so I was able to spend more time cutting out the piercing design and then use today for polishing. It's better to take my time with it since it adds not only the open feel Sue wanted, but because I really wanted to add to the story of the rings. The piercing creates the third vine on her ring using open space. There's a quote in the Bible that "a cord of three strands is not quickly broken", and each vine on her ring represents one of the cords (which represents the two of them bound together with God in their marriage).

Here are pictures of the prongs on (they won't be cleaned until the final stages) with the vine design being laid out and then pierced. The other photo is of Jon's ring during the rough polishing stage.

closing the rings

The rings are looking good! The tiny pieces on Jon's ring went on in one pass as well, although it took longer to heat up that much metal. I only struggled with one or two pieces before the flux settled down (even though it's dry it can still bubble up), but they behaved in the end.

Unfortunately, the thickness and width of the metal was more than I accounted for, which affects the ultimate size of the ring, so it didn't reach the right ring size. So, back to the bench to fix the problem, which added about two more hours to my day - but I got it right the second time. :)

Since I was on a roll I started putting the prongs on Sue's ring, which I hope to finish tomorrow. I'm still on schedule, but there is no room for mistakes now. I can't wait to get those diamonds in!

The pics are of Jon's ring first and then Sue's being hammered into shape on the mandrel.