Posts Tagged ‘ring’

To the ring from hell (you know who you are):

After three entirely too late nights of trying to perfect you, I’ve decided that I seriously hate you. However, you shall not defeat me. In fact, you best stop trying. Or I will rip you apart and send you to the refiners.

You’ve been warned.

That is all.

I spent the summer working on building up our necklace stock. Now I’m working on rings.

Silver rings, stacking rings, gemstone rings, and even solid 14kt gold rings. Yes, you read that right. I finished my very first solid gold pieces! It’s fabulous to solder and polish. And scary. The entire metal market is scary right now, but gold is especially frightening. It’s all too sobering to see how expensive a tiny piece costs!

But it sure is fun.

Secret of Life Ring

Cubic Zirconia & Textured Sterling Solitaire

Black Spinel & Sterling Stacking Rings

Solid 14kt Gold & Black Spinel Ring

Solid 14kt Gold Textured Band

Call me a ding-a-ling, but I’m pretty pleased with these ring-a-lings! (Insert the “Crystal-is-such-a-cheeseball-smace” here.)

That’s me!

Or my jewelry, anyway. I set my very first (and second, third, fourth, and fifth!) faceted gemstones this week. I am a happy camper. I used tube settings because I love their sleek look, but I’ll be doing some prong settings soon too. Yes, bloggy buds, I now solder and set precious stones. Aren’t you proud?!

My first was a sterling silver ring that I forged and soldered a tube setting onto. I set a 3mm (teeeeny tiny!) smoky quartz stone in it.

I saw that it was good, so I moved on to some earrings. Again, little 3mm smoky quartz stones. (Yep, I soldered the earrings too!)

I was pleased with the results, so I figured it was time to get serious. I pulled out the sapphires. Little tiny 3mm sapphires. I put them in a second pair of studs I had soldered.

(Just in case you’re wondering, there aren’t scratches on the silver. That’s fuzz. Cause you should never put lotion on before handling shiny jewelry. You get jewelry fuzz. And jewelry fuzz may be undetectable to the human eye, but jewelry fuzz can never fool the eye of a macro lens!)

Genuine sapphires, people. I set them. Go me! I don’t think I’ll be selling that pair. You may notice that the one on the left shows more silver around the stone. That’s because the stone sat lower in the setting than the one on the right. Boo. That’s not my fault. That was the person who cut the stone. But it was my fault for using it in the earrings. But can you blame me? I was having too much fun. Oh well. I guess I’ll just have to keep this one pair… what a pity.