A Commission

I received a commission this summer to reset a faceted blue topaz in a similar fashion to this style of ring I made.

I was a little nervous about it because the stone has a fancy cut, and setting faceted stones is not something that was much covered in my training, which means it has taken some trial and error for me to learn how to do it.

I would have to say that I'm pretty pleased with how it came out.

Diamond Solitaire Ring

Sterling silver with a 4 mm diamond. In the shop.

Diamonds and Gold

After the a fore mentioned stone-setting workshop I took, I have made my first jewelry with diamonds and gold. As with the silver ring in my previous post, these diamonds all came out of diamond jewelry I inherited from my grandmother, as did the gold.
I melted the gold down, hammered it into thick sheets and got to settin'! So I guess they're pretty eco-friendly too. It's funny how being too poor to buy materials often dovetails so nicely with being environmentally sound.

New little diamond ring!

I just finished making this sterling silver ring with my new found stone-setting expertise and the diamonds mentioned in the previous post.
It is very delicate as the stone is only about 2 mm in diameter. There are two tiny silver balls on either side of the stone. I'm pretty happy with it. Look for it soon in my shop!

Them're diamonds!

This past weekend I took a workshop through the Society for Midwest Metalsmiths on stone setting. I finally learned how to gypsy set (or flush set, or burnish set--whatever you call it) faceted stones; something I've wanted to learn for a while.
Since diamonds are a durable stone and relatively easy to set, and since I had a tacky diamond ring from my grandma to dismantle, I think I'll be trying my hand at setting some diamonds soon!

This is an example of the kind of setting I'm talking about from Jetflair's Etsy shop.