Tag: Ring

Waves Ring

Making a shiny wave ring.

I’ve been taking a jewelry making course for the past couple of months. It’s been fun and I’ve been severely challenged in the patience department. The first classes were about reading measuring tools, how to saw, what soldering entails and how much sanding is going to be required for any project. Then we got started on our first item.

For the first project, we needed to make a ring composed of a simple inner ring and an outer ring with some sort of decoration it. Since I never wear rings, I didn’t want to make a giant thing, but it needed some size in order to get a decoration in it. What I settled on is making a short-ish inner ring, and then make an even shorter outer ring with a flat bottom edge and a wavy top edge. Once I managed the sawing of the outer ring, I also decided to drill some holes and saw some lines for more wave action.

Then there was some amount of sanding and polishing before soldering the two rings together. There’s one line decoration that came out great, and two that were partially filled in during the soldering process – can’t be perfect when you’re still learning. On to so many sessions of filing, sanding and polishing the thing to a high sheen. I learned about something that translates to ‘skin spots’, which is apparently copper coming out on the surface of the silver and looks like a dirty spot. I managed to get them all out in the end though. I have still not managed to wear it for a full day and I’m not sure that I ever will, but the process and the people in the class make it very enjoyable.

Ring

I made a ring today! I was looking around the internet and I found the cutest little ring with a rabbit on it here. Sadly it was sold out! Otherwise I might really have bought it (since there are other cute items in the shop but the shipping is expensive so combining might have helped). I decided I could not make a better one, but I could be inspired by it. So I got out my fimo for the first time in a year or so, and made a little rabbit ring.

I made a metal wire base (basically an elongated U shape bent in an almost circle) and formed the paws on that, then I formed the head as a little squashed in bowling pin. The ears were two little ovals with rice grains pressed in and taken out to shape the indent. I just my pinky nail to smooth everything out and put more clay over the bottom of the U to form the back and end. I redid it about 4 times because I wasn’t happy with the results. With this final version I’d done enough and this was going to be it, so I popped it in the oven at 110 degrees C for 30 minutes and out came a cute little rabbit ring.

 

The original rabbit looks a little desperate because it can’t reach its bottom, in my opinion. Mine doesn’t have eyes so that is less the case and his ears are not as far back. I’m really liking him, although I’m not sure how much use it will get, since I tend to not wear rings. I also found open ended rings like this in cat and mouse shape. Although, I think I like rabbits better.

 

Also, it’s dark and my pictures are really yellow, but I know me, if I don’t post soon, I don’t post at all, so I hope you’ll excuse that issue.