And this is what I have been doing...

As this poor little blog has been woefully neglected, I thought I’d post a little bit about the shiny things I’ve been making. If you’d like to read more, please visit my blog at www.laurengracejewellery.com/blog

I made a wonderful necklace for my mother in law’s 60^th birthday, a collaborative design between all of her children.

 

And another for my mother's birthday:

An Update and a New Blog

You may have noticed that I’ve not updated this blog for a good while now!

I’ve rather excitingly built myself a shiny new website that has its own blog feature, so I’ve not wanted to duplicate entries over two blogs.

My new blog can be found at www.laurengracejewellery.com/blog and is updated regularly with work in progress pictures and new shiny things.

I’ll be updating this one occasionally with what I’ve been up to, and probably more random and personal posts (I’m trying to keep my new one vaguely on-topic!) but do check out my new blog for all my up to date jewellery news.

Miley Cyrus M Necklace

I was asked by a customer if I could make her a gold initial M necklace, like the one Miley Cyrus wears.  I confess, dear readers, that I did have to take to Google to find out who Miley Cyrus was.  I am so not up to date with popular culture - I mainly listen to Radio 5 and shouty punk music!  In my defence, this was also a couple of weeks before Miley's somewhat infamous VMA performance...

Anyway, this is her necklace:

And my version:

I cut it from thick silver sheet, carved all the edges into nice curves, then sanded and polished it.  It was then sent off for hallmarking and gold plating.

 

Apologies for the iPhone photography, I didn't get a chance to photograph the necklace properly after it had been plated.

Silver Beard Necklace

I was recently asked to make a beard necklace from sterling silver.  It's definitely one of the more unusual custom requests I've had, but I really loved the idea.

The customer emailed me a picture of what the beard should look like:

I carved it out of wax:

 Then cast into silver, after which the sideburns and joining rings were carved, as the wax was too fragile to carve any further before casting.

Chain soldered on, hallmarked, polished and ready to go!

Custom Skate Necklace

I am getting better at taking pictures of custom work before I send it off, even if they're not my best photography work!

This is another custom roller derby skate necklace I did recently with semi-precious gemstones for the skater's team colours.

Custom Jammer Helmet with Skate Numbers

More little skate numbers!

This jammer helmet necklace was customised with the skater's colours and skate number, 03.  Threes are one of my favourites to cut out.  Not sure why really, there's just something pleasing about the shape of them...

Also, I have been promising some new roller derby jewellery for a really long time now.  I keep getting distracted by all the other new ideas floating around my little head, but it's really, really, nearly finished now!  I'm just finishing off my prototypes ready to be moulded and cast.   Watch this space, roller derby fans!

Custom Wedding Rings for Emerald Cut Stone

I was recently asked to make a pair of complimentary wedding rings from silver, with a hammered texture.

So far, so right up my street - I love hitting stuff with hammers.  The slightly tricky part was that the bride's ring had to fit around her engagement ring, which had a large, emerald cut stone.  Having done some googling on shaped wedding rings for emerald cut stones, I drew a bit of a blank, as most wedding rings for this rectangular shape of stone are flat bands that fit under the stone, rather than going around it.

Carving the band so the setting fitted perfectly into it was definitely a challenge, but it turned out really well I think.

The rectangular shape and squared off style looks quite art deco, and would look great with a matching shaped diamond eternity ring on the top.

The groom's ring was much easier!