New Logo and Business Cards

So, I made a complete 180 from my previous designs for my new logo and chose to try out a different business card layout. I am very happy with the results. The flower for the logo was from an ink painting that I did. I completely drew and designed the font for letters of the HJC and found a great free font online to coordinate for the rest of my name. Now I have a hole suite of marketing products and had some hallmark stamps made finally. I am quite excited with my new branding!

A Story of Two Rings - Congratulations to Kristi and Ike

So begins a tale of two rings, I was asked by Kristi, a previous Arizona student to custom design and make her wedding bands. After a little research she decided she wanted their rings to look like twigs. Kristi emailed me some examples she found on the web, they were twigs carved out of wax with a leaf holding in the stone. As I don't like to copy other people's designs exactly, I said I could do something similar, but I would cast mine from Natural Twigs rather than carved from wax. I believe this makes them unique and more special. She wanted them made out of a white metal and hers with a stone setting. After much back and forth about types of stones, the decision was for Palladium with a round Alexandrite. Since I can't cast Palladium I decided I would have to cast the originals in bronze, make a mold of the ones they liked, and inject them with wax to be sent off to the Palladium caster. I used a few different types of twigs for the samples, including some from a cherry tree of which they liked the best.

These were the options I offered. I sent the two grooms rings for Ike to try and decide on what felt the best, and the one brides ring that Kristi liked for them to try for size and comfort.

Final Choices on style.
One Decision down!

After some difficulty in finding the right size of Alexandrite in an affordable price, I threw out a couple other options. I supplied photo's with different size and shapes of stones. As an example I used some random stones I had so she could get a better idea of how it might look.

Stone choice was an oval Iolite. (Photo shows an Amethyst)







During the trial period Kristi and Ike decided the Palladium was out of their price range for the moment, as Kristi was just accepted into a college program and so the purse strings tightened a bit. They decided to stick with Sterling Silver after all and that I could cast myself. After making some changes based on Kristi and Ike's preferences, here are the final wedding bands.

And, my little treat to them, I made a cute little custom box with a surprise note and ring pillow inside!

I used a cool box pattern from this website, and modified it a bit.

Wedding Photo's yet to come, stay tuned!

Custom Commission: Final Steps

I am a little behind on my posting! In November of 2011 I began working on this commission piece and here are some of the final photos of it before it left my hands. The client was planning to have it gold plated, but I haven't heard if she has done that yet.
If you would like to see the post on my previous progress click on the links below:
Custom Commission
Custom Commission Continued

I was unable to permanently attach the last bits. Due to the plating process the pearls could not be attached yet, so I took a photo of what it might look like when done.

With some creative assembling and photography, here is an accurate depiction of what the finished piece will look like except plated in gold. It was a great learning experience and I gained a new friend in the process.

Custom Commission Continued

This piece was time consuming because I had to stop and do some finishing work between adding the various stone settings. It would have been cumbersome to do the finishing after the settings were in the way.

A design challenge that I faced was how to attach the pearl settings.
The customer wanted a pearl to be placed between the round peridots, but the pearls could not be attached before the Gold plating was done. Her solutions was to solder the head pins that she wanted to use to the piece and then after the plating she would cut the head pins, slip on the pearls, and then glue the balled end of the head pin into the pearls. The problem, first of all, is that it was not a very strong connection to solder a small piece of wire to the side of the piece. The head pin could be just snapped off at any time, not to mention how difficult it would have been to set the stones around such a small wire without mangling it or breaking it off myself. Of course there is also the problem with having just a little bit of glue holding the pearls on in one small spot.
I experimented and tried to solder a wire with a soldering iron, in the hopes that maybe I could solder it on after the plating was done and with the pearls in place, so there would be no need for glue. Unfortunately, it didn't work, the soldering iron was just not hot enough to flow the gold filled solder that I had.
I finally came up with a solution by the time it came to solder on the head pin that I found satisfactory.
 My solution: to solder on small pieces of tubing with a tapered end. I nippled the end of the tubing in order to make the hole small enough for the head pin to be inserted with a tight fit. This way the head pin could be glued to the pearl and the tubing, hopefully creating a stronger bond. I also reamed out the pearls just enough to fit tightly on the head pin. I reamed a larger hole at one end of each pearl for them to slip slightly over the tube, thus being able to be glued directly to the tubing, again, creating a stronger bond. Another issue was that we were afraid the pearls she gave me might be a little too small in relation to the size of the piece. Adding the tubing pushed the pearls out further balancing the relationship of  size of the pearls with the layout of the whole piece giving the impression of a larger pearl.

More process photos to follow.
You can check out my original post to see where I started.
Original Post: http://hollycarter.blogspot.com/2011/11/custom-commission.html

Custom Commission

I was commissioned to create a pendant for a wholesale order using the customers own center piece and stones. The center piece is an Italian cut glass intaglio and the stones are London Blue Topaz, Peridot, and Pearls. When finished the piece will be gold plated over the sterling silver. Her design was inspired by an antique piece she had seen.
I will continue to post pictures of my process.

The Launch of My Official Facebook Fan Page