Come celebrate Polish Festival with Jewel Envy. On this coming Saturday, everyone will have a chance to try your hand at wax carving for Free! Then you can take a special 1/2 day casting class on Sept. 20th to cast and finish your work. It’s a dream come true to make your own piece of jewellery!
These are some oldies, but goodies. Last year the studio was tapped to create some prop pieces for the TV show Reign. Below you can see the process of creating pieces that are emblems for Mary, Queen of Scots personal bible. The design was sourced from films stills to recreate the elements of the prop. The emblems were later attached to a hand bound book by a bookbinder. – Alexis
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| Working from a blurry photo still, I first sketched the pieces out and did a transfer on the wax before cutting out the shape. You can see in the photo the drawing/scratch marks that were my guide for sawing the shapes out. I like to think of piercing work as drawing with my saw ;o) |
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| To prevent the wax from breaking as I was carving the details I glued the pieces down onto sections of scrap wood. There are few things more heartbreaking than when you are almost finished adding detail and it breaks. With the wax firmly glued in place as I was working all the pieces stayed intact (success!) |
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| To remove the pieces from their wood bases I simply soaked them in water, here you can see all five designs. |
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| The show needed to have replicas of the props, which meant making multiples. I made molds directly from the wax carvings to duplicate the designs. |
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| Here are the wax duplicates after I attached sprues to each. There needed to be enough to make two book covers with the emblems. The designs in the middle and bottom right appear twice on the cover, so it meant making four (you can see I made extra in case the castings didn’t work. |
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| Casting these pieces was an ORDEAL. Between this and the last picture I made the duplicates into a casting tree (which can be seen just left of my saw); I made three separate trees. The metal I used was bronze… as I was melting the metal in a crucible it started to seize and just would not get molten. My crucible turned into a dirty mess and after standing and heating the first batch of metal with a torch for almost 15 minutes I stopped what I was doing, took a break and decided to try changing my normal casting process. I altered what I normally do when melting metal and was eventually able to cast the three groupings of pieces. |
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| Here you can see that all the pieces casted well, I even have the extras that worked on the left. I filed and polished them up before eventually goldplating them. |
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| Here are the final pieces with antique looking goldplating. Duotang-like tabs were added to the back so that they could easily be attached to the book props as the emblems on Mary, Queen of Scots personal bible. |
All sorts of pearls, stones, and interesting things here a Jewel Envy from the in house jewelers! Everyone has their own style and creative ways to make new designs.
This is just a small sample come on over to see all the handcrafted work!
Hope to see you soon!
Hey all!
The in house Jewellers were asked to expose
their beautiful gems stones that were hidden away at their benches!
This is a great way for customers to get inspired and gives these gems a
new life!
Come on in and see what kind of wonderful things can be made. Maybe a pair of earrings or a pendant, perhaps a ring?
The possibilities are endless!
Thanks and we hope to see you!
Check out Darija Radic’s new earrings!
Elegant yet different, perfect for a person that has an edgy style and needs a nice pair of earrings for an outing or just because!
Come to jewel Envy to see more of the bullet collection!
over and out!
Darija
Here it is… the post you’ve been waiting for!
The fabulous bride and groom, and the jewellery they wore! I’m sure you already guessed that the jewellery would spectacular, and you won’t be disappointed!
Just look at that gorgeous filigree necklace! It was handmade in 18K gold by the Gillian herself. Those lovely sparkling gems are mutli-coloured sapphires (Gillian’s favourite gemstone).
And those earrings!
They were custom-made for Gillian by her friend and bridesmaid (and Jewel Envy’s manager), Alexis Kostuk (Glacial Jewellery). They are made of sterling silver, white sapphire, aquamarine, and resin.
(Photo by Mark Anthony Studios)
Left pinky: This ring was given to her by her mom when she was young. It actually belonged to her mom as a child. It is carved and painted ivory.
These rings were all custom made within Jewel Envy by Amanda Henderson of Jewelust and Gillian (Pash).
Engagement ring– This 18K palladium white gold ring was designed with a special concept that Matthew came up with. He wanted the ring to represent their two separate paths (the side of the ring with the claws are those paths) that join together at that magic moment in life, when two individuals find each other and fall in love (represented by the 1.75ct blue diamond), and then continue growing together, for the rest of their lives, in love (the joined path of sapphires that are not only graduated in size, but also in colour- getting brighter as they grow together). I had the pleasure of working on this ring with Matthew. We went through several designs together. I carved several rings, and we sat down and decided what we liked about each design, and what we should tweak. The result was a funky, colourful ring, just like Gillian!
Wedding bands– The bands were made by Gillian using a technique that she specializes in called Mokume Gane. The patterns are made by soldering together two different coloured metals, rolling them flat, cutting them in half, and soldering them together again. This process is continued until the desired number of layers is achieved (usually 16-32). The layered metal is then twisted, filed, or punched to create variation in the layers, and that changes the patterning. Then the bands are formed from this patterned metal and soldered together. Matthew’s band is made out of 18K palladium white gold and sterling silver, and Gillian’s is made out of 18K yellow gold, palladium, and blue diamonds to match her engagement ring.
Thanks so much for following the Jewellery of Gillian and Matthew’s wedding. It was a beautiful day, and we look forward to many more happy days with the two love birds!
Amanda
Jewelust
Making band ring requires a lot of skill and creativity. I am looking forward to see my students finishing them up tonight. They used what they learned in first class, which is saw and piercing and applied on their first project. It is going to be busy busy for us in the evening.
Ellen Tsai
