Tag: #buyhandmade #madeintoronto #madeincanada #roncesvalles #roncesvallesretail #parkdale #customjewellery #customjewelry

We are trying something new here with our social media and part of our new initiative is to make sure everyone at Jewel Envy receives equal representation across our various platforms. That means you can look forward to seeing artist spotlights each Sunday as we work through a rotation highlighting each member of the space.

Today I would like to highlight what Alexis of Glaciale Goldsmith has been up to. If you have been in the store recently you may have seen her amazing new line of sharks or her marriage of metal pieces. We have posted some pictures on FB and Instagram but that is the obvious work she does; today I want to highlight some of the behind the scenes work taking place.

As you may know Alexis is the studio manager here. What that means is that she is responsible for a fair bit of equipment maintenance, social media, studio organization and coordination as well as retail and teaching. One of her recent initiatives was to move us over to steam dewaxing for our casting burnouts. She spoke with various casting houses and came up with a plan to help us make this switch. The reason for doing so is that during the wax burn out process one of the most toxic stages is when wax reaches a temperature where it actually burns out of the flask. This releases toxins into the air and although we have a good ventillation system it was not removing everything and some people were getting headaches from the burnout.

By switching to a steam dewaxer, the wax comes out of the flasks using steam and pressure at a much lower temperature before the wax has a chance to burn. This means cleaner air for us, cleaner castings for the jewellers here and an overall improvement in the casting process. Switching over has not been without a few bumps along the way but with an interest in troubleshooting and excellent problem solving we have a safer system in place for all. Thank you Alexis for your perserverence!

Gillian

I recently had the pleasure of creating some custom jewellery for a customer and I wanted to show off the necklaces, take a look!

The customer brought in a strand of coral branches she wanted to use, here are the loose pieces after I removed them from the strand.

Here are the design sketches that I presented to the customer; they were really open minded so I did some options for necklaces and earrings – there were lots of beads to use!

The customer decided on two necklaces, to give as gifts. Finished necklace #1.

Finished necklace #2.

The necklaces were a joy to make, and it goes to show that you can always reinvent old strands of beads that you might have lying around.  Maybe you have some beads or old pieces of jewellery lying around that could be revamped, drop by the studio and inquire! 
-Alexis