Friday, June 24, 2011

Erikas Design Process

I make no claims to be a trained artist. Infact, most of my sense of design is purely instinct. When I work on a new piece i have several days of designing: sometimes i draw out the idea, sometimes i just move around the stonest themselves. I had a nice turquoise i wanted to pair with an opal, but i hade a bit of trouble figuring out what to do and how to so it. I did a small sketch, but it wasnt enough to fill in all the design holes. So I played with the stones i had until i saw something I liked. Here are three possibilities:
 I still like this one....

Ever so slightly different
But I went with this one. 

Now the question: where to I put the chain?

Tippy top?

Middle of the top?
Through the accent stones? IF i went with this design I would have to have the opal stationary-and my problem was I couldn't see how to connect the opal to the turquoise.
Finally, I decided to go through the top and connect the two stones with a rod....this also created lots of design possibilities. Big rod? Small one? Beads on the end? Gold or Silver? Though I almost went with gold accents out of nowhere i decided to use two rhodocrosite garnets.


Here is the setting waiting for the stones.


Finished piece. Well, almost, still needs a final polish but its not to bad for an afternoons work.

BTW This is the original piece of opal I cut that one from. I actually got THREE different pieces of jewelry from this one stone.

2 comments:

  1. Really fun to see your design process - thank for documenting it! I like the way you ended up setting the stones but I think you had several nice designs there that all could have worked as well. Nice job!

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  2. This is really beautiful! It's neat to see the entire process from start to finish!

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