20 Jul 2016

Improved lace imprint hinged bracelet

Years ago, I made a lace imprint hinged bracelet. The fastening was with a little padlock clasp at the front. I was never quite convinced by it, not least because when worn, it tended to snap open a little, so it would be partly open with the padlock holding it together. In short, it just didn't quite work.
For ages, I had this idea to change the clasp to something not only more sturdy, but more in fitting with the design. Since it's lace imprint, I wanted to give it a corset-type look. Last week, I finally had some time to work on it and it turned out rather nice. The clasp works much better and stays firmly shut. There are the three clips on the front and a lip underneath with two dimples that also click the bracelet shut so it's already in place to easily line up the clips. It also looks better because the clasp is not directional - it looks fine when worn. The old version didn't work because the padlock hung in the wrong way if you moved your arm up (so looked best when not on someones arm, which is not the idea!). So, all in all a big improvement.

This is how it was:

And this is how it is now:

closed hinged bracelet


slightly open hinged bracelet
top view open hinged bracelet

6 Jul 2016

Stacking rings commission

A couple of months ago, I met someone at the Henley Arts Trail who had a big birthday coming up and wanted something special to mark that day. She had two stacking rings already - one with moonstone (her husband's birth stone) and one with garnet (her birth stone). She wanted to add to the stack with two more rings - one with another garnet (her son's birth stone) and one with green tourmaline (her other son's birth stone). So first thing was to stretch the existing rings - very carefully - as they were already a bit too tight and adding more rings means you need them to be a bit wider usually. The wider a ring, the larger the size you need. Then I made two ring bands to match the existing ones in size - 1.5mm thick horizontally and 1.4mm thick vertically. The garnet was slightly larger, at 5mm, so I bezel set that one on 1mm sheet with a hole cut out of the bottom. The green tourmaline was 4.5mm, so I tube set that one. And this is how they turned out (with the two new rings on top of the existing ones):

two new rings

all rings together

rings in presentation box