Making a Rosemary Ring

Here's a little tour of my Rosemary Ring making process.

All of my herbal casting start with making a mold off a real plant leaf or seed. I couldn't find any photos of my making the Rosemary mold, but <------here is one half of it finished. Its silicon rubber with the negative imprint of a Rosemary leaf which creates a negative space. Like if the Rosemary leaf disappeared in the rubber.

Making a mold is messy and time consuming work. And now that I'm expecting, I wont be making any molds for quite a while... the chemicals don't mix well with baby making! But luckily, I have lots of molds already made and you can use them over and over again.
After I have my mold (or molds) I melt wax in an old coffee pot double boiler. Then I close the mold and pour hot wax in filling the negative space.


The wax cools and then I have a cute wax replica of my Rosemary leaf. This is cast into silver using another mold making process... more on that later.

For the Rosemary Ring I use two cast Rosemary leaves.

They come out of the "oven" a little rough so some filing is needed.

When I have two perfect leaves I bend them into a rough ring shape keeping in mind the desired ring size.

Then, I clamp the two leaves in the correct position and solder them together one side at a time.

More filing and fine tuning. Lots of polishing.

I have made a beautiful shiny ring!

And YES, It is hard to keep long nails while making jewelry!