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!

Gold Gold Gold!

rosemary and half maple

I love the way it feels, looks, solders, hardens, bends, cuts, tastes smells!

Thanks to some recent sales, I recently made two gold necklaces. One rosemary and one half maple. I can't say that I was exposed to very much gold growing up. And I've always assumed that it was "gaudy" and "some gross yellow color". Perhaps a jealous reaction to my deprived jewelry box! Or, perhaps I was just naive.

Since making jewelry, I have slowly broken through the great gold barrier! With humble beginnings of a black onyx heart gold plated ring from my grandmother in grade school. Then onto a snake link necklace found in the middle of the road while bike riding in middle school.Too bad it was butt ugly and I would have only worn it If I had morphed into a wife beater wearing, gelled haired muscle man. I cannot remember much gold in high school... I was more into grunge with flannels and old thrift store strange-pants that would not see a washing machine for over a month (serious).

After college, I merely watched a jeweler friend work with gold. Gradually, my fingers felt a tingle for the precious metal. One day I made the plunge and whalla! The magic of gold came clear!

Patina experiments...

Two rosemary leaves with Jade, made for a friend of mine-

I am experimenting with blackening silver, lots of fun. Haven't hit the nail on the head yet, but soon, soon! Similar designs, soon to be in my store.

Creating the beautiful photographs of HB.

Here I am in the middle of a photo shoot. As you can see, I spare no expense in photography equipment and set design.

OK, just kidding! But I do think the end results were nice. Here is a photo of my Rosemary and Maple Seed rings.