Tuesday, December 11, 2012

At the studio: Vintage rings.

The vintage rings I sometimes sell on my shop or at craft fairs are always such a hit and people just adores them. I'm always receiving wonderful feedback from the people who buys them, telling me they feel like wearing something really unique, special and beautiful. Well, let me tell you, they are so unique and special and beautiful! That's why I want to show you today a bit about the process of selecting and preparing them to be worn, most of them, for the first time.

First of all, I hand pick each one of them and carefully select the ones that I absolutely love. This is an awesome job as I always feel the anticipation of seeing the treasures I'm about to uncover!

Finding the perfect ring is a dirty job: I use plastic gloves and they end up disgustingly dirty!

Here you can see some of the rings I choose, already on my bench. As you see, they have a little 'tail', this is called sprue and it is the way through which the liquid metal was introduced to a mold. This means ring is unfinished and not ready to be worn.

Some sprues are easy to remove with cutting pliers but others need a bit of hand sawing.

And then what is left of the metal sprue needs to be removed with a file and emery paper, to make it smooth and nice.

To finish, I put them in the tumbler to clean and uncover some of their original shine!

The finish product! Aren't they lovely? Believe me, it's always hard to let go of these beauties knowing is rare to come across the same one again. So, when you get your vintage ring, enjoy it to the max because it is such a special piece of history and art.

I'll have some of these beauties for sale at Puces POP this weekend and on my Etsy shop by the end of the month.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this post!

See you soon :)

7 comments:

  1. and i still love my coral reef ring which was cast from a vintage ring....

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    1. Yay! thank you kindly! I'm so glad you are enjoying it :D

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  2. was so great to see the process of bringing them back to life! beautiful rings! x

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  3. Oh wow! Don't know why I haven't seen your blog before : ) Love ALL of these rings x

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  4. Hello! First time visitor of your blog! Browsing through your shop now and I really love your stacking rings and packaging..

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  5. Very special, very nice retro rings. Thanks for sharing.

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