WOYWW: Three Turquoise Beauties & Time to Play

Remember that beautiful pile of turquoise stones I got in the mail last week?  Well, I have been inspired!  So inspired that I have stayed caught up on orders just to have time to play and design with them, the stones are so pretty.

As a mostly self taught metalsmith, my real interest is in creating these more complicated kinds of pieces, but I hardly find time it seems with my other jewelry keeping me so busy.  It has been so much fun working this way again.

You see the finished product as well as some of the processes involved at my bench.  One of the biggest challenges for me when building a ring is the finish work.  I get so excited about the result that I want to stick those stones in to see what it looks like finished!  But it is really difficult to file and sand away imperfections (there are always many of these before the piece looks finished) with stones in the way.  And then there is the patina and the hand polishing..all before the stone setting which is the very last thing to do!  I'm working on being more patient. :)

These rings are fresh off my work bench, I don't even have them all listed in my shop properly.  Two of them are getting a new photo shoot (I had to go back and rework some of my finish work because I wasn't happy with it, see I have issues).

So I hope you enjoy seeing my work as much as I enjoy sharing with you, and creating it!

Linking up with Julia for WOYWW.