Birthday Present

Today is my birthday and I forgot to give myself a nice birthday present. Duh...
I wanted make a nice ring for myself with this amazing blue Topaz stone that I chipped a couple month ago. With the small chip on the side I can't sell it to anyone anyways, but I can still make a ring for myself and hide this chip in the setting. Unfortunately I am not that well organized when it comes to preparing for my own birthday. So here is the day and I can still only stare at the loose gem stone. Bummer! I guess I can still make it into a nice Christmas present.

But I finished a nice new ring yesterday that I have an eye on to just keep for myself. That might be the substitute birthday present and not a bad one either. Love how it came out.

It has a beautiful light blue Drusy Chalcedony which somehow looks like it has tiny brown freckles under the drusy crystals. I added some 18 karat gold bubbles on the side that look like tree dimensional freckles. It's wired that lately I am starting to add some gold accent to some of my pieces. Must be the Holiday season being around.

The ring is somewhat a mix between my Tetra line and the Ergo rings. It has the freeform shank design  and the underside of the ring is molded against the stone. It's very comfortable and fits me perfectly. This might be the sign to keep it. I guess I will have to make up my mind in the next few days.
I don't have this exact stone again to make something in custom sizes for my shop. But I have some other drusies in similar shape, one is black and the other red. Those would look perfect with the little gold accents too.

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Pale Blue Chalcedony Ring

Some days when business is slow and I feel in the mood of dreaming about new designs, I take out my box with those gems stones I bought probably 3 to 5 years ago. It feels like going through a treasure box you found at the attic of your parents house. Most stones in there are small; sapphires in different shades, garnets, some rubies, lots of citrines, topazes etc. These days I am more into large stones that make a statement.

Here I found one stone that I did not even knew I had. A beautiful pale blue Chalcedony cabochon measuring 14 mm by 24 mm.  So sleek and modern looking. I played a bit around and designed a ring thats very simple, clean and seamless. Below is a photo of the wax model that will be cast in sterling silver. I might flush set some small blue sapphires or diamonds on the sides of the setting but I am not sure about this yet. I will see how it looks when it is cast in silver. Maybe it will just stay clean with those architectural simple lines, no sparkly add-on needed.