Tagged Rings

A Design a Day – Day 214 (With some thoughts on juggling and other risk taking)

…and exhausted.

I learned an important lesson some years ago when my brother-in-law taught me to juggle.  The hardest part of juggling, much harder than trying to catch the balls, was actually letting them go.  Until I stopped clutching the balls, I made no progress.  When I finally gave up trying so hard and starting letting go, I learned to juggle.  Even better, the higher I let the balls fly, the more time I had to watch them and gauge where they were going to come down so that I could keep juggling them.

My life of late has seen more a pattern of clutching than anything else.  Perhaps that is why I discovered not one, but TWO gray hairs earlier this year.

(I plucked them out promptly…)

While I’m not really thinking of joining the circus next year, I might take up juggling,

and letting go again.

What are you going to let go of today?

A Design a Day – Day 206

Today in a moment of great energy,  I proposed we take on repainting the kitchen ourselves.

So, while I was creative today, the paintbrushes and “canvas” were on a much larger scale than I’m used to…

and, as a result, the design I’m posting today is a simple technical drawing I did earlier this month:

3-View Technical Drawing for Large Gemstone Cocktail Ring by Joana Miranda

Tomorrow I should be done with Icy Peach and will get back to my preferred watercolors and more delicate-sized paintbrushes.

See you then!

A Design a Day – Day 200

I’m computer-less for a few days as a result of some troubling computer crashes, and so am also without access to my printer/scanner. Fortunately, I remembered that I had this ring design saved in a recent email, and so am able to keep to the goal I started 200 (!) days ago of posting a design or rendering a day for a year:

Technical 3-View Sketch for Large Gemstone Cocktail Ring by Joana Miranda

In this project, I generated each of the three views (top, side and end) almost simultaneously, utilizing a series of parallel and perpendicular lines which originated from a square grid.  I drew these lines on the back of the piece of vellum I was working on, then erased the lines when I finished the drawing.  All of the actual rendering was done on the front of the vellum and was unaffected when I erased the guide lines.  This is the “old-fashioned” way of doing a technical drawing; most jewelers today prefer to create the same concept of multiple, t0-scale views by using CAD – or computer aided design.  (My CAD program, too, is inaccessible to me at this point since it is stored on my computer!)

Tomorrow, with any luck, I’ll be “back in business” with my computer and scanner and will be back to posting more colorful designs.

Until then….

A Design a Day – Day 196

I recently designed this Lucite flower ring…

Pencil and Gouache Lucite Flower Ring Rendering by Joana Miranda

…liked the design so much that I went to the bench and made the ring.

"Ring Around the Rosy" Ring by Joana Miranda

“Ring around the Rosy

Pocket full of Posy

Ashes, Ashes,

We all Fall Down”

(Not the innocent nursery rhyme it seems.  You can read about it here.)

I wasn’t thinking of the black plague – or any other disease – when I made the ring.

But giving the ring a black patina really provided a great contrast to the lovely frosted Lucite flower.

The name seemed very fitting as a result.

A Design a Day – Day 193

Today’s design is a foray into irregular-shaped engagement rings and their matching wedding bands:

Pencil and Gouache Engagement Ring and Wedding Band Set by Joana Miranda

Designing a truly unusual engagement ring is a fun challenge.  However, creating a wedding band which will nestle snuggly against the engagement ring can certainly put a lot more restrictions on the design of the engagement ring.  In an ideal world, the two rings would look beautiful worn together or worn separately on the right and left hands.  However, modern tradition dictates that the two should be worn together on the same finger.

In the design above, the wavy quality of the engagement ring would actually have a symmetrical repeating pattern.  The wedding band would also have a symmetrical pattern of waves, and therefore would look just fine worn together or on its own apart from the engagement ring.

I’m intrigued with this issue and will continue exploring creative ways to compliment “out-of-the box” thinking on engagement rings.

One designer doing really innovative engagement rings currently is Mark Schneider.  Take a look at some of his designs here.

A Design a Day – Day 190

I’ve got rings on my brain a lot these days.  I’m currently designing engagement rings for a client, as well as doing a cocktail-style ring design for a fine jeweler in New York city.

This ring emerged from my pencils quite easily this evening after I had spent a large chunk of the afternoon on the other projects.  Perhaps it is the 10,000 hours rule (it takes at least 10,000 hours practice to become really good at something), or perhaps it was the Triscuits and nuts I ate for a snack just before I sat down to do this post:

Colored Pencil Gold and Diamond Swirl Ring Rendering by Joana Miranda

In any case, I could see this being my next engagement ring…

(Not that I’m getting engaged again any time soon!  My husband is a keeper.)