Ring A Ding

Well, there it is...

The ring has a 1/2 ctw asscher-cut center stone with side baguettes, set in white gold (without rhodium coating to maintain a more vintage-gunmetal look to the ring). One more cool thing? The diamonds are manmade.

A few words on that:

I really have no business being preachy. I own (vintage) fur, eat meat, and frequently leave yoga early so I could check my bids on Ebay. But if I'm permitted one socially-conscious vanity, I'm against the diamond trade. Even if regulations have been recently imposed on it, the history of the market is abhorrent and I didn't want to be part of that history. NRM is even more passionately anti-diamond mining, thus it surprised me that this is a diamond ring.

Originally I had wanted a pearl ring, which I spent a lot of time dropping outrageously unsubtle hints about ("Wait, you were serious about that??" he said, after the fact, "That wasn't some phase??"), because I thought NRM would never go for a diamond. But he circumvented DeBeers because these diamonds are cultured, meaning grown in a lab, by a company called Apollo. They are also called "synthetic" diamonds, which makes them sound fake, but they are chemically identical to regular diamonds--they are real. So this a tiny point of political consciousness on our part, and while we'd never begrudge anyone who goes with traditional natural gemstones, we did want to encourage knowledge and awareness about this option and support the industry. PS: NRM had them model the ring after a Harry Winston design, only the original had an emerald-cut center stone and this one is an asscher cut.

Cat's Envelopes (sample round)

I'm doing the envelopes for lovely Cat & Dan's upcoming nuptials (in France!), so I sent them a few samples. This is the outer envelope with simple Copperplate, done on a diagonal. (Although it has no real relationship to the script, I love the Yosemite National Park commemorative stamp.)

JJ's Table Numbers

My friend JJ asked me to make the table numbers for her wedding--such an honor. Each one is made from a 9x12 cardstock, folded in half, and stands vertically, like a greeting card.

I did illustrations on the outside that referenced things about the couple (their hobbies, hometown, colleges, etc) and on the inside, we came up with prompts for the guests such as "advice for the bride and groom" or "places the bride and groom should travel to in their lifetime."

The best thing about the project is that materials-wise, it's relatively inexpensive. We bought two pads of 9x12 bristol online for about $4 bucks each and I used 3 pens for the drawings: a thin pentel unisco micro-tip, a thin-felt tip for the first layer of the numbers, and then a sharpie to darken the numbers. The total was less than $20.