I'm back!!! I know, I know - I should have written a short notice to explain why I was gone for so long. But as a matter of fact, I was really busy over the past 2 months. I got a job! Not exactly what I wanted, because it's customer service on a zero-hour contract basis, but it's a start so that I can gain experience while looking for jewellery designer jobs. I was completing a lot of online training to start work as soon as possible, and I completely forgot about the blog. Then I remembered about jewellery design competition deadline, which I wanted to take part in, and with a deadline tomorrow, so I was doing a lot of design development. Then I got some intel about jewellery designing job and was calling back and forth to organize interview (I have it this Tuesday), so overall - crazy time. I finally told myself, that Sunday latest, I need to prepare something and update.
So here I am.

Now that this is done with, the competition!


 Fairtrade Gold Design Awards is a competition organized by Ingle&Rhode. The competition is "open to UK-based jewellery students, apprentices, and those at the start of their jewellery careers, these awards will showcase the talents of emerging jewellery designers, while raising awareness of Fairtrade gold amongst the people who are the future of our industry."

Designs are to be either engagement ring, wedding ring or a set of both.

"Designs may incorporate yellow, white or rose gold (maximum of 10g of fine gold or 13.3g of 18ct gold) and a maximum of 0.5ct of round brilliant cut white diamonds (in total, whether all set in one ring or shared across two rings). Diamonds should not be smaller than 0.8mm diameter (approximately 0.003ct)."

Winning design will be manufactured in Fairtrade gold through the process of casting.


 So as you can see a lot of things to consider. When creating initial moodboard I instantly wrote down the keyword - Fairtrade. It instantly made me think about the source of gold, mines, and earth gold was taken from. There is this link between honouring nature through environmental protection and supporting Fairtrade. The key for the ring design was natural landforms, mountain terrain, rock/crystal formations. I wanted something simple and slightly modern.

 As you can see I got to the part of making models - I originally planned to make a set of wedding and engagement ring, and for them to be quite nicely fitted, engagement ring with 3 stones. But I looked back at my previous designs, and I felt that I wasn't fully satisfied with my design - it wasn't as creative as some of the older sketches.



 I wanted something more unique but at the same time I struggled with visualising it on paper (I usually don't - I can imagine designs from different perspectives), so it was pure torture.  I took a step back. In the meanwhile, I was given a commission (I will talk about it in more detail another time) and made few small samples in blue wax. That gave me an idea to try carving shoulders of the ring - relief that was giving me so much trouble. So I made a tiny model in wax and drew design based on it.