DIY bride

Yesterday my fiance and I spent the day at my friends studio, she helped us make our own wedding rings and other wedding jewellery.
It was so lovely that we were able to make our own rings, the other half wasn't that interested in wearing a wedding ring but now that he's crafted it himself, he's really rather proud.

The talented lady that helped us was my friend Alison Zwaard who has the best studio in her basement, she runs Handmade in Netheredge and runs some rather lovely courses.

It was great fun, and really not that expensive, the materials came to about £85 (we made a LOT of stuff) and Alison charges £200 for these bespoke sessions, so to compare to the price of shop bought rings, its a total no-brainer and with Alisons expert guidence it's not even that hard!

the raw materials, this is for my ring and has been imprinted with some lace that was given to me by Pauls Grandmother

for Pauls ring we used a kind of D shaped silver wire so the first job was to cut it to size

and Paul got to work on trimming my wider piece of silver

then you start bashing it into shape, which takes aaaaaaaages

getting the edges to match up before soldering is probably the fiddliest bit and took us a fair old while too

then its onto soldering the join

you then pop them in this after bathing them in acid, not sure what the technical term is but I call this the rumbly ball machine

a LOT of filing, sanding and polishing later and TA DA! the finished product, totally unique and personal to us...