We Tried Making Our Own Jewellery at Artisan 8 Studio

Choosing and buying rings has become a norm when it comes to celebrating a special occasion or gifting something to your loved one, but have you thought about making one from scratch? So, we thought why not make our own rings for a change? TLDR: It was super fun and you get to be creative during the process too!

The studio is located in a corner on level 3 at Orchard Plaza, it was really quiet when we got there in the morning. Our session started at 9am and our instructor started with a brief introduction of her studio. The studio has been in operation for 5 years, but she assured us she has been making jewellery for a longer period of time.

Being complete newbies to jewellery making, we did not know what to expect from making rings. Turns out, there are many different styles of rings with different textures that you can make! First up, we started by choosing the designs we wanted on our rings and this includes stamping initials, characters or symbols that you would like on the inside of your ring.

We were given a small piece of copper strip to practise first so that we could gauge how many hits were needed and amount of strength required. At first, my characters and symbols were not in a straight line so I positioned them again and it became straighter! With some experience now, we proceeded to stamp on the actual silver metal strips which would then become our rings.

Then, we had to create textures (of which there are many) on our rings and I went for a hammered ripple look as I thought it looked pretty interesting! You can also choose something different like the classic polished look for your ring if you like a mirror-like finish.

My hammering technique definitely got better as I went, and it’s really a balancing act between trying to get the texture you like, and knowing when to stop. Once we were happy with our work, we called the instructor over and she helped us bend our metal strips into loops to form ring shapes.

That was far from the end of our ring making journey. Next, we had to cut the excess overlapping metal strip off, which is where the jeweller’s saw comes into play. Given careful instructions, we placed our to-be rings on the wooden bench pin and got to sawing, which was easier than it looked!

Now it was on to the most anticipated step, using a blowtorch. In order to seal the gap between a ring, a little bead of solder (a low-melting alloy) was placed between each side of the ring. With a few waves of the torch, the solder magically travelled upwards and fused both sides together! It was really a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ moment.

Hot off the firing, we placed our rings onto a ring mandrel and began another round of vigorous hammering - this time to get that perfect circular shape that all rings have.

Lastly, for final touches, we sand our rings with a metal file to smoothen it and made sure there were no rough edges.

And voila! We are done making our own customised rings. Although it took 3 hours, it felt shorter and we really enjoyed it! Thanks to our instructor, who was really patient with us and we were pleased with the final look of our rings!

If you are curious about the jewellery making process or just feel like hammering something, we highly recommend this workshop. Sign up for it now on Traveloka, with a price that is simply a steal!