Custom Made Jewelry Handcrafted –Miscellaneous

133+ Things to do in Puerto Vallarta for your Holidays

Puerto Vallarta is nowadays a reknown destination for holidays for both Mexicans and North Americans and also a great place for retirement. Being known as an heavenly destination, it is also a great place for business and investment.

With more than 6 200 000 tourists flying to Puerto Vallarta in 2022 (which 57% came from abroad) and more than 35 000 US and Canadian citizens living in Puerto Vallarta, the town offers a great deal of activities and things to do to enjoy your stay or living in Puerto Vallarta.

View of the bay of Puerto Vallarta

Panaramic view of Los Arcos from the shore

As I have been living more than ten years in Puerto Vallarta for business purpose, I have discovered many things to do here with my Mexican friends. I wish I could say I have done it all, but I still have some activities to check on this list of more than 133 activities to do in Puerto Vallarta.

February 01, 2023 — TRANCHANT NICOLAS FRANCOIS RAPHAEL TANI8011158E6

Bottom Up V3+ 3D printer build and test

As part of my jewelry business, I use 3D printing for the creation of Castable masters for some of my jewelry. Mainly making unique and complex pieces for my clients, I need to quickly and faithfully print wax masters for our creations.

I started my work on 3D printing in 2015 with the purchase of a 1200 Project 3DS printer, an honest review of which is published here (in French). I then changed my printer, for a Draken 3D printer from the company 3DFacture which is also an SLA type 3D printer offering a larger printing surface than the 1200 and the freedom to manage the light exposure parameters at will, allowing me to work with resins more economical than those of 3DS and especially castable.

 Then, I now turned to a 3D printer, still SLA, but of a new type for me since printing from the bottom up, unlike the two previous printers which are of the Bottom-Up type.

3D printer software

September 17, 2021 — TRANCHANT NICOLAS

Price of a custom signet ring

Men prefer signet rings to rings.

Wearing little jewelry, they are usually oriented towards making unique signet rings personalized according to their tastes. Of course, the price of these signet rings suffers and has nothing to do with the price of simple rings manufactured in series that are found in jewelry dealers.

Gold signet ring with black diamond

The purpose of this article is to explain what are the cost factors when making a signet ring in gold or silver and help you to mature your project.

Note that there is no more beautiful signet that the one that makes you want. A beautiful signet ring is one that brings together a style that suits you with the decorative elements that make you vibrate.

October 03, 2019 — TRANCHANT NICOLAS

What are fossils and how do they form ?

Over the past few years, there's been a renewed interest in fossils. In fact, this interest has convalesced into exciting new trends in fashion and home decor : curating fossils for jewelry and art.

If you've been thinking about having custom jewelry made using amber, ammonites, or fossilized teeth, it helps to know how they were formed.

Here's everything you need to know about fossils.

Fossil

September 30, 2019 — Hugo Maherault

Wedding ring engraving

The exchange of wedding rings between the spouses remains the highlight of a marriage.

However, the engraving of these is what will remain definitively on the rings that will accompany you all your life.

So, as much choose an engraving that suits you.

Gold opal ring

An idea of an original engraving for wedding ring

To choose an original text to engrave, you must look for an event that has marked your relationship, the common base of your memories together.

We can try to make originality but it's especially the engraved texts that have a common sense that will be the most durable.

Originality is subject to fashion and your environment.

However you'll find very good ideas of texts to engrave described in this article of the Zankyou webzine.

September 23, 2019 — Hugo Maherault

Authentic Aztec patterns

This year's fashion is an opportunity to see Aztec symbols flourish on all the possible accessories that fashion can touch, and we can see Aztec motifs blooming everywhere that do not have much to do with the historical patterns.

The representation of the patterns that we see is often simplistic and stereotype Aztec culture in frescoes made of squares and triangles. As we will see, the Aztec representations were much richer than that.

We accompany you to learn more about the Aztec patterns and their meaning. The latter, after saturating the fashion print is about to disappear a time stores, perhaps allowing people to rediscover the authentic symbolic expression Aztec.

ceramic aztec patterns

September 06, 2019 — TRANCHANT NICOLAS

Measure Your Wrist

When buying a bracelet online, it is important for your comfort to choose the length of your bracelet; so that it is not too tight around your wrist or too loose not to wander around your forearm.

Once you know your wrist size, you just need to add an extra 1 to 3 cm (depending on your comfort) to know the ideal size of your flexible bracelet.

This method works for both women's and men's bracelets.

Measure wrist

The first, easiest way to measure your wrist circumference is to use a tape measure, wrapped around your wrist, it gives you an exact measure of the size of it.

The other way is to cut a strip of paper or use a cord that wraps around your wrist, where you usually wear your bracelets.

Make a pencil line on the cord or on the paper ribbon, then measure with a flat ruler the line length to line.

However the tape measure method is easier to implement, it is the one that I advise you.

September 06, 2019 — Hugo Maherault

Fabergé egg : the price of excess

Fabergé, a mythical name.

Fabergé eggs : a world reference throughout history for fine jewelry.

Fabergé was an exceptional jeweler working for the greatest crowned heads and the most fortunate, yet his destiny brought him to ruin because of the Bolshevik revolution.

No piece of jewelry in the world has been surrounded by so much pomp, misfortune, chance and mystery following their sale, their loss and rediscovery.

Fabergé eggs are certainly the most intriguing jewelry pieces of all because of their fascinating history, from their creation to their record-breaking auctions.

Faberge egg with pearls

September 05, 2019 — Hugo Maherault

999 silver in Mexico

Mexico is the world's largest producer of silver ore and a leading producer of silver jewelry.

This is why many wholesalers and suppliers of silver jewelry are in Mexico.

Silver metal is extracted as ores mixed with other rocks and ores and must be separated and refined in order to produce pure silver or 999 silver bullion.

This silver is then used for the manufacture of jewelry, to do this, it must be alloyed with other metals (usually copper) to obtain silver jewelry having a better mechanical resistance.

999 silver

August 21, 2019 — Hugo Maherault

How to solder silver ?

It is essential to know how to solder silver to make elaborate jewels.

However, in the majority of cases, when we talk about silver solder, it is an abuse of language : in reality we're doing a silver brazing.

In jewelry, we assemble silver coins by wetting them with silver solder. This silver solder will, by capillarity, run along the gap between the two parts and hold them together while cooling.

We invite you to discover this process in photos, by the work of a designer making silver jewelry.

Soldering

To solder silver, it takes two pieces in pure silver (925 or 950 in the case of this example) and silver solder.

It's also necessary to use a liquid facilitating the solder, it cleans the areas of solder and avoids the oxidation of the latter, we generally use the Borax.

Silver solder is an alloy of silver and copper that has a lower melting temperature than the pure silver we are trying to solder. It's less pure silver than the sterling silver we work.

August 19, 2019 — Hugo Maherault

Hallmarks in silver jewelry

Hallmark of a jewel or a precious metal object (gold, silver or platinum) is the official guarantee of the title (its degree of purity) of the considered metal.

These precious metals have common characteristics : they're very resistant to oxidation, they have an incomparable brilliance, and above all they are ductile, malleable.

Therefore, it's necessary to combine them with other metals in order to increase their mechanical strength and to be able to use them in the form of jewels or pieces of silverware.

hallmarking

Silver is commonly alloyed with copper; and gold with zinc, nickel, copper, or silver. It's in order to find your way among this range of precious alloys that hallmarks have appeared. Hallmarks are a guarantee of the title of the jewel's metal or object of art.

August 19, 2019 — Hugo Maherault

How to test silver and recognize fake jewels

We usually recognize sterling silver by testing it with acid.

Many jewels are sold claiming to be sterling silver but are fake jewels, namely an economical 925 silver plated metal.

A popular method for testing silver jewelry is that of the touchstone.

silver testing with touchstone

August 16, 2019 — Hugo Maherault

Silver melting

Many women with a silver jewelry collection also have a collection of silver chains and bracelets broken or damaged to continue wearing them. The advantage of solid silver jewelry is that they never lose the metal value that composes them.

It's easy to melt these jewelry scraps into a silver nugget that can be resold or reused to make a new silver jewelry at a lower cost.

Casting

 

August 16, 2019 — Hugo Maherault

Rings and mens rings in 24k gold

Yellow gold is the most desired of the precious metal in jewelry, because of the heat of its glare, it has no equal.

Most family rings or signet rings are in 18-karat gold, but it is normal for exceptional jewels or signet rings that will remain for generations in the family to want a gold of the highest purity, of 24 karats.

Precision, 24-karat gold is necessarily yellow since it is not mixed with any other metal likely to change its color.

So there is no chance to find 24 karats white gold, pink or black gold. The only way to change 24k gold color if plating it with white or black rhodium.

24k gold nugget for jewelry making and mens ring creation

Pure gold is an ideal theoretical gold.

It is also called fine gold or 24 karats gold. For the definition of gold karat, I refer you to this article on the subject.

Gold is usually mined mixed with other metals, so to obtain pure gold, rough godl nuggets are refined through an industrial process.

April 24, 2019 — TRANCHANT NICOLAS

How to wear a signet ring ?

The signet ring is a jewel of ancient origin, historically used by both women and men.

This is one of the few jewels that had a practical utility function, as it served as proof of identification, like today's digital signatures, in order to seal the letters with a wax seal. and legal acts (marriage, inheritance ...).

large gold signet ring for men

If the wearing of the signet ring meets the aesthetic and fashion today, precise rules governed the wearing of signet rings for the nobles during the Middle Ages.

The wearing of the signet ring changes according to the country, the sex and the time.

Here's how you find it, starting with a review of the fingers of your hand 

April 12, 2019 — Nicolas Tranchant

How to measure ring size

Knowing your ring size is a prerequisite for any ring or wedding ring purchase, whether it's a custom-made ring or not.

We offer below two methods to measure your ring finger size, which are both simple and fast.

This measure is made in millimeters as this is the simplest way to measure your ring or finger size.

Please check out the ring chart below to get the correspondence between your ring size in millimeters and the ring size used in your country (whereas USA or UK).

We also explain why French jewelers use millimeters to measure the ring size to ease the ring making process.

determining my ring size measuring

October 19, 2018 — Hugo Maherault

Mexican turquoise jewelry

The Indians of pre-Columbian America are known for their religious artifacts, sculptures and turquoise jewelry.

It is believed that it was the Toltecs who developed and controlled the turquoise stone trade in the area that was later to become Mexico.

All Amerindian civilizations have either rubbed shoulders with each other, or succeeded one another, so that there have been enormous influences from one to the other of these civilizations.

Which, throughout Mesoamerica, lead to the manufacture of jewelery, works of art. craftsmanship using turquoise, a stone considered precious by the Aztecs, Mayans and Toltecs, who valued it more than gold.

Read this interesting article on cultural exchanges between Amerindian civilizations.

January 01, 2018 — Hugo Maherault