Leah Ashley Jewelry Designs Creates Stunning Custom Jewelry

When I was in California at the Gemological Institute of America learning how to do what I do now, I took a lot of classes to get all of the knowledge I now use. One of those classes was on casting.

I already knew how to cast going into the GIA class on casting but I certainly didn’t know everything. Cast is the process of basically turning your idea into a metal piece you can wear. In the jewelry industry this usually starts with a wax. The wax is an exact model of what your piece will look and feel like. Jewelers use waxes because they are inexpensive and because you can change a wax by adding and subtracting until it looks exactly how you want it to look–it is much easier to change a wax than a piece of metal. Once you have a perfect wax, you pour a type of plaster around it and then melt the wax out leaving a hole in the plaster in the exact shape and size of the wax. You then shoot molten metal into that cavity.

At GIA, we learned how to do that process and we got to practice a lot. In order to get that practice we cast from waxes we had carved in a previous class and from waxes we got from molds. In those hundreds of molds were these really fun animals that I just had to cast! They were super cute and with all of the detail they were difficult waxes to perfect and then turn into metal! Check them out!

I think my favorite one is the turtle; what yours?

The other really fun thing we did was make a mold of an actual silver dollar that we got from the beach. We then made a wax from the mold and cast the wax into silver.

What a cool way to keep something that is very fragile in a way that is much less breakable!

If you could, what you would you cast into a silver charm to keep forever?

All of the animal charms are for sale for $19.95 and the silver dollar is for sale for $29.95. Contact me at leah@leahashley.com if you are interested!