Our Process

The way we make jewelry here at The Sparkling Pebble is a creative and interactive process.  It all starts with an idea of an animal or an interesting design.  After searching and saving many reference images for the particular animal, or doing hand drawn sketches for the design idea, we begin to design using CAD and digital sculpting technology.

 

The animal pendants are almost completely designed using a digital sculpting program called Z-brush.  It is the same program used for most CGI animation for character creation.  

 

Once the design is complete, it is then 3d printed in a high detail plastic material.  From this model, a silicon mold is made.  We use this mold to use lost wax casting techniques to make the sterling silver pendants.   Once cast, we do the rest of the finish work completely by hand in our studio.  From filing to antiquing to polishing, each piece is carefully crafted by hand.

 

The process to make this jewelry in pewter is only slightly different.  Either a sterling silver or a bronze model is made by lost wax casting of a specific design.  Using that model, we can create a special type of circular mold that is used in a spin casting machine to make lead free pewter jewelry.  Once those castings are finished, we again do all of the finish work in our studio on each and every piece.

 

If you are interested in a custom designed piece, we will use these same techniques to make something just for you.  Check out our custom design page to get a more in depth look at how it works!  We like to say, “If you can imagine it, we can design and make it!”