A Design To Last...

The Family Compass is a design that is very close to my heart.

I remember walking into the jewellery tools store and laying my hands on my first "doming set"... it's a set of tools with increasing gradient circles to place metal into and then use the rounded "doming tool" to start to curve metal.

I took that set home in my hot little hands and started playing around with it.

I made up a flat hammered circle and started on the largest hole in the doming set between annealing (heating up the metal) with my torch, I slowly turned that flat circle into the top half of the dome!

I soldered on a jump ring and wore that domed piece for months... and then one day it dawned on me that it was missing something.

I went back to my doming set and after cutting out an imperfect circle I domed it to the same size as the top I had been wearing.

When I put the top over the domed circle I realised that I had created a "compass" and straight away I engraved four letters on the four points of the top of the compass.

North A for Adam

East C for Cameron

South K for Kate

West L for Lulu

This is a shot of my Family Compass, it's a gold topped silver bottomed version... I wore it plain for many years and then last year I blinged it up with Emeralds.