Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Before I get to posting the other things I wanted to post like my recent TSA experiences, I wanted to share with you the ring I made this morning, and I’m going to do it by simply having the rest of this entry be pasted in from my Etsy entry on it. This is a very special ring!!! I’d wager you will never find something like this at any other jeweller. Here’s a link to the item directly where you can see the pictures at higher quality: https://www.etsy.com/listing/98949917/skull-ring-with-libyan-desert-glass

I began this ring by sculpting a master skull ring design out of polymer clay by hand, based on a real human skull that I have here as a model. From this I made a two part silicone mold, into which I cast a tin/bismuth metal alloy (ie. a type of pewter). The ring was then removed from the mold and finished by hand, including drilling out the eye sockets to prepare them for the stones.

The greenish stones that you see in the eyes are where this ring gets especially special. I carved these cabochons by hand out of Libyan Desert Glass — also known as “great sand sea glass” — which is a gorgeous green glass found only in parts of the Libyan desert. It is about 26 million years old and was used by prehistoric man for tools, and later as jewelry, for example being found in the form of a scarab beetle that is the centrepiece for Tutankhamun’s pectoral jewelry. The glass is a specific type of tektite, formed by meteoric burtsts and impacts, that is, the great heat of a meteor from outer space striking the desert causes the sand to liquify into this new form, so in addition to the earthly elements from the sand, there are bits of the meteor as well which have travelled across the depths of space to be a part of this skull ring’s eyes. As far as I understand it, it gets its colour from melted zircon, which also shows that the stone was formed under colossal pressure and temperature. It is quite similar to Darwin glass or Moldavites if you are more familiar with those — they are all quite similar but source from different impact sites.

Anyway, after grinding these meteoric bits of glass into rough domes to fit the eye sockets, I mounted them from the inside of the ring and then welded the inside of the ring back together to trap the tektites inside the eyes. Then I ground the inside of the ring smooth again and polished the whole thing. The final step was to treat the ring with an antique patina, which blackens the metal and brings out the detail, especially after I gave it one last polish to accentuate the highlights.

The ring is currently sized to a 10 ¼ but by request I can increase the size to as large as a 12. If you need me to do that please specify it on the check-out.

Item link: https://www.etsy.com/listing/98949917/skull-ring-with-libyan-desert-glass