WHO IS ICARUS?

Icarus is the son of Daesdalus, the greatest craftsman on earth and creator of the Labyrinth. Daedalus and Icarus were prisoners of Minos on the island of Crete, and Daedalus created wings for them both of feathers and wax. His warning to Icarus was not to fly too close to the sun as it would melt his wings. Icarus ignored the advice and fell into the sea and drowned. 

WHAT EMOTIONAL CONNECTION DOES ICARUS HAVE WITH PEOPLE?

The story of Icarus can be looked at in many ways. Whether that be the relationship between Icarus and how he blindly fell in love with the Sun to the point it killed him. No matter how you interpret the myth, you can find a piece of yourself in there. 

There are many poems about Icarus and the Sun by multiple poets throughout the centuries. My favorite poems are by Nikita Gill from her book “Great Goddesses: Life Lesson from Myths and Monsters” and Shei Cope. 

INSPIRATION

The inspiration behind the Icarus ring was to create a ring that has both the elements of the sun and feather wings. I decided I wanted the feather wings to hold up the sun because I found the ring would look way cooler with a stone in the middle and the details of the feathers would be sick to see. 

 

SKETCH 

Originally, we had two sketches. One sketch was using a thinner band and the other sketch was showing a thicker band. We let our followers on Instagram decide what ring size we should go and they decided on the smaller band. 

The sketch showed the materials we were planning on using: stainless steel base with an 18k gold PVD coating and sunstone (to mimic the sun). Benefits of the sunstone include:  instilling good nature, heightening intuition and allowing the real self to shine through happily. 

3D MOLD 

The 3D mold for this ring was made around 3 times. The reason was because everytime we would finish the piece, we would find that there were gaps between the stones we sourced from a small business in China. So we would have to make over three molds to figure out what would be the perfect size. 

The 3D mold took around 3 months to make and when we completed that we moved onto the stainless steel base. 

STAINLESS STEEL BASE 

The stainless steel base is the main material we use since it is more accessible and cheaper, which keeps our prices affordable. This is made by pouring the stainless steel into molds and then we file away extra metal that was left. The filing also helps define the details such as the dresses, the torch, the crown and more. The next step is to polish the stainless steel base so we can fix any mistakes before moving on to the gold plating. 

GOLD PLATING 

I use 18k gold to coat my jewelry and give it a vibrant color that stands out and is less likely to tarnish. We use a coating system called PVD (physical vapor deposition), which is when we take the stainless steel base and vapourize a thin coating of gold. I use this method because I find jewelry to last longer and be more resistant. If you want to learn more about PVD coating, check out this article: 

https://alcadyne.com/what-is-pvd-coating-how-it-works/  

ENGRAVING 

The ICARUS engraving was made at the end using a laser. I wanted to add a special detail and this was the first time I engrave a ring.