Strawberry Leaf Ring

This ring shank was made using coils of rolled silver clay and wrapping them round a mandrel. I had prepared the ruby in it's bezel beforehand and dried and refined it. I placed the ruby on top of the coils. I picked tiny strawberry leaves out of my garden and pressed them into moist silver clay, I cut out the outline and pressed those onto the coils alongside the ruby. After drying and refining with a flexible sanding pad the ring was fired in the kiln at 1650 degrees F for 2 hours. I burnished the leaves with 24K Gold foil and painted on some patina for contrast. The ring was then polished in a tumbler to get the beautiful shine of silver, gold with the ruby and strawberry leaves as the main feature. Of course the ring shank is also very decorative. Ring Size: 10