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Our Guarantee
The wedding ring on your hand will be a constant reminder of your
commitment to another person so choose a ring that is comfortable,
durable as well as meaningful and beautiful.
Our fine line
of wedding and commitment Bands are very,very comfortable to wear.
And yes, our rings are as strong as they are beautiful! Our
gold and platinum braided wedding rings are designed to last a
lifetime or more.
To fit you
with the perfect ring, we offer free consultations. We can help
you to select the right style for your budget or custom design a
unique wedding ring.
Nervous about
ordering over the internet? Give us a call - we can answer all
your questions and help make your ring purchase easy.
[MORE about
our ordering process, guarantee and other policies]
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Handmade Braided Wedding Ring Sets |
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Todd
Alan: the Artist and His Life
"After
becoming intrigued by gemstones and crystals in 1986, I started
teaching myself jewelry work and gemstone properties. During
that time, I found a crystal that I mounted in steel wire and wore it
as a necklace. Friends soon asked me to make one for them.
So I purchased some sterling silver wire and began my
experiments. After I had created a dozen or so pieces, I
displayed them at an event where they sold well. |
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After
experimenting with pounds of copper and bronze wire, I began to
discover my own style of working wire. I avoided the study of
existing styles because I wanted to develop my own style without
being too influenced by others. For the next few years, I kept
making pendants and earrings with crystals and tumbled stones while I
looked for ways to make rings and nicer jewelry with faceted stones.
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By
chance or destiny, In 1988 I found myself merchanting at a show next
to an amazing wireworker named Wayne Wirebender. Wayne could
shape copper and silver wire into amazing wire jewelry as well as
intricate, realistic sculptures. After several days of getting
to know each other, Wayne helped me learn my first braid. For
many years after that, Wirebender and I would meet at different shows
and share ideas with each other. If not for his sad death years
ago, I'm sure we would be still be meeting each other at shows and
sharing with each other like artists of an ancient guild. His
kind sharing gave me the building blocks I needed to discover many
different types of braids. My jewelry became more and more
elaborate. I progressed from being a wirewrapper to a jeweler
who uses wire as a structural element in my jewelry |
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With
the birth of our first daughter in 1990, my wife Charlene and I
opened a storefront art gallery in Peninsula,
Ohio.
During the decade (Oct 1990-Oct 2000) that we operated Creations
Gallery in the Cuyahoga Valley, I honed my skill as a jeweler at my
bench there. I kept experimenting with ways to make my jewelry
stronger and more interesting. I bought a torch and started
teaching myself soldering and fusing. Because of my long
experience in working with round wire, I found ways to melt little
sections in drips by fusing pieces of gold together without solder. |
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I
later found out this technique is called "fusing."
Very few jewelers use this technique because of the split-second
timing it takes to melt the right amount of metal ends together
without accidentally melting the entire piece of jewelry. For
many years now, I have worked on mastering this art in combination
with my unique style of shaping and bending round strands of gold.
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Creations
Gallery was located in the blacksmith shop of the historic canal-era
village. We put up a trellis over our garden porch and planted
a Wisteria vine, an offshoot of a vine bought from China on a clipper
ship by Julian Kubinyi. The Kubinyis were one of the prominent
art families who first settled in the Cuyahoga Valley in the early
1900's. When this spectacular vine flowers each May, people
drive by to take pictures and smell the enchanting fragrance of the blooms. |
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We
became known in the area for fine and exotic gemstones and Todd's
distinctive jewelry. Our store was quite beautiful and
glittered with stained glass hanging throughout. We also
featured the work of potters, beaders, woodworkers, and weavers.
At that time, downtown Peninsula
was filled with galleries and artist's studios. Along with
other professional artists and local entrepreneurs, we become
founding members in the Peninsula Area Chamber of Commerce. We
were warmly accepted in the community and our second daughter was
born there. |
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While
Creations Gallery was operating, we also showed our work at many
events throughout the year and throughout the country. We
traveled to many shows on many themed circuits - art shows, gem
and mineral shows, fantasy and progressive culture events,
renaissance/medieval and metaphysical shows. We exhibited quite
often at large international gem and mineral shows
(Cleveland/Columbus area) where I found wonderful stones for my
jewelry and gained a vast knowledge of various gemstones. |
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While
we loved the fine people of Peninsula, we knew our stay in the
Cuyahoga Valley was not our final stop. Charlene and I had long
dreamed of living a rural country life in community with like-minded
people. In 1996, we discovered the perfect land and
founded Wisteria,
an intentional land-based community. With other families, we
worked together to build an event site campground and the
infrastructure for a village and nature retreat. Families
starting building homes and having children. Parents purchased
adjoining land to be near their children and grandchildren.
After four years of traveling back and forth from Wisteria to
Peninsula, we decided to make the leap of faith to the rolling
foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. |
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In
October of 2000, much to the dismay of our loyal customers, we
closed our store and moved to Wisteria . With our family and
community, we are very, very happy to have a nurturing and beautiful
natural place to live our lives. I now work at my bench making
jewelry for our internet customers. From my window, I look out
onto the grassy hills and forests of our land. Dreams can come true.
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My
work is always evolving because I don't like repetition and am
always seeking new ways to create new additions to my style. I think
of my jewelry surviving as heirloom pieces treasured for generations,
which I believe has helped me create a truly unique and beautiful
form of fine jewelry unlike any other work I have seen anywhere. |
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Via
our website, we continue our long-standing reputation of courteous
and personal customer service. We understand how important,
personal, and symbolic this kind of jewelry is for people. Our
decade of experience from owning and operating a retail storefront
taught us how to provide good service and good quality products to
our internet customers. We realized that we still
operated a store in a sense -- now we show our work in a virtual
gallery and people from all over the world now enjoy finding and
shopping for my jewelry. |
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While
we don't travel to shows like we once did, we still travel each year
to Pennsic, the annual national gathering for the Society for
Creative Anachronism (SCA). We are members of this fabulous
medieval historical reenactment group and love to spend part of each
August in this creative recreation of medieval life. Imagine
over 10,000 people camped together for weeks dressed in medieval
clothing with armored warriors and royalty and period arts and
dancing and performance . . . it is like nothing else on the planet. |
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I'm
always interested in taking special orders because I like making
pieces of jewelry that people will hold special and know it is truly
unique and reflective of their ideas. Send me your sketches and
photos, and I'll tell you if I can make a custom piece for you that
is within my style and abilities. Thank you for taking the time
to learn a little of my history as an art jeweler. If you have
any questions or comments, please feel free to call me or e-mail me."
--
Todd Alan
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