Rebecca Zemans Jewelry Blog — handmade

Citywoods is a beautiful little gallery located in downtown Highland Park, IL and specializes in unique handmade pieces from all over the country. This gem of a shop first opened in 1988 and is still run by its original owner, Diana and Robert Schaps. Citywoods showcases a vast variety of art pieces ranging from beautiful wooden furniture and room decorations to fine handmade jewelry and clothing. Nearly five years ago, at my first One of a Kind Show, a buyer from Citywoods came by my booth in the emerging artist section and bought an original Luna Pendant with peridot for...

As you probably know by now, we do a lot of custom work, especially a lot of custom commitment rings. Often times we create pieces from scratch, but sometimes we also revamp an existing piece. A few months ago a couple came to us with two beautiful wedding bands from their grandparents. They wanted to keep the rings and honor the tradition, however they were looking to customize the rings a little bit and add a personal touch. Here are the before and after pictures. As you can see, the simple 14K yellow gold half round band (on the left)...

Today we will share with you some insight on one of our most important processes - forging. Forging is the process of shaping the metal using force. Forging can be done either hot or cold, depending on the metal. For our silver and gold jewelry, we use the cold forging process after annealing the metal. Meaning, we hit the metal while it is cold after heating it up to loosen the molecules and then cooling it off so we can hold it while hammering it. Hot forging is when you hit a portion of the metal while it is hot,...

We hope your holiday season is going as well as ours! Thank you so much to all of you who came out to the One of a Kind Show and our studio sales! Each show was a great success and we couldn't have done it without you... Thank you! To all of you who couldn't make it to any of the shows, don't worry, there is still a way for you to get your hands on beautiful one-of-a-kind jewelry for the holidays! Like us on facebook and get 10% off when you come by the studio this week to pick out...

We are so excited to share some exciting news with you! We realized that as a jewelry company that specializes in custom work, we needed to offer the perfect gift by giving our special one of a kind service as a gift! So here they are, just in time for the holiday season we are introducing RZ Jewelry Gift Cards! Available in many increments starting at $10, simply click here to order one!