About Jewellery By Shalini

Every item that you see in our jewellery showroom is unique. All items have been designed and handcrafted by Shalini (with inputs and ideas from Dave). The semi precious gemstones used in the jewellery have all been processed in our own workshop, with the exception of Cameos, beads, pearls and shells which we do buy in from worldwide suppliers of these items.

The Stones

The semi precious gemstones used in all Jewellery By Shalini pieces are bought in by us from around the world as “rough stone”, in the same condition as they were mined, hence the term rough. We then cut the stones into suitable sizes for the different polishing and shaping processes we employ.

The tumble process involves cutting the stones to a suitable size for tumbling in a rubber barrel. Basically the tumbling process works in the same way as the movement of the sea waves which naturally smooth and polish pebbles on the seashore over a period of hundreds of years. However, the process we employ takes around a month from start to finish on average, and produces naturally shaped, smooth semi precious gemstones. The final stage in the process is to then polish the stones to a beautiful shine, again through the tumbling process.

The second process that we employ is to produce more formally shaped semi precious gemstones known as “cabochons” . This process involves cutting the rough rocks into slabs of about 5mm thick. Next we mark out the slabs to the shape of the cabochon we want to produce. The more well known cabochon shape is an oval but we also create squares and rectangles. Occasionally the natural shape of the stone lends itself to minimal shaping to give it a free form shape. After cutting the shape, we continue on the grinder to complete the shaping phase, following on from this a whole series of fine grinding processes are undertaken and finally the stone comes up, smooth and highly polished.

Read more about our Rough Rocks and What we do with them!

The Jewellery

Once the tumblestones and cabochons are ready after the final polish stage Shalini designs and creates her wonderful jewellery. To view our range of hand-made jewellery please click on the links on the left under Jewellery Showroom.

As you can see, the whole process is truly hand crafted for you.

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