A New, Exciting Direction…

A few years ago…

I was looking to create a custom interchangeable pendant when I stumbled upon a piece of software that was life-changing—a program from Pixologic called ZBrush.

I’ve spent many years creating jewelry the “traditional” way, but I’ve also had a love of computer-aided drawing (CAD) programs that I’ve used for woodworking design and space planning. In the mid-1990s, I became aware of a technology called “stereolithography,” which used a vat of resin and a laser to print objects in three dimensions. The printer was at 3M, and cost about a half-million dollars.

I never dreamed I’d be able to create jewelry this way, but a few years back, I discovered ZBrush and set about modeling jewelry. Within a couple months, I’d purchased a Formlabs Form 2 printer to print and cast my designs in my studio.

Learning ZBrush was really tough, and the courses and video tutorials available were hard to follow. I struggled. I learned how to use ZBrush in more efficient ways—ways that allowed me to use my old MacBook and a simple pen tablet to design anywhere. Suddenly, my jewelry studio was wherever I wanted to work.

I started creating a course back in 2018, but life got in the way. As I finally got back to work on it, I worked to understand what jewelry artists—especially people new to this kind of design—wanted and needed. Easy-to-understand videos, handouts, and exercises that simplified the program were top of the list.

I finished the course on April Fool’s Day 2021…finally.

I’ll still be fabricating jewelry from sheet and wire, but casting my designs has been exciting with this new technology. I’ll also do an occasional YouTube video tutorial to make my teaching accessible to everyone, and I hope to do some live events here shortly.

Take a look at the new site, www.zbrushjewelry.com, to see what I’ve been up to.

— Kat