dossier | HAND STAMPED JEWELRY

When I started Christina Kober Designs, I wanted to create inspirational jewelry that made it possible for you to carry around those uplifting words a fortune cookie message gave you. I began folding fortune cookies in metal and hand stamping messages in sterling silver. Soon I found my customers were connecting to the fortune cookie necklace and adding a favorite quote, a sweet phrase their husband said or the name and birthdate of a child. I realized how powerful words and messages could be, a way for us to not only wear our inspirations but empower us to love ourselves and celebrate our connections. From there our inspired collection grew outside of the fortune cookie collection - to simple, elegant handstamped jewelry pieces that highlighted a message.

I want to show you just what goes into creating these special hand stamped jewelry pieces : precision, time and a whole lot of love and care.

So what exactly does hand stamped jewelry entail? It starts with a steel stamp and a hammer. The steel stamp is harder than the metal and when struck by the hammer, will leave its imprint in the metal. But to put your messages on the metal, a little more precision goes into each strike of the stamp.

THE LAYOUT
We begin with laying out your design, creating soft lines in the metal so we have a guide for placement of each letter. The length of the message, piece of jewelry, and font style will dictate how many characters will fit per line and how much space will be between the letters. Once the message design is laid out, we begin stamping. One letter at a time, sometimes stamping left to right, sometimes stamping from the middle of the message out. We plan out the design so the spacing is as even as possible, but keep in mind this is all done by hand, so there will be variation from one piece to the next.

THE STRIKE
Another important part of stamping is the hammer strike. Holding the letter stamp in one hand, the hammer in the other, I have found using a specific style of hammer with one swift, powerful strike will leave behind the perfect impression. When you hammer lightly, on the same letter multiple times there is a greater chance of the stamp slipping and making ghost impressions.

THE STAMPS
At Christina Kober Designs we have many sets of steel stamps with varying styles of fonts, capitalization, font emphasis, and font size. Each set includes individual letters of the alphabet, numbers and select punctuation. One stamp has one letter, number or punctuation. If the letter is bigger or upper or lowercase, then that requires a different stamp. This is why we can only offer certain fonts, sizes and capitalization.

I’d like to introduce you to our most common stamp sets here :

Teeny-tiny block font (our original font style) This font is found on most of our styles, it is called teeny-tiny because it is just that; so small I had to have them specially made. It is only available in upper case.
Typewriter font (found on the mini tag necklace) Only available in lower case.
large serif font (found on our mini oval necklace and signet ring) Only available in lower case.
Serif font (found on our seedling necklace) Only available in lower case.

Part of the beauty of hand stamped jewelry pieces is that they are all one of a kind. Slight flaws and differences will happen, because, hey, we’re human and we’re not perfect! Our flaws are what make us beautiful.