Petoskey Stone Ring- Size 6

Petoskey Stone Ring- Size 6Cute little Petoskey Stone ring that will be sure to be your new favorite! Size 6 Copper electroformed ring (see below for more information on my process) We collect all our stones from the shores of Lake Michigan and bring them home to polish and transform into beautiful keepsakes for you to cherish forever! What is a Petoskey Stone? The Petoskey Stone has been Michigans state stone since 1965. This fossilized coral was named after an Ottawa Indian

Cute little Petoskey Stone ring that will be sure to be your new favorite! 

Size 6 - Copper electroformed ring (see below for more information on my process) 

We collect all our stones from the shores of Lake Michigan and bring them home to polish and transform into beautiful keepsakes for you to cherish forever! 

What is a Petoskey Stone? The Petoskey Stone has been Michigan’s state stone since 1965. This fossilized coral was named after an Ottawa Indian Chief named Pet-O-Sega, meaning “rays of the rising sun” which refers to the cell pattern of the stone looking like rays of sun. More scientifically, it is a fossilized Rugosa coral called Hexagonaria Percarinata. This creature lived during the Devonian period (That is over 350 million years old!) During that time, the Michigan Basin as we know it, was located close to the equator and was a shallow, tropical reef; the perfect habitat for corals such as the Hexagonaria to flourish. As time went by these marine creatures died and fell to the bottom of the sea and were covered by silt and mud. Over the next million years, movement of the Earth’s tectonic plates caused that basin to be pushed north, as it is now. Glaciers then scraped along the Earth’s surface ripping up all those buried fossils and depositing them all throughout Michigan’s Northern Lower Peninsula.

What is electroforming? Electroforming is the science of plating copper onto objects. To start I paint a copper conductive paint onto where I want the copper to plate. I then submerge the piece in a "bath" of plating solution (an acid solution I make myself) and hook it up to a power supply. The copper ions are then transferred one by one onto the area that the conductive paint was applied. This process takes anywhere from 12-36 hours depending on what I am plating. After the piece has a nice layer of copper built up it is removed from the bath, neutralized and then either sealed to preserve the bright copper finish or I paint on a patina to give it a more antiqued look that shows the depth better. A lot of work also goes into prepping the piece before the conductive paint is even applied. Sculpting, sealing, designing etc. Some pieces take a week to finish due to the many steps it takes.