ALMA Jewelry pieces are made with an artisanal and millennial technique called ELECTROFORMING, what we do is incorporate metal through electricity to different materials, it’s also called the mysterious technique because few people work with it and a free technique because there is not much literature on the subject so each author develops their pieces under different try outs and creativity, this allows us to customize it and make it mor our own.
Electroforming requires a lot of patience and time, we use this technique to transform the different elements of nature into jewels where we incorporate them with silver and copper then we plate them in 24k gold, silver or rose gold. It’s a test after another even if we now handle it perfectly, every element of nature we work with if it is a flower, a seed, a leaf or a stem it is always a new challenge.
But this is not our only secret, our jewelry starts when we pick the element from nature if it is already on the floor or we are taking it from the plant, it has to be at a precise moment just before it starts to naturally dry a deform its shape, here we work with farmers and nurseries so we can use the elements that were not sold or stayed bloomed, we receive flowers with little defects, like holes or freckles that will be covered or beautifully highlighted within our electroforming process, nature is amazing and these defects are not an excuse to throw them out.
Then we submit the elements to a very rigorous drying process to preserve that moment in nature where it’s still alive, it can take several days and we need to make sure it is super dry or it may have a reaction with the metals and not have such a successful outcome. Other elements like roots, seeds, foliage or leaves are picked on their state of decomposition and dried on our work shop taking them to the point we need them.
After the element is perfectly dried now we can preserve it through our electroforming process, it can take 2 o 3 days it all depends on the difficulty of the element and the thickness we want. As you can see they are no molds to our technique and the most beautiful part of it is that “The natural element is underneath the metal” it has been forever preserved and transformed, what was going to be thrown away is today an amazing piece of jewelry. Each one is unique even if they are the same flower, it’s just not how nature works it doesn’t produce exact replicas each one has a subtle detail that will make it unique.
