Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!
Hi this is Becky Nunn from Nunn Design and I'm a guest designer today
at Beadaholique.com and what I'm going to be making is
a really fun little bead cap bead like you're seeing in this sample right here
what you'll need for this is some bead caps
you'll need a couple of the little crystal chatons, some crystal clay and
you're welcome to use whichever color that you have
I'm going to be using a brown and inside of the crystal clay
you'll find they have a little tooth pick with a little beeswax on it. So we're using
that
as well as the gloves, some head pins
and some cutting shears. We're going to be using
a gold head pin and putting it through
the crystal clay and the bead cap to create a link
so your first step is going to be trimming off
the end of the head pin. Inside of the crystal clay package
you'll find a pair of latex gloves. You gonna wanna follow the manufacturer's
instructions on how to handle and work with the clay
pinch off two equal size balls
the clay typically has the colorant as that darker color or the color
and the resin is always this beige color
so I've already pinched and put it into round little balls, make sure they're
equal sizes and then you're going to mix the clay together until its
no longer marbled some of the clay is stickier than
others and well really stick to your gloves
in this video you're lucky to see that is not
but sometimes it does really starts to stick and pull
and you can bring it down into your palm and fold it over
and until it is no longer marbled
once the clay is completely mixed it is then activated
and you have 90 to 120 minutes to work with the clay
before it starts to harden and you're not able to embed anymore crystals
into it. This is what it looks like when it's not marbled anymore
once the clay is mixed
you can then remove your gloves, it's much easier to handle the clay
I like to roll mine into a nice little ball
and I can see right now that I have way more clay
then what I'm going to need. That's okay because we'll be showing you
about to do with extra crystal clay in another video
I miss going to make a nice round ball
and I'm going to put it together
in between the two bead caps
and depending on how much of a space you want
you could have a lot or you can keep on pinching it off
so that there is less of a gap
like the example that I have here
so also depending on what kind of size of
chatons you're using that will also make a difference of how much of a gap that you're
using and in this example I'm using such a tiny stone
I know that I want a very small gap and that looks good about right there
when I'm working I typically always have
wet wipes right beside me so that I can go ahead and wipe off
any of the clay that might be getting on my fingers because
it's easy to the fingerprints on the piece. I'm also making sure that the
clay isn't on the finding because once it gets
on finding and then dry it's like cement, it's really hard to get off
then I'm going to use my head pin I already cut of
just put it right through the center of it and this is another reason why I
have my wipes handy is that I can then wipe it off really easily.
when it comes to this part
of embedding chatons, my 48-year-old eyes can no longer take it
so I use my glasses, so if you are having a hard time seeing these itty bitty pieces you
might want to put on some
very inexpensive reading glasses so that you can see
this level of detail. First of all I'll
show you how I pick up the chatons and move them
around with the beeswax toothpick
a lot of times the pieces will be turned upside down so you can just flip them over
and you just pick them up and then you gonna start just embedding them down
into that small gap
and that's why we took that time to make sure that the gap was just about right
so that these little crystals would fit right inside of them
and you can make it is tight as you want or you can make it
loose, you can alternate colors, you can do all kinds of stuff
if you're finding that to the crystals
are not releasing from the little beeswax just place it inside there
and then slightly rotate it and it will twist off, another thing that you might see
is that the crystals start to have a little bit of the residue
from the actual beeswax, don't worry about that because
after its already dried and cured you can go back with your
wet wipe and wipe away some of that residue that might be
on side of there. If you don't
have a big enough gap to put those crystals in you can just make it
wee bit wider if you like. Now just go around the outside edge or
the inside edge and lay the rest of these crystals
when I'm laying these in I'm not pushing down too hard at first because
if you push down too hard
sometimes they get all cattywomped I'm showing you a cattywomped example
and then it's really hard to pull it out so I tend to put my crystals in really
lightly
but deep enough so that they're sticking
into the clay and then once I have
finished it I'll go back in and sculpt it
a little bit more but even that cattywomped one that I
showed you earlier still looks fine and you can press it down with your
fingernail or use an eye pin to go in there and just kinda straighten it out
if you don't like that look. Now I'm just gently pressing them
into position, pressing them farther down into the crystal clay
I'm also using my
head pin that I fit through to make sure that that hole is nice and sturdy and
straight
and now I have a little fun bead and once that's dry
it takes about two hours for it to start to really harden
I'll then use a pair of needle nose to make the loops and you can reference
that in another Beadaholique.com video & then you can go ahead
and create your own bracelet or your own necklace or
earrings or whatever you'd like to do. So this is the part of the video where
I'm going to
show you other Becky Nunn dog-and-pony show
jewelry examples. So if you didn't want to use crystals
inside your piece you can go ahead just put the two bead caps together
and you're good to go. Down here
I did crystal clay and just put a little bead cap and I
just stuck another little chaton there to make a cute little pair of earrings
here's other examples of using
the two little bead caps to make a fun little balls
to add, here it is in silver with garnett
the piece that we did earlier and then
on this one is just showing other ways that you can use
the crystal clay
whether you're just making a nice little ball inside of
a jump ring, that's jump ring laid down first and then a nice little ball
adding it onto charms
here are two will bead caps inside another piece
here are some right inside of
my bead cap and then using the Cup chain on a toggle bar
those are some fun other examples of the ways you can use the crystal clay and
bead caps.
Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!