Hi there.
Sandy here.
Welcome to another Friday Findings video at KeepsakeCrafts.net.
Today I'm going to talk to you about yet another finding that can be used in a multitude of
ways and that is bezels.
So here I have an assortment of bezels of all different types and what's wonderful about
these is that you can use them for many things.
Now traditionally, when you see a bezel like this, you would think that it would be a receptacle
for a stone, such as these.
These are from Fire Mountain Gems and it's their Almost Instant Jewelry line.
You buy the bezels, you buy the stones that you want, you put them in, you glue them,
you're done.
Frankly for me, that's not really creative enough, although I bought a few thinking I
might make molds of them and then make stones myself or I might use them as accents or something,
but you can do a lot with these.
First of all, what does bezel mean?
Well actually many things besides jewelry have bezels.
Your cell phone has a bezel.
It's just this bit that goes around the outside.
The same with your tablets.
It's just the frame that goes around the outside of it.
So a television screen has a bezel.
A watch may have a bezel.
The definition is really just that it's something that goes around the outside of a thing.
We have a few different types here that are specific for jewelry.
We have some that are open backs and quite decorative on the edges, like these.
This one is really pretty or some that have solid backs and they can be plain or simple
or these that are shaped on the back to accept something.
Like these are more of the Almost Instant Jewelry.
And here's a bezel that I made.
I was learning how to solder and really it's just a flat piece with a strip of metal that
you solder together to the shape of your cabochon, which I cracked because I wasn't paying attention
and then you solder it down and insert your piece.
And this is a nice, you may have heard of a bezel setting where a cabochon, such as
this, would sit inside here and then I'm not gonna pop it in now because I'll never get
it out and then you would just gently push in those edges of the metal all around the
piece.
And because of the sloped shape of the edges of the stone it would hold it in place.
Now like I said, you've got lots of different types of bezels.
Plain, simple, open back, solid back.
Here are a few bezels that I got that are on rings.
They are mounted onto rings and here's a fun one that's nice and deep.
You could put again a stone in there or a cabochon that would fit and then you would
use a tool to push these edges in, burnish them in and that would hold your stone in
place, but there is so much more you can do.
You don't just have to use them for stones.
You can see here I made faux druzies.
In fact I made a bunch of faux druzies.
If you follow my blog you may have seen these some time ago.
I filled, some of these I bought from the craft store, popped out the stones they came
in and experimented with glass, glitter and such to make faux druzies.
So you can create your own things to put inside bezels.
This is a Lisa Pavelka ring base.
It's pretty much the same as this, except that it's round and you can see I put a piece
of polymer clay in here and I also put a strip around the outside.
Then actually I took a class with Lisa a few months ago and she taught how to make -of
course using her ring blank- how to make this spinner ring.
So you can see you can go a long way from just popping a stone into a bezel.
And even this bracelet blank, you can call this a bezel because it's something that goes
around the outside edge of something else and I'm very much looking forward to decorating
this with polymer clay.
Some of these I have plans for, mostly with polymer clay, sculpting or filling with a
scene, like something three dimensional is very popular these days to have rings that
stand up that are quite impractical to wear, but a lot of fun.
So I was thinking of a little fairy garden scene in this one with maybe a house and some
mushrooms and we'll see.
A little sculpted scene.
You can fill them with photos.
There are so many things you can do with bezels in addition to making your own and you don't
have to learn how to solder.
I'm going to teach you in a future Friday Findings video how to make beautiful bezels
out of polymer clay.
In fact, here's a very organic bezel that I showed you how to make in a previous video
and then filled it with Pebeo paints and some Magic Glos resin.
So really if you just think of a bezel as something that goes around the outside of
something else, it could really spur on your creativity to thinking of what else can I
put in there?
So have fun creating with bezels.
So if you're interested in some of the supplies I showed, there's a link in the upper right
and the description box to go to my blog post.
And don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already and check out my Patreon page to help
support these videos.
Thanks for watching.
Happy creating.
Bye bye!