Another quick tutorial- paper ephemera pendant

Following on from yesterday, I thought I’d do another mini-tutorial, this time using the glass cabs and settings from Beadcrafty. They are both 18mm x 22mm ovals so are compatible with each other, which means you can get the two essential parts from the same place.

You will need…

A bezel, a cab, a piece of paper for the image (scrapbook, ephemera, photograph, whatever!), scissors and Ranger Glossy Accents.

Squirt a bean sized amount of Glossy Accents onto the flat side of the cab and squish it down over the part of the paper you want in the necklace. Push it so that the glass goes clear again (Glossy Accents is cloudy when wet) and there are no trapped bubbles. Once happy with the position, wipe off the excess glue from the edges with a paper towel or a rag. Leave to dry for at least half an hour, preferably a few hours if you can spare them.

Cut around the cab close to the edge.

Squeeze a pea sized amount of glossy accents on the inside of the bezel and push it around with the nozzle to evenly coat it. Stick the glass piece on top.

I’ve got a few secret sewing projects going on for Christmas, so I can’t show you them just in case, but I will show you a bit of stippling I did yesterday on one of them. It was my first attempt at this, and I found it quite therapeutic- the texture is lovely. And I must say the pedal-less operation was particularly useful!

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Interchangeable bead necklace tutorial

Here’s just a quick post, borne out of needing to put something together for you to show you my purchases from Beadcrafty and not being able to find a chuffing eyepin this morning.

Anyway I put an order in for some pretties from Beadcrafty and they were very quick to arrive, with friendly customer services and reasonable postage costs. It’s a really pretty website with lots of shinies to ogle. The only thing I wasn’t too keen on was the amount of little plastic bags used- if I ordered 5 bezels for example, each one came in a separate bag, so I ended up throwing them out, though I’m sure most of you would have ways of reusing them. Anyway I digress…

Here are some of my cute purchases…

And I thought I would make a simple necklace this morning- it was still dark which is why the pics aren’t super awesome.  I like bright jewellery but I don’t like too much faff, just a pop of colour, which is why this is quick and simple. I don’t have a Pandora bracelet but I really love silver core glass beads and there were quite a few to choose from on the site, so I settled on this one. Equally if you want a more finished look and don’t want to be able to change your beads whenever you feel like it, you could use an eyepin instead of a safety pin. I would have done just that but I couldn’t find one this morning- my craftroom is being painted and EVERYTHING is in the middle of the room.

(picture taken in dark office on camera phone with no flash- soz)

So here’s what you need… (all beads, bead caps and jump rings from Beadcrafty.com) I used a medium sized safety pin measuring 35mm

Open your safety pin and string on a rhondell, a bead cap (facing outwards to cradle the rhondell), the silver core bead, another bead cap, another rhondell and then close the pin.

Open the middle link of your chain up (or cut with wire cutters).

Open a jump ring by pushing the joins away from each other (as shown). Put the ring through the last link in the chain and the hole in the safety pin. Close back up again. Repeat for the other end of the chain and safety pin.

You can change the beads any time you like- here’s some of my other beads (also from Beadcrafty) that could have worked instead of the rhondells.

I will have another mini-tutorial for you in my next post- this time making your own cabochon pendant using some more bits and bobs I got at the same time!