Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi this is Julie with Beadaholique.com and today I'm going to show you how to make this ring. It
uses crystal clay, Swarovski chatons,
ring finding and some bead caps and to me looks very vintage. I called it the Doris Day
ring
I'll show you how to make it in silver
so what you're going to need are some bead caps. I've chosen these
spikey palm ones
you can actually choose whichever ones you like but these ones will give you a
really nice kind of fun vintage look
I have some chatons in pink
and then I have some white crystal clay
crystal clay is a two part epoxy. Crystal clay itself is self hardening. You don't need to bead it
or fire it
it's going to cure overnight. It's very sticky. You
insert items into the clay and they're going to be grabbed and hold and stay
without needing adhesive
so what you do is I've made
a lot of projects out of the pack. It was a pack of twenty five grams to begin
with
I'm slowly working my way down
so I have part B and part A. A is the color. B is the hardener
I'm going to
take equal amounts of both. I want to end up with a large pea or a small
gum ball size amount
take
my part A and I'm going to round it, roll it into an approximate ball
take part B
pinch off what I think is about the same amount
roll it into a ball as well
the actual curing process doesn't start until the two clays are mixed
together so you have plenty of time
looks like I have a little bit more hardener
than I do of my color
you want equal amounts
so that looks good to me
put away my extra clay
take my two balls and squish them together
now you might want to use gloves when you do this because it is something you
don't want to have really get on your hands too much
I'm not doing an huge amount of this and I'm going to wash my hands after I'm done
so I'm going is my fingers for the video purposes it's a lot easier to see what I'm
doing
when I don't have gloves on but you do you wanna take precautions, use gloves,
wash your hands
so I'm just kneading the clay and you can see we have some modeling happening, the
goal is to get rid of all the striations so it is one solid color
it's going to take a couple minutes
and happy about that. It's all mixed together
For this particular project I'm going to pinch off
about a third of it and I'm going to put that aside right now
roll my my remaining third into a ball
you have about two hours of work time with crystal clay
what I do you find is that it does start to dry out, it'll start to cure
as you get
further along in the drying process
so I'd like to try to all my work within the first twenty minutes or so twenty
minutes to half an hour, so you don't have to rush but
don't put this down and come back to it later
so I've put the ball on top of the glue on pad
on the ring finding I'm going to
squish it down
I want to create a nice dome
Once that's secure on there, I'm going to pick up a bead cap
and I'm going to insert it into the clay starting on the bottom outside edge, the
narrow tapered part
being inserted into the clay, so the actual
the palm fronds stick out
just like so
you wanna make sure that there's enough
being inserted into that clay ball
to really grab it
and I'm just gonna go along the edge
pushing one in after another
give them all a good push
actually that's quite pretty the way it is but I do want to add some more. I'm going to start
putting them on the top
with this particular size ring I found I can get four on the top
I couldn't get one in the center there
if your bead caps are a bit different size you might be able to get more on the top
but I could fit comfortably four
remember to squish them in there, you want to have
a bit of that surface of the taper part of the bead cap inserted into the clay
we have our base, our foundation. It looks a lot like a star
burst
go back to that other ball of clay that I pinched off
and I'm going to pinch
off just a little
about the size of
a sewing needle like those yellow sewing needle heads
about that size. I'm going to make little balls and make enough
fit into each of my bead caps
think I used twelve bead caps on my other ring, so I'm going to make twelve little balls
I will have to double check that
It still doesn't have to be perfect. They don't have to be totally even. They don't have to be
the same size
what we're going to do is put these in the center in the bead cap and then we're
going to put the chatons
into the clay to hold it there. Make sure that you're using enough clay. This going to be
a good bed for that chaton
I think I got plenty there
just go ahead, take a ball of clay
put it into the center and it will grab
and then take a chaton
I'm going going to pick them up because the ones I'm using are size 32pp
so they are pretty big
press it into the clay
just like that and go around and do that with every bead cap
If you want to have a tool I have a
head pin here
something to help you push it in place. You can do that
as an final step
inspect your ring
go ahead make sure that the clay hasn't
become loop sided as you've been setting these
and I would recommend going back
just pressing on the stones a little bit more to make sure that there're fully in there
even if you wanted to, if you're using these bead caps do squish very easily with your
hands
you want to try and
put another one in that center
I won't be able to put a crystal on it
you could probably fit one in there
let's try for a crystal
see if we can make this work
so have fun with it. Experiment
let the project lead you
and that is how
you make a very vintage style looking ring
using crystal clay
Swarovski chatons and bead caps. Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!