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Hi this is Julie with Beadaholique.com and today I want to show you how to
personalize your jewelry and make jewelry tags
some people call them artist tags, artisan tags, jewelry tags
and basically there a way of putting your mark, putting your name on pieces of
jewelry your design
Here's a couple finished examples. Since my name is Julie Bean I did my
initials JB
so you can see a couple of different styles here. Action in one I just did a
little
icon on it. I just did a little bird flying
In terms of the tags themselves they're a wide variety of sizes and shapes and finishes
I've just pulled a few. There's actually quite a number more available
and when deciding on the tag that you want you're going to also want to look at
the size and how much you actually want to fit on the tag itself
You can see you have a quite a bit of a choice
Now if you don't want to do a personalized tag and actually stamp it
there are premade jewelry tags like this in on both sides
They say made with love
and there's also some that say handmade. It's the shape of a little hand
and
it's also nice to use a tag on jewelry. One to put your mark on it to let people know
that it was made by you
and also let them know that it is handmade and it is something
which is really unique
when deciding what to put on your tag you want to think about do you want to put the
name of your company on the tag if it's short enough or some abbreviation of the
your company, if you want to put your initials or your first name
if you wanna put a symbol. We have symbols with the metal punches. There's a wide choice
of them. I've got a lot clover and a bird raised here but there's smiley faces,
hearts, stars,
sailboats, the whole host of different designs you might find one which calls to
you or say something about your company
and then once you've decided what you want to put on it you'll want to also
decide the size
I have a couple different metal punch sets here. Here's 1.5mm
which looks like
this is really a tiny lettering which would fit on a smaller tags. If you wanna
use all larger letter set such as the one I have right here you'll want a larger
tag
Take all those things in mind when you're deciding what you're going to do
and then I'm going to show you how to make one
so again based upon what size tag you want and what you're going to
put on it
that's going to determine what size you're actually need
Chances are good that you're going to need a steel bench block
which i have right here with a rubber pad below it to absorb some of the blow
and you're going to need a brass mallet
you might also need a rubber mallet. The rubber mallet would be if say you've
got a little tag sometimes a smaller ones get a little curved
and all it takes is a couple swipes of the rubber mallet to go ahead and flattened
them before you punch them
and you may also need a chasing hammer. I actually on this little tag right here
I texturized it . I used the ball end of the chasing hammer to texturize it a
little bit
And then on this tag where I did a little symbol I rubbed a little bit of
african bronze gilder paste into it. So I'm going to show you all those different techniques
Let me begin by making a tag
So I've got my artist tag right here I like the size and I'm going to make the tag
you see here
if you want have a piece of brass available where you can do a couple of
trial punches, trial striking
to make sure you have the right pressure
So I have my J. I'm going to use a J and B for this one
and on this particular set the marking of the number of is actually
what needs to face my in order for that
punch to line up correctly
all sets are a little bit different though
so I'm just going to put this
onto my
stamping. I'm going to hold it
I'm going to do one swift strike
you can see I got the J printed
now I'm going to do B
Again one swift strike
can be a little hard to tell. I did the B as well. I'm going to pull that detail out
in a second
and then I'm going to do the clover
You can see these all are there but it's kind of faint. I'm going to take my Vintaj
Relief block
I'm going to rub it using the gray side
You might need to flatten this if it got a curve again the rubber
mallet is gonna come in handy
I'm going to use the polishing side right here to take off any scratch marks
you don't have to use a relief block when you making artisan tags. I just want
to show you a couple different techniques for finishing them
but you could definitely make your stamping
and call it good at that. You see I have my artist tag and it's got my JB on it
To attach it to a piece of jewelry
the most common way to attach it to a piece of jewelry is to use a jump
ring
OPen up my jump ring
Put it through the loop
I have a necklace I made here
I'm going to put it up towards the back where these commonly are found
close my jump ring back up
you can see that now I've marked this jewelry as a piece that I created
A couple more quick techniques. I'm going to do the bird one here
so this is had a symbol on it
I'm going to hammer this one with the rubber mallet just to make sure it's flat
they do come flat but I notice when I store them or something might happen where
they get a little curve but I want them completely flat . So I got my little
bird
I'm going to center it
and he looks pretty faint on here. You can see the before and after
so all i need to do
take my Gilder's Paste. I choose green
Rub it into the actual
lines of the stamping
and rub it off
now you can see that he shows up a lot better
That's one thing you can do and I just wanna show you one more quick technique
you can do these techniques with any of the different blanks
I'm going to do just my initials
on this little copper blank
I'm positioning it on there. You can kind of tell
where you're putting it so you get it even
This particular set doesn't have a marking on the side. You just
have to look at it and make sure you're going to line it up correctly
so I've got my J and my B
now I'm going to texturize this one I'm going to go over the entire surface lightly
with the ball end of the chasing hammer
that's going to give you a little bit more detail
I have my two JB
I have my
original tags
right there
so those are just a couple choices on how you can make artist tags and personalize
your jewelry