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Hi this is Julie with Beadaholique.com and today I'm going to show you a fun
project using these silver silk with a ball chain embedded in it
and the main reason I want to do this video is actually to show you how to use the
ends that go along with silver silk but
combine a project along with the technique and we'd be good to go
there are various forms of silver silk
and one form has ball chain embedded into
and silver silk is this wire mesh. This is actually wire it's not thread
and inside is this delicate little ball chain in this particular one
you see is copper
with a silver colored ball chain inside
it's just right in there. It's just a tube that's was put over it
comes in a bunch of different colors
and then the clever people at silver silk have actually made findings that perfectly in
case the ball chain and here I have one that has
slots for three
separate links
here's a single one with a loop at the end
here's a double one
and there's little end caps that just comes to a blunt end and this will be great if
you're doing like a tassel
or lariat or some kind of design where you need it just finished off at the end without a
loop or a protector
so it's a little hard to see. I'm going to open it up a little
I'm actually using a broken pair pliers. The spring no longer works but that's perfect
for this
I'm going to put my pliers inside the middle hole here
just inside
ever so carefully
pull it apart
you can't pull these apart a lot but you do open them up just a little bit
to make it easier to put your ball chain in
so if you can see inside
there are a couple grooves and basically they're little squares
and that's where you're going to want to rest your
ball chain when you insert it, so there's two little grooves here and I want two
balls in there
so I'm gonna go ahead and open it up a little bit more for my own sake
ever so slightly because I'm going to be using this tool here
so I'm gonna put these other ones aside
and here is a necklace that I made, you can see I actually braided my
three different strands
I used the end caps and then I just use a nice lobster clasp
originally I used two feet
of each silver silk color
I braided my necklace which is about an fourteen inch braid. I put the ends on
a little clasp, that ends up being
almost a sixteen inch necklace
my goal was to let that two feet of silver silk be able to make a necklace and a
bracelet. I want to show you how to make the bracelet
so you have a finding
it has a silver silk logo on one side and it's plain on the other side
and we're going insert
our ends into the finding. So to do this
choose how you want them laid out. I want the silver in the middle
with the copper and gold on the side
and I'm going to take
the end and pinch it
basically I'm just forming that wire mesh
around the ball chain
roll it in your fingers and pinch it
and then you're just going to insert it
into one of the slots
push it
as far in as it will go
that should be about two balls worth which will then
fit into those little internal squares
so I'm not going to crimp my finding yet, insert the next color
so again
pinch it
form our wire around the ball
insert it
the third color
just rolling it in between my fingers, pinching it
insert it as well
take a pair of nylon pliers
going from the side
I'm going to squeeze the findings shut
and I'd like to just go from all sides
so you can see
that shuts nicely and all of those are trapped inside
you can actually see through that little crack where the ball chain is in that
mesh. You can see that's nice and up in there
now that's closed, so we have
this ready to go
so I'm going to show you how to braid it
we're going to do a simple
three strand braid
take a piece of scotch tape
I'm going to lay
my end
on the table
tape it down
make sure it's secure
and you can see these are a little uneven just from the last braid that I
did
I have my flush cutters ready as well as my tape
actually
I'm going to do a preemptive
measure here
so now I'm just gonna braid
if you're not familiar with how to do three strand braids
lay them out you're going to take the right strand
over the middle strand
then pull the middle strand to the right
take the left strand over the middle strand
pull that out a way
just repeat so right over the middle
left over the middle
right over the middle
left over the middle
do that all the way down
I love the look of the three different middle colors
I think it's very rich, just perfect for parties and even events
so remember your findings and your clasp are going to add about an inch and an half
I've got my ruler here
I've done about six inches, so if they add an inch and a half
that will be perfect for a seven, seven-and-a-half bracelet
we've got this much done, so what do you do figure
that your braid doesn't come all unraveled. I'm going to do one more little crossover
because I want that silver in the middle again which is what I had originally
so take that piece of tape
just wrap it around
your braid
hold this in place
take this off
you see how the silver silk logo is face down on this one
so when you attach the finding here, you wanna make sure that logo is facing
down as well
just so that everything matches
you want to cut
your lengths
so that you have about
three ball chains above the tape lines, so where you tape it is where your
braid was
all nice and neat, you wanna make sure about three ball chains
snip it off with flush cutters
now for this one
I'm more concerned with the fact that it'll be even with
the one I just cut
out of the three ball chains
curve into that finding about there
same with this one here
and take my finding
at this point
I want to take my tape off, I'm going to pinch my strands so that they don't unravel
I'm going to cut this off actually
a little bit of a balancing act here too so that your braid doesn't come
undone
go ahead
pinch all those end so that wire
is how you want it
nice and flush against the ball chain inside
remember we wanted that silver silk logo to face down
insert
you have to do this all at once
insert all three of them
into the finding
push them as far as they'll go
hold that in place and go ahead
and use your
nylon jaw pliers
to seal them in there
there we go
so now all we have to do is
add a clasp
I'm going to do a really simple one here using
three jump rings and a lobster clasp
I didn't add ay glue
to my findings. I didn't feel I needed to because they're pretty solid in there
they're not gonna come out
if you're worried you could use a little bit of E6000 glue on
the inside
just before you insert
your silver silk, just to give a little bit extra reinforcement
I would suggest doing that if you're not sure that you're pushing all the way so that it's
going all the way to the back of the finding. If you're having troubles with that
I would reinforce it with E6000
open a jump ring to attach the clasp
simple as can be
now we have a really pretty little bracelet
to match our necklace
I'll show you the set
which we were able to make
using
two feet
of each of the three colors
of silver silk
with ball chain embedded in
so you can find a full ingredient list and instructions for these two projects and
more at Beadaholique.com
in the free project section. Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!