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Hi this Julie with Beadaholique.com and I'm going to show you how to incorporate
buttons with glass shanks into your bead embroidery
there are so many beautiful buttons out there and they're lovely, they're one of my
favorite things
but they can be a little challenging trying to figure out how your going to work them
into your embroidery because if you've done a lot of bead embroidery
you're probably that you'll need a flat surface
like a cabochon has
where it's completely flat. Where it buttons
or not. You can see that
so we need to remedy that, we need to somehow either set them down into our
foundation. I have Lacy Stiff Stuff right here or I need to build it up. So I'll show you
two ways of doing this
and I think their the two easiest ways. There are other possibilities out
there but this will give you a really good start
so first off what we're not going to do, we're not going to try to cut
that shank. It is glass and it will shatter
you can injure yourself. You might actually crack the entire button
if you're using vintage buttons you definitely don't want to risk that
so the first way which is actually my favorite way is to set the button
down into the
foundation itself. The way you're going to do that
is I'm going to cut a little piece
so let's say I was making a focal pendant and I wanted about that much
around
my centerpiece
make a little mark in the center
and then here's a really handy trick
I'm going to give you a warning. So I have a Thread Zap
You're probably used to using this to burn your threads to really easily cut them
and here I have an older one and I no longer want this for my threads
so I wasn't too concerned if the tip got all gunky and what the Thread Zap does
to Lacy's Stiff Stuff, it's pretty cool. I'm going to make a hole about the size of my shank
right in the middle of my foundation and I'm just going to go ahead and
press the
on button
for my Thread Zap
it just actually cuts right
through
the foundation
now it does gunk the tip a little bit so you want to use an older one, the one that you
won't mind
if the tip gets gunky
but it is a great little handy trick
and then
take the button, you put it right down in the hole
see it comes out the other side
and look what happens
you now how the a flat surface to bead embroider around. So it's not going to
wobble on there
and we're ready to go
go ahead and apply your backing. A couple options
you can make
another little piece like this, another little donut
put it right under there as well. You're getting a little closer to a flat surface on the
back
and then when you put your
Ultra Suede backing
you could feel a little bit of a nub but you can't feel too much and if you stitched
around it
it would be fine. So if this was done
for a pendant or even a ring at this point we could put a ring finding on
there
so that's one option
if you're not concerned about that little nub you can just go ahead and
put
foundation right on it
you can see there's a little bulge
but it's not bad and still be comfortable to wear
so this is my favorite way and I would just applied some E6000
glue all the way around the base here
and then just
stick it in there
and you're ready to start bead embroidery
so that is one way. I want to show you another way
use an air dry clay. I have crystal clay here. You don't need to
bake it. It dries on it's own
you can use other of air dry clay products
you want to mix up a little bit. This is Crystal clay. It's a two part epoxy
clay
you need two equal parts of park A and part B
and with this if you are using crystal clay, we have videos on how to use
crystal clay, how to mix it up
and basically it's just equal parts and you mix it until all striations are gone
I'll show you what we're going to here
mix it up for a couple minutes
my clay is all mixed up
roll it out
to a tube shape
and again any air dry clay will work for this
and I'm using white just because it's gonna be easiest to show against this black
background on the video but you might want to use a matching color
you can even paint it after it's done
so roll it out
now I'm basically going to just go around our shank
making a donut
you don't want to much. Pinch off the access
it's basically just
building up that backside
so that my clay is level with the very top
part of the glass
and what I would do
is I would like this fully cure overnight
and then when I'm ready to go ahead
and put it on to my foundation I would just glue it as if it was a solid piece
as if it was one cabochon
and now I would do a roll or some type of stitch to cover that and then
progress with my
bead embroidery
however I want to the rest of my project
if you're not using crystal clay, crystal clay is great because it adheres
to all sorts of things so I don't need to glue this in place
if you're using just a regular air dry clay you might need to glue the clay
itself to the button
and then you'll glue that whole piece
to your foundation
and then you have a nice
flat back and you're ready to go just like any other focal piece
so I hope I gave you a couple different ideas of how you can
incorporate these beautiful glass pendants into your bead embroidery and don't
worry too much about the shank. There are ways of getting around it and still
being able to use them in your work.
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