Beadaholique Live Class: Designing Handmade Gemstone Jewelry

	Dakota Stones Gemstone Beads, Mixed Stones, Star Cut Faceted Round 8mm (14.5 Inch Strand) SKU: SPMX-139 $14.35
	EuroWood Natural Wood Beads, Round 10mm Diameter, 50 Pieces, Multi-Colored SKU: BWD-1036 $5.29
	Gemstone Beads, Quartz, Smooth Nugget 17.5-20mm, Crystal Clear (9 Pieces) SKU: SPQC-900 $7.49
	Gemstone Beads, Amethyst, Round 8mm, Purple (15.5 Inch Strand) SKU: SPAM-58 $9.29
	TierraCast Antiqued Silver Plated Pewter Hexagon Rondelle Beads 3mm (50 Pieces) SKU: BMB-3248 $4.84
	TierraCast Bright Silver Plated Lead-Free Pewter Disk Heishi Spacer Beads 6mm (10 Pieces) SKU: BMB-3932 $2.89
	Gemstone Beads, Amethyst, Nugget 15-22mm, Purple (9 Pieces) SKU: SPAM-900 $6.49
	Gemstone Beads, Quartz, Smooth Chip 7-12mm, Crystal Clear (33 Inch Strand) SKU: SPQC-0101 $7.49
	Beadalon Beading Wire Silver Color 19 Strand .015 Inch / 30 Feet SKU: XCR-69523 $19.99

Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
hi everyone welcome back to the beadaholique studio here I'm cat Silvia and I'm joined by Alexandra Smith and today we are talking all about gemstone jewelry so how to incorporate it how to use it what some of the gemstones are we have some really great tips for stringing wire wrapping lots of fun stuff today and we have a beautiful table yes this may be my favorite class so far you know this is one that has been a requested for a long time and you know what's funny is we think of gemstones oh well they're just beads you know you just use them as though there any other beads but there's really a lot to discuss when using gemstones we have like I said we have some chain that we're gonna go through so it's gonna be a really great man yeah well I don't think of them that way they are near and dear to my heart the the authenticity and the genuine quality of stones is just really special to me so that's why I'm so excited to be here yeah you know I do I find myself wanting to work with gemstones more and more you know there's always something kind of new or a new shape or something that kind of comes out and you know I love picking them out too there's sort of this like there's this treasure trove you have kind of feeling to like working with them so I just I love that yeah so why don't you guys take a great look at our table here and just kind of see some of the things that we're gonna be talking about like I said we're gonna be going over some stringing I'm gonna be talking you through a lot of the projects that are on our table here we've worked very hard over the years to make lots of different types of things you know different using different materials there's just a lot of great stuff that we're gonna be discussing we have some Dru Z's we have some star cuts we have some Nuggets we have some chips lots of different things we're also gonna be talking a little bit about using pearls with gemstone jewelry that's another great thing that we like to utilize here at beadaholique.com we are an online retailer so we sell everything from the beautiful gemstones that you see to chain to findings to beading wire to the little metal beads everything that you're seeing here so be sure to head over to be Holly comm we've created a beautiful collection that showcases all the things that you're seeing here today so a lot of the projects if you're curious about how to do one of our tutorials we have lots of videos and even more so head over to beadaholique.com shop it so so thank you for joining us thank you and welcome to everyone who's new here and welcome back to some of our regulars we love hearing your comments we have Bryan behind the camera back there so he will be feeding us questions if you guys have any questions or any comments be sure to leave them below and we're going to be answering those throughout our live feed today and if you are leaving a comment or a question or just say hello you have a chance to win our giveaway for today so I want to show you what our beautiful giveaway is and of course it's gemstones we just I couldn't help myself and this was actually a really fun one to pick out so we have here I'm gonna be giving you guys one of our exclusive beadaholique.com stone necklace in amethyst now it includes all the supplies it doesn't include the tools obviously there's no pliers stuck in that little tiny box there but it does include everything you need for that and then we're gonna be giving you guys some really great variety of our wood beads and these are just really fun I picked out a whole bunch of different sizes and shapes and colors so that we're gonna be talking about how to incorporate this into your gemstones I also have a nice little selection of some tassels here for you guys to use I have some black and some silver I thought that would be a nice little neutral color pop for you and then I have three different chips here we have some beautiful green adventuring we have lapis lazuli we have some rose quartz and then I have some of that gemstone chain up here this is a beautiful chalcedony and you see that really lovely green and blue there so you're gonna get a foot of that beautiful chain and then just a wide variety of little gemstones here we have some star cuts in there we have some big faceted gemstones we have some little guys so there's just a whole bunch of fun stuff and we wanted to give you guys a nice little variety a nice little sort of sampler pack of some gemstones that we have here at beadaholique.com very nice so all you need to do is just leave a comment below and we will announce the winner live here and our classes usually run about 45 minutes or so so we're going to be making a few projects so stick with us and get those questions ready because we are to be answering some varies alright so Alexander why don't you kick us off because one of the things that I am really excited to talk about is the gemstone chain so why don't you explain what that is and the different varieties that we have yeah so come over here we've got several different there are so many on our website you just have to take a gander but these are just a few examples of some Ruby with these pretty brush discs we've got some mixed blues here turquoise and lapis and over here is some amethyst and chips that are straight wrapped so you can see these have some dangles on them and then back here is the project that I'm going to be putting together and it's this very dense lush rich looking gemstone chain of labradorite and turquoise on for me and so what I'm going to do is clip every half inch or so and incorporate these six millimeter onyx beads I really wanted to experiment with what the the short lengths would do with this this variation of colors so I'm going to go ahead and do that here and want to show you how to clip this this chain because what you'll notice is I've just started the project and I'm going to take up my half inch length here with my flush cutters find the link that I want to cut and carefully insert the blades of my cutters on to that Center link and what you'll notice is there are these little dangles that are going to pop off and so I'm going to save those and incorporate them into my design as I wire wrap so to do one of my onyx wraps I'm going to take about two inches of this wire I've got some 24 gauge wire and with my round plier just gonna grip just off center there and angle my wire at 90 degrees bring the top of my plier up and wrap over the top to create my loop and then I'll go ahead and slide that into the end link of my half inch chain so you're kind of nestling it in there yeah oh there came another piece and then I'm going to grip flat onto that wrap that I just made and grab another pair of pliers my chain nose pliers and I'm gonna grip and coil the tail once and twice get the excess off of there I'm missing my bead on and on the opposite side I'm just gonna grip the side this is standard wrapped wire loop technique and do the same thing here make a loop and I'm alternating so I'm going to go ahead and loop myself around onto the labradorite portion get my end link there create my wire wrap and then I'll cut my half-inch link once I'm done so again I'm going to grip flat onto my wrap and take my second pair of pliers and coil around the base once and twice just filling that space what are you gonna say cap I was just gonna say it's really smart that you use the pliers that way you don't cuz I always find with I'm doing wire wrapping I have to cut maybe an extra long length of wire to kind of really grip it to wrap it around but by using the plier you have a little bit less of the wire waste if you will yeah so you can kind of get in tight there especially because it is so dense with those beautiful gemstones yes so here I'm gonna again carefully clip my desired link of chain and see where my little dangles fall save those for later and then I'm gonna do another B heat and so I'm gonna continue for about six inches of length and see where that lands me and then I'll be ready to add a clasp on at that point so just gonna clip another length of wire here start my next wrap whoops wrong player I want my round ones angling off looping over across the base and before I latch I want to remember before I coil I want to remember to latch on to my chain link that gives you a really nice finished look you know and then you're continuing the wrap the rabbit is seamless yeah hmm so just incorporating the beads into the chain and this chain is so dense that it really really holds its own between those beads and I was looking for the contrast yeah so again this is labradorite and turquoise on veut may with some little ball head pins and those give a really nice pop - I like that so I'm gonna continue on here and toss it back to cats all right what you're working on well you're doing the fancy wire wrapping I'm gonna start talking a little bit about some strong jewelry now I have lots of pieces going on here but before I get into actually making my piece what I want to do is I want to showcase some of the other pieces that we have here and in particular this piece here because when you're thinking about stringing jewelry I want you to kind of think about the shape of the natural beads that you're going to be using and how you can incorporate in some potentially metal elements you know you can use different metals but up here I have some sea glass and this is really a wonderful thing to use with gemstones and then I have some tapered wood beads here just to give a little bit of length and then I have these beautiful drusy beads here but I also incorporated some white sea glass in here so it kind of continues that design but I've kept those little metal flags in there so that's just kind of one of the little design tips that I kind of want to have you take away and then I'm actually going to show you the back of this bust because I want you to see what happens at the back in order for a necklace that might be a little bit heavier and when we're talking about heavier you're probably using you know gemstones you might want to have something that's a little bit sleeker on the back so you can see that I kind of use those wood beads to taper down to some smaller wood beads and some nice little spacer beads too so I can continue the design but for that back part that part that's gonna sit at the back of your neck you want a little bit of comfort back there so I went ahead and did that and I actually did a very similar technique on this design over here and I'm just gonna kind of scoot this around so you can just sort of see so you can see that I used some metal beads on the back there so I'm just keeping with the design but once you get to even those back few inches there I definitely wanted to keep that so just like so just like that so that's just a little little tip there when you're doing your strong jewelry and down here I want to showcase a couple of pieces so this one is actually really neat and I'm gonna sort of sneak this out of here so this is a long necklace and this is done with some wood beads at the back and you can see again we have those metal elements in there and we've broken up the beautiful star cut beads here and now these aren't Dakota stones and they have wonderful wonderful quality I mean one of the things that I really love about the Dakota stones is we sell them 1/8 inch strands so if you are doing a shorter piece you don't have to commit to a much longer strand you know and that goes for some of the gemstones and then we also of course all the sixteen inch as well but just I wanted to show you the back here because this is a seamless closure we have a video showing you how to do this but in essence you have the beading wire coming through this way and the beading wire coming through this way and it's crimped in the center there with a crimp bead so you get that nice finished look and it just looks like a nice little metal bead at the back so that's an option as well you don't have to worry about adding in all these extra clasps and all that other stuff especially if you are doing a longer piece now speaking of some longer pieces here this isn't quite stringing it's more knotting but I did want to showcase this because this is one of our more popular requests this down here this is called a mala it's often used and you know we see them in prayer beads or in yoga so this is a mala example and this is a wonderful way to use gemstones especially because a lot of gemstones have some beautiful sentiment to them so we have those and we have that nice little wood goobers to eat it down there and that's actually an aromatic bead so it smells like cedar wood and I just love that lovely and then one other example here if you don't want to do your entire piece strung you want to add some chain to the top I have some of those thread and wire protectors up here but again we're seeing that sea glass a little bit of that gemstone and then some nice colorful wood beads there at the bottom so those are just couple of the examples that I wanted to showcase for you but let's go ahead and dive into actually doing some stringing and I'm going to sort of on the fly create a piece here so for today I'm going to be using the beadalon stringing wire and this is a nice silver color and it is 0.15 inches now this might be thinner than what you might want to use for gemstones it just depends on how heavy your piece is going to be and you want to consider that the smallest gemstones that you're going to use you want to make sure that they're kind of the least common denominator in terms of what's going to actually be able to fit through your wire because you don't want to choose a thicker wire to accommodate your thicker beads but then go oh I wanted to use smaller beads or smaller metal beads or seed beads and then end up with a problem at the back so I have on my table here I have some wood beads and a couple of different sizes here I have a nice variety of metal beads I have some spacers I have some little hexagon beads I have a little design on the side I have here some more spacers just in some different sizes because I'm not quite sure what I want to use yet and then over here these are some bicone beads and these are actually really neat and I want to kind of show you these first so these are metal bicone beads so if you look at their side they kind of have like a little taper on either side so they almost look like a little diamond but what's really nice is when you pair it with a bead that might have a little bit of a larger hole like say this would be here when you string it together it actually kind of fits and fills that little hole so you don't end up having all this extra space there so this could be a nice little thing that you can use to sort of just fill in a little bit of that you can see that it kind of covers a little bit of that edge bicone there so that's another little tip to think about as you might be putting together some jewelry alright and then I have some nuggety beads here and then when I talk about the least common denominator I love this peach moonstone I think it is just the cutest little color and honestly it's just one of my favorite colors for summer you can see that I'm wearing my peachy ring today but I wanted to kind of figure out a way to bring this into my design all right so here's what I'm gonna say first I have my bead stopper on my wire and instead of starting at one end and working my way around because I'm kind of doing this on the fly I'm going to start by creating a focal so what do I want I know that I want to use my amethyst Nuggets here and these are really fun they're actually sort of smooth but they are so what it means is they're tumbled but they do still have those beautiful facets there and I like that it kind of looks all sort of crackly inside and I just think that's such a such a neat organic look all right so I'm gonna string that down to the center there and let me remove my bead stopper while I try to make sure that I don't knock anything off my table here alright so the first thing I want to do is I think I want to add in some spacer beads so I'm going to go with these nice little round spacers so let me add one to that side and I'm gonna add one to this side here alright and string that down together and let me see okay so now I want to I want to lighten the load and wood beads are a great way to do that so let me string on some little beads there so I'm doing one of the white wood beads on each side and stringing on one additional of my little spacer beads okay I'm really I'm liking the way that looks alright now I think I'm gonna go for a different size here and just so you can see you kind of still have that similar shape but it's a different color and it's you know it's really giving the option and it's really taking the eye down to that focal but you can also see how the white is really just sort of brightening that whole thing up alright so let's keep going I'm gonna string on another of my metal beads another wood bead and another metal bead and I'm gonna do that to both sides I'm liking the way this is shaping up I could add in some of my small gemstones at this point but I think I want to create a nice little focal there at the bottom and again wood beads are a great way to not only add color I mean we do have natural wood beads as well but they're to add color and to add a little lightness okay like in the way that looks I have two more of my purple gemstones and I think I want to slide them on here so let's slide on one down that way and one this way i'm so yeah accent the wood beads they're gonna get in the giveaway are a great accent oh yeah and you that's why I wanted to give you guys just a lot of different colors and here let me pull one out here so you can see you can also add in some different shapes and stuff so here's kind of just a cool one where if you wanted to add in a shape and that's what I mean about that natural color as well so that's an option too you could also go smaller with the wood beads or you could go larger I could have added some some larger wood beads to my focal but I wanted to play a little bit with that size because as you can see the Nuggets are a little bit different in size so I have that sort of going down right there and this is why I just sort of stringing it's it's very zen it's you know oh man so you've just kind of just being creative and just finding out what you can what you can do with your gemstones alright so I'm really liking that let me see here now I'm gonna add on one more wood bead just to kind of finish off where I'm headed there and all right there we go okay so now let's see what I want to do I think I'm going to nugget style yeah but you've got some silver spacers over there too that would really yeah cuz I have the smaller spacers in there I do I do have the more organic kind of nuggety ones here and I do have these bicones I think maybe let me try one of the little bicones here maybe that'll give me a little little extra silver that I want there at the bottom okay oh I like that actually all right so let's string that onto both sides so I'm just kind of going back and forth you know because this way you can really kind of work from the center out you'll see how many you how many beads you really want and where you want them alright so now I'm going to pick up some of these beautiful peach moonstone let's say one two kind of mm-hmm I'll just ring them on myself three four and five let's see you hmm maybe let me be a few more I wanted to work in five so I would stay symmetrical but these beads are so small I don't think that's gonna work the way I wanted it to and what is it the rule of odds that you work with is that just preference you know I think it is just preference I think one of the things and that's why I like to start in the center so that I know my bead in the focal because also you can see that these two beads match up a little bit more and this one is a little bit more of a rounder bead so I was able to kind of think about that as I was stringing as well you know I like to work in threes and fives for some reason it's just you know there's something about my design aesthetic that I really like the symmetry of everything and I think that's also why I like to kind of when I'm designing especially on the spot here guys I did not play in this that I like to just kind of go back and forth with a lot of things and we have a question so fire away Brian alright three questions oh okay so our first question is about wood beads and if you find them sometimes rough on the inside and what do you do about that and let me see if I can find it okay so here's one actually here and this like this one actually isn't too bad you can see that it has a little bit of core in there and that just sometimes just happens with wood beads you know because they are a natural material you can either maybe see if one of your pliers will kind of sneak down in there and you can just sort of use the edge of your plier to just sort of core that out see yeah it just popped right out there you can also use what's called an awl and that's typically used for pearls but it works really well with wood beads as well because you you're kind of grinding down at that little opening there you can also kind of just take a little piece of wire and kind of poke it through there but an awl works really well if you need to clear out your wood beads because you know it's it's a natural material so sometimes you're naturally gonna have just some of that stuff that's gonna happen you know there's clearing the hole and there's also the size of the hole when I that's a that's a rather large size and what occurred to me also is the use of a bead cap mm depending on the size of the bead it's sometimes it's nice to add one of those I was looking to see if there's any on our table and this necklace here has a bead cap at the end just to give you an idea of what that is but you would find your appropriate size and shape that would fit nicely against one or both sides of the bead and that could hide the hole or augment this size yeah bead caps are actually really wonderful things sometimes the reason I don't think about them with gemstones is because I often use gemstones that are a little bit more natural shaped but if you are using something that's really round that's a great opportunity to just add a little bead cap and you can add one just on the top just on the bottom on both sides just depending on the kind of the look you want to go for and that goes for wood beads as well now as a segue I was actually thinking of using bead caps in this design until I realized that my six millimeter beads are a bit small for that but I am at a point here when I want to add on my clasp sure let's see if we have we have another question okay yeah so these are these are painted they're not bleached we don't I don't believe we have any wood beads that are bleached sometimes that can actually kind of harm the wood but these ones are painted so as you can see when you see if I can pull some of these other ones over here yeah so we have some other painted wood beads here we have some black and blue these type of beads I'm trying to pull some out here do ya so we have some other beads so these these are painted they're kind of color washed so they're nice and saturated which is really really lovely but yeah so these ones are painted so we have those nice wood bees the white ones there as well probably with a little bit of lacquer on the top just to keep that color interesting yeah and it you know what I it's so funny I I had I made something with the darker blue and I wore it and I sweat a little bit and it didn't rub off so that that was I was actually very impressed with that because work sometimes do you find that no no sadly with some some of the wood beads alright one more question oh this is this is a great little tip guys so I'm gonna give you guys a little bit of a peek behind the curtain here this is actually just fabric that we got from a fabric store but what's really nice is it's this nice soft gray material and this is really really wonderful you could actually make a beading mat out of this this is what we use for kind of a backdrop for many of our videos here but what's really nice is it's not allowing those beads to really roll around too much and it's really keeping them so it's got a nice little bit of flocking there you can just kind of see as I move my finger over it it kind of changes colors there but it's really just a nice little sort of suede like cotton material but this is a really great thing to use for you know keeping your beads in place it's lasted a long time it has it has is one of our favorites we have this one and we have a beautiful white one that you guys have seen of course in many of our pita Halik videos all right so urine is a good stopping point for your class so why don't you why don't you show us what you're gonna do there finish it off all right so I have a bead on either side and this is gonna be about a six and a half inch bracelet a little small for me but I'm gonna close this up if I wanted to extend it I could do so with another bead or you know another section I could do a couple of jump rings if I wanted to make it longer but I'm latching on my wrap there I'm gonna grip and coil again this is just basic wrapped wire loop click that I chose this beautiful disc clasp Swarovski Elements disc clasp and bring around my other side here just latch that on and coil it up so I am very happy with how this turned out I think it's good really a lot of impact I saw that word cat in one of your piece about our class and it made an impression on me oh yeah it's a really nice one a little goes a long way with some of this stuff let's get that off there I'm actually gonna tuck that tail in too and there beautiful finished bracelet I love that kind of like I wasn't sure I was going to love the little black that's in there but it's really nice and Rossi is I'm so delicate yeah and let it movement mm-hmm so anyway good use of the gemstone chain now I wanted to show you a couple of other projects that we've done these are some earrings with hanging briolettes that go with a necklace that is just over here to the right and you'll see that at the back of this necklace like Kat was saying I finished this off with some long and short chain I'm just to save on materials and make it a little more comfortable in the back so there's a video on that set what else do we have over here for briolettes there's this other set of earrings that's got the briolette wrapped at the top with that coil and I wanted to demonstrate that to you it's a good why don't you go ahead and dive into that great so just below you'll see that there are a couple of rose quartz drops and I love the oversized smooth shape of these so you'll see that I've wrapped a couple already and the orientation of the loop is different so you can see that the choice you have with that and these two are wrapped with that very meticulous stack of coils that I actually tucked the wire into the hole of the bead to hold it in place and used some 26 gauge wire that's very soft you definitely want soft wire for this type of a wrap um so it doesn't spring off on you so let me go ahead and demonstrate that wrap in just a slight variation so I'm going to cut get myself a good in foot of wire for this and I'm gonna string that wire through the top of the bead fold over the top and with my plier I'm gonna angle the large portion of the wire up off the top of the bead and then I mean a coil looks the little tail portion around the base just by kind of gripping with my fingers and rotating there come around once and twice clip the extra take my round plier and get get a little bit of leverage on that portion just above I'm going to angle off the top straight off the top of that wrap I just did and create a loop and then from here I'm taking and coiling back down over my previous wrap now I could leave it at that and clip but I'm going to choose with this larger bead to go ahead and get a grip with my finger and continue around the base onto that frame that I made that's angling on either side of the bead eventually it's going to get to a point where it starts to capture the top of the briolette and it makes sort of a handmade cap so I'm coiling and coiling and again I'm taking the path of that neatly stacked look but what you'll see here is instead of tucking into the hole I'm actually going to train that wire back on itself and go back up around a couple times to the top and what I'm doing is creating a sort of organic nested look that I think goes really nicely with some of these gemstones and it also gives a good finished grip at the top so I'm just going to work my way around and use up my wire like so and just make kind of a casual nested wrap look and then when I'm ready to finish it off I'm going to take that tip and get it right at the base of my loop and get a secure finish on there so yeah there's a couple different ways to do this 26 gauge wires pretty good 24 would work really a number of different gauges depends on the sides of your hole sometimes gemstones can be drilled a little bit irregular and so you want to just make sure that the hole is going to accommodate whatever yr you're using it's really that simple you also want to remember to latch on to whatever component or chain that you're going to be using before you start your coil so yeah it's good I've already taken apart something okay so so I should have showed you what it just looks like but I wanted to kind of move ahead here so this is what I've got going on so far so I've got that beautiful focal at the bottom and then on the sides there it was just looking a little bit anemic because what I initially tried to do is instead of adding the like five of the white I tried to just do just one unit just like that and then I continued with some more of the moonstone and then some more of the metal beads but what I was realizing is it just yeah it just looked a little anemic to me I wasn't balanced really well with what was happening down here because this was so thick and then it went right to thin so I wanted to kind of bulk it up just a little bit more because when you think about where it's going to land on you and let me see if I can kind of show you on me like where's wherever is comfortable for you so I always like it just a little bit below where I generally wear my shirts so I wanted to not have too little happening here because I still have all that neck area to cover that stuff sorry - because it takes the eye up from below onto the I love this board and decollete where your your collar bones are it's it's just a very flattering design yeah and you want to you know you do want to kind of think about where you want it to lay we're seeing still a very popular trend of very long necklaces so if it's it's a little lower you know kind of weird that might be sitting on you or sitting on a client if you're designing for someone but you know you can also do the hair flip but you can also bring it up really high so that if it's sitting up near your decolletage there right above the collarbone you know you have you see that that would be is just sort of ending just at the turn of my neck there so just something to kind of think about as you are designing as you are designing some of those strong pieces as to where it's gonna lay and then where you want the back to start and how much space you really want back there for most people I feel like the back their neck is give or take about six inches to get to the sort of what I call the the turn of the neck is to when you kind of start coming over that shoulder there so just consider that as you are doing some of these strong pieces so with the option also of adding a chain extender if you want to do that that's a great option as well and I've done that here because this was a little bit more of a choker piece and I realized that it was very slim and very small and I enjoy wearing it nice and up-close but I added this nice 3 inch extender which has a nice little ball at the back so if you wanted it to be a little bit looser you could do that as well so chain extenders are also wonderful and that's just a great tip if you are especially designing for a Jewelry Show and you're not quite sure who your client is going to be who's going to want to take it home that's a great little option there add a little briolette or drop of the gemstone you're using is it comfy yeah I incorporate that in why not absolutely and you can do that even with some longer necklaces here you see I've done it with this one where it's a little bit of a longer necklace and I still added that little chain extender there at the bottom so I am going to probably hmm I don't know what to do next I think I'm going to go back to my little moonstones here but I want to add a little bit more of the metal element happening so I think I might do a little sort of small small variation here so let's alternate maybe just five of these and see as you can just sort of see that for the most part I'm working with odd numbers again it really doesn't matter if you you realize that you need that extra little part of an inch you know go for it that's theirs here's the thing with stringing there's no rules you know there's like sort of your personal design rules that you might want to follow but you know there's nothing saying that you can't do whatever you whatever feels right or whatever looks right whatever lay is right for you you know especially when you are working with an organic material such as gemstones you never really know what you're gonna get and you can see that even these little runt ELLs they seem like they're pretty you pretty um similar to each other but they have a little different you know qualities to them and also here's a little tip so I just kind of want to show you this side by side you can see how saturated this is when you put all those gemstones together and how desaturated this looks when you put metal beads in between imagine the difference if those were gold also and that's another thing too you know I see a lot of gemstone jewelry done well a lot actually with mixed metals yeah um so you're using both but you know yeah if you're gold and you have that moonstone it might look very different it'll kind of become a little bit of a different color so that's just something to just think about as well alright so let me see if I can finish one side and then I'm gonna show you guys how to actually finish a clasp and I have some great little techniques for that alright as you finish yeah can I show some of these beautiful cabochon sit oh please do please do alright let me finish my design and Alexandro take it away so over here you can see that these flat back smooth stones called cabochon have no holes in them and so what they are for is setting into a bezel and so actually the piece that I'm wearing as well as a variation on this which is just over here to our right on this form has a 18 millimeter by 25 milliliter cabochon laid into a bezel and when you shop on our website at beadaholique.com it's made really easy for you the bezels have all their measurements and the Cabot ron's have all their measurements too so you can really mix and match to design to your fancy so you can see we've got an assortment of different shapes and sizes here in beautiful carnelian rose quartz some Chinese jade and to show you the variation of the matrixes that come in these stones and how unique each one is I wanted to hold this up against the one that I use just so you can see the difference again like Kat said you never quite know what you're gonna get with gemstones and that's why it's such a treasure hunt so we've also got this beautiful rhodochrosite which I just love and some red tigereye so cabochon yeah we also have these beautiful blue lace agate earrings that have been made with some cut chain they're a really creative design and then just super simple stones glued onto a ring back for just a really nice statement piece yeah so cabochon and then also the briolettes come in you know assortments of shapes and sizes got some Amazon there some pyrite chalcedony and amethyst so I definitely wanted to show you guys all of those and then just below here you can see these beautiful star cut gems and these are about eight millimeters I love the cut on those because they're they're faceted and symmetrical but kind of in an asymmetrical way so just so lovely and organic um and then the cat loves this with all accommodations on this strand you could come up with so many different designs and then in between the two is a strand of that agate drusy and I just love the way they've faceted this stone but then beneath the facets you can see those those little divots and cutouts of sparkly crystal inside I think it's so interesting so that's some of our strands yeah and as you're talking about that strand that has just all kinds of different colors here's a here's a project that we've you know sort of overlooked on our table here but this is a nice pair of earrings and this actually features the Zola elements tassels and I love how big these guys are they are so fun they are definitely some shoulder dusters but I just have one of those little star cut and this is the matte amethyst up here at the top but what's really nice is if you have a strand that's got that multicolored you know you can actually break that apart into several different projects and there's something really wonderful about that so if you're getting into gemstones you know go for maybe some of the mixes I think you'll find that you'll have a lot of fun utilizing those and really really having fun with you know trying to pair different things or just just seeing how different colors work together you know especially then it gives you just a lot of options that you may not have before so yeah so gemstone mixes are really really fun mm-hmm-hmm all right so I'm adding some more of my moonstone here and while I'm doing that we have another question so mm-hmm so one thing that you'll notice is and this is generally true for most stones and we were actually talking about this the other day that they have they're a little bit cool to the touch because they're a natural material so oftentimes you know if because what you're what you're getting if you're not getting a gemstone is you're probably getting glass so when it's a gemstone it will be a little bit cool to the touch and you'll find that especially with like tiger's eye and malachite those tend to be the cooler stones but that's one thing that you'll notice and I think there's also a little bit of a weight to it one other thing is I was in China a couple of years ago and when I was there one of the things that I noticed is I I was able to go to the Jade factory and they show you kind of how to take a flashlight and see and how to tell if it's glass or real Jade and that was one of the really interesting things so yes you can actually take if you're let's say you're at a gem show and you're not quite sure of the quality that you might be getting bring your flashlight take a look at it you'll be able to see some of the striations because don't forget gemstone is a natural stone so you'll actually be able to kind of see what is in there and then there's different grades of gemstones and you know I could go into that for days but that's a good way to kind of see because you'll be able to see if it's glass if it's got that like opaque almost yeah there's um you know what I I will link to an article because I this is how I learned how to do it and it's how you can tell whether a gemstone is real or not but if you don't have a flashlight and you're just kind of eyeballing something pick it up it should be cool to the touch glass tends to take the warmth of your hand pretty quickly so it won't feel as cool so that's just a little indication that might help but yeah again just look for it it's a natural stone especially when you're looking at cabochons xand cut pieces I know picture jasper is one of the hardest ones to fake because it is so organic but you know there are some good fakes out there sadly and you want to make sure that especially if you're paying for the quality that you're getting the quality yeah and often times you can tell aesthetically by the variation striations and matrixes of the stones I'm having a recollection with pearls that a way to was to tap it against your teeth and there's a berry dandy there's a clicky high-pitched sound to authentic pearls versus the man-made ones that were sort of more hollow against and again yeah feel it what the touch is just you can kind of tell but it you know if you're ordering online of course you can't write can't get those those tactile sensations well we definitely do our due diligence here at Vita Holly to make sure that what we are giving you guys is true gemstones if you're looking at something in the in pardon me pardon my stringing if you're looking at something in the descriptions it tells you potentially where it's from if we know but we also are we stand by what we have with our grades on our gemstones and we can stand by Dakota stones they have beautiful gemstones and they are authentic and we have many many more on our website so I just want to say that you know from beadaholique we do really pride ourselves in giving you guys the best quality gemstones and you know sometimes they are expensive but it is the quality that we're really selling you guys so I don't want you to say that you you mom and often get what you pay for it's kind of you know yeah if something is too cheap yeah you know sometimes yeah it's just you know it's it's the tough part about gemstones but that's why I suggest using one of those multi strand pieces because then you're getting all kinds of different colors you're getting to work with stuff you're getting to discover without sort of spending all that money on I want amethyst and I want adventuring and I want lapis it's like no no no just just get that you know this is the multi strand and you know we'll see how we're doing there all right there are ways to heat treat and color treat gems to bring out the colors in natural stones as well all the variations mm-hmm all right so we are nearing the end here I think I'm I don't know if I'm happy about this I know I think I like it I like it actually all right so let me show you guys a couple little things on how to end this and I'm gonna do one side here so before I start picking up one side I'm gonna take my little bead stopper this is like a cool little coil thing and I'm just gonna place my wire in there because I want my beads to stop and not fly away because I've spent the better part of this class training my project together throughout all my talking but before I finish that while I have the camera here I just want you guys to get your last chance for your comments in to win our giveaway we're giving you some wonderful wood beads we're giving you an exclusive beadaholique and of course just in a beautiful assortment of all kinds of different stones we have that beautiful star cut in there we have some amethyst some rose quartz and then over here I'm just gonna give you guys some extra little fun tassels that you guys can find great uses for with your gemstone jewelry for the summertime all right so get your last comments in to win our giveaway and I'm gonna finish up this necklace real quick and one of the things again you know I've so I've been talking a lot about the weight of the necklace so I have a big focal down here and then I went to some smaller ones some wood beads I might want to add with more wood beads there I might adjust this design I don't know how I feel about it yet but here's what I want to say so these little guys here these kind of look like little horseshoes what they are is they are thread and wire protectors so here's how we're gonna finish this off because this is gonna allow me to add a little bit of extra weight and it have that pull there where it's not going to be strained onto the beading wire so especially if you are using a thinner beading wire to accommodate your beads or your gemstones this is a great way to go so all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take my crimp tube and I'm gonna there we go all right I'm gonna take my crimp tube and I'm going to slide it on and then I'm gonna slide on one side of the wire protector and you can use these with everything it doesn't just just mean gemstones so you slide it up and over so it has that little channel there on the side you can kind of see that and I'm just gonna slide that down there there we go and now another thing to consider is the size of your clasp so I have two different sizes here now I'm gonna go with the larger one because I want it to be easy to wear but also to really take on the weight of my piece now this one will probably work just fine but I want to see if I can get that larger one on here so before I thread this other end through the crimp tube I'm gonna slide this up so it's actually going to sit into that thread and wire protector just like that so you can see that it has a nice sleek little finish and it's very polished and you can see that that has a lot of strength to it now because it's metal on metal and not the wire alright so there we go alright so now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna string the other side of my wire through my crimp tube and bring that all the way up to the top here okay so there's my crimp tube now one thing that we we've done here a lot is I'm gonna be using the magical crimpers now what this does is it's different than a regular crimping plier which looks a little bit more like this this is a regular crimping plier so this is going to crimp your bead in half and then fold it over so you're gonna have a seam and what this is gonna do is this is gonna actually turn that crimp tube into a nice little silver ball with no seam so here's how it works alright let me just make sure I have a nice grip on it okay so you can see hopefully in the nose of the plier there what looks like that little groove so we're just gonna set that little groove in there and I'm gonna come over and I'm just gonna crimp it just gently just pushing it down just a little bit so it kind of becomes a little flattened pillow now I'm gonna take that and I'm just gonna rotate it about ninety degrees or so and I'm gonna come in sorry I'm trying to keep my fingers out of the way so you guys can actually sort of see what's going on hand let me get a good grip on it there we go and I'm gonna kind of squish it again alright so it's starting to you can see it start to kind of come together but it still looks a little wonky there so all I'm going to do I'm just gonna kind of gently squeeze and rotate and squeeze and rotate and I know now my hands are getting in the way there we go but all I'm doing is just sort of rotating it just a little bit at a time and what it is doing is it's forming a nice little crimp in the form of a little ball there and we're nice and secure and let me just kind of do a little 360 here so you can see that it looks like a nice little ball and that's a great little thing it just looks really nice and trim and stay here I'm gonna bring in another example here to show you this is a gold version and I did that magical crimp here on the end and the reason I wanted to do that is because look how well it matches the design of using those little gold beads throughout so I had these little 2 millimeter beads and I wanted to finish it off with that magical cramp now I'm not using this is an example where I'm not using those thread and wire protectors there because this is so delicate it would have actually flared it out so I wanted to just go with that little wire but because this one is super fine I didn't feel the need to use that here in this particular design so you don't have to use them so this is another little example but that's how cool the little magical crimpers are and you the magical crimping plier so cool and I took a double take at that bracelet mhm first got it on the table I said where are the gemstones you just said this but those are hematite B mm-hmm these little purple beads in here they kind of look like little flattened squares and they have one hole and they're just so cool yeah again just another little sort of organic shape that we have so there we go alright so that does it for our gemstone class thank you so much for hanging out with us guys and I am ready to announce our giveaway sort of as crisp hands over the last little bit of our table I'm think I'm going to finish this design and have it on the website there so we'll see what we'll see what actually happens all right so congratulations to Deborah I and I hope I'm saying this correctly Deborah molnár so congratulations you are winner of our beautiful giveaway so all you need to do is contact us at service at beadaholique.com and we will get your shipping information and send you these beautiful gemstones congratulations so congratulations Deborah thank you so much for watching everyone if you have suggestions on what you might want to see a full class on or hey if you just have a video suggestion be sure to leave that in the comments below we do read that and we definitely have done customer suggestion videos before so it's really really fun so thanks so much for joining us guys and we will see you back here we are always here the first Friday of every month on YouTube live and Facebook lives just gonna stay I can't wait for the next one I know the next one's gonna be really fun alright we'll see you guys back here in May have a great one bye bye