How to Embellish a Channel Bead Core with a Strand of Beads by Becky Nunn

	Nunn Design Antiqued 24K Gold Plated Large Hole Channel Bead Core 13mm (1 Bead) SKU: BMB-9000 $4.99
	Beadalon Large Beading Mats - Prevent Bead Rolling 13 X 18 Inch (Set of 2) SKU: XTL-9935 $6.75

Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi this is Becky Nunn of Nunn Design and I'm the guest designer doing this fantastic project here at Beadaholique.com. What you'll need for this project are some Crystal Clay, channel beads and some seed beads and this is an idea what we're doing with this simple technique of using the seed beads while they are on the string embedded in the crystal clay and then pulling the string out so you can create pieces that look like this. For the first part of this project we're going to want to follow the manufacturer's instructions and put the gloves on and then you want to pinch off equal size balls of both the colorant which is typically the color like this and then the resin is the more beige color and when it's in this raw form this is when you want to use your gloves you want to mix them fully until there is no longer any marbling and sometimes it can be really sticky and stick on the gloves but this one's not too bad once it's activated and these two parts are mixed together you have 90 to 120 minutes to work with the clay while it's still malleable and nice and soft, after that it starts to harden and just like cement I often have a wet wipe right by my workstation because I don't wanna get any of the crystal clay onto my findings side edges or anywhere I don't want it to be once it's all mixed together it should look something like this and it won't be marbled Once your clay is mixed you want to make it into a nice round ball. I'm also just double checking to see if it's marveled at all and looks good and then I'm gonna snake it out into a rope about that long start to wrap it around the core of the bead and I'm just pushing it down with my finger and kinda just scooting it forward like this side action that's what's making the clay move to the different edges. On this particular channel bead it has this little groove in there which looks awfully nice but sometimes it's a pain if you get some clay in there so I'm just careful that I'm not bring my clay too far over and getting it caught inside of there and if it is it's no big deal you can get it out just by picking it out with a head pin but if you can know an extra little tip and not have to do more work later on, why not? as you saw I got to the end there and I just pinched off my access little bit and I'm just patting it together to make it not have a seam right there, that doesn't matter much because we'll cover it up with the seed beads in a little bit at least we knew it was nice n tidy and neat you might wanna check to see you don't have any bulges like you have more clay on one side than the other and if you do have a bulge and I do have one right there and if you wanna just go ahead and live with it that's fine but if you don't wanna live with it you can pinch off a little excess of that and then just continue to pat it down until it's nice and smooth and now that we've mixed this extra clay you might want to check out the video on what to do with extra crystal clay there's a lots of fun projects you can do with your excess clay before it starts to harden and you don't waste a little bit of it so now that I have my channel bead all nice and round. See what I was talking about you wanna make sure you use your wet wipes to get that excess off because once it's on there it's on there and sometimes I'll even have some on my fingers and so it's getting on there so I wipe my fingers off too. Now using your strand of seed beads. This is already on the string like this you start to wrap it around the channel bead, so I'm just lightly pressing it into the channel bead and then I'm going to continue to feed it along. If they start to get a little bit cattywomped, even that adds to it a little bit of character so don't worry too much about having it be just right, once you start to get to the other edge about right there, you can see that you have it meet right where it comes together you're going to press down on that one and then start to pull gently let's see how we're doing here pull you see that string is coming out. We had one little guy pop off, don't worry, we'll get it on there but the rest of them we can just go ahead and gently press it down inside and then once you feel that that one looks good and it's all in a row. I don't know where that one came out. It might have been at the end of this string or I think that lost another but that looks pretty good you can still go back in and adjust them using your fingernail to put them into place and then you want to take your next round. I've not done very many with this smaller size seed beads. The samples that I showed you earlier showed larger seed beads. So this I'm not sure how it's gonna fit on there but you can go ahead and mix up the strands like if you have some seed beads in your stash that are larger sizes than other, you can mix them up and do different examples I'm making sure that my seed beads are pressed on the way up on that strand, this little guy needs to come up to the surface on the top parts. I can easily pull it up once I get those seed beads on here and before I pull that string out I'm going to make sure that I have them somewhat down inside of there I'm just kinda going around and making sure that they're kinda lined up and I'm pressing them slightly down into alright and I'm ready to pull. I have to make this special noise that's the magic the magic string noise you just keep on patting them down and keep going alright and then once you have all of the different strands you just want to keep on using your fingers to kinda sculpt it down and into place and sometimes your beads might turn on their side that looks kinda cool itself, this takes a little bit of time and a little bit of practice but it is just so much fun and so easy as you can imagine this would of taken for ever if we were embedding each of these individually so I'm really into any kind of project that makes it looks like it took me forever but it did not I'm just going around slightly pressing them down nice and into the clay. Take your wet wipe and then wipe over the surface of it. Just to make sure that you don't have any clay on the outside of those beads there you have a fun little bead core. So this is the part of the video that is the Becky Nunn's dog-and-pony show where I show you some examples of how I have used that seed bead technique on other different projects. So on this one right here I just used it all the way around the outside edge patted down the crystal clay into the base of the bezel and then I used those seed beads on the strand. I just pulled it out and I just so happen to have a bezel that fits perfectly right inside of there down here I did pull them off of the strand and embeded them individually like you would with any kind at Crystal these were on the strand and I want to point out this is what it looks like when you don't clean it up off of your piece sometimes it gets on there and it's really really hard to get off you can pick it off once it gets hard and then over here I did the same thing as down here. I took it off of the strand because it was a oval shape I wanted it to go elongated and that was fairly fast to put it right inside the crystal clay so again this is Becky Nunn with Beadaholique.com and I hope you enjoyed seeing all of these fun examples of how you can use seed beads on a string with the crystal clay Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!