How to Make a Fancy Link using Bead Caps, Crystal Clay, and Chatons by Becky Nunn

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Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi this is Becky Nunn from Nunn Design and I'm a guest designer today at Beadaholique.com and what I'm going to be making is a really fun little bead cap bead like you're seeing in this sample right here what you'll need for this is some bead caps you'll need a couple of the little crystal chatons, some crystal clay and you're welcome to use whichever color that you have I'm going to be using a brown and inside of the crystal clay you'll find they have a little tooth pick with a little beeswax on it. So we're using that as well as the gloves, some head pins and some cutting shears. We're going to be using a gold head pin and putting it through the crystal clay and the bead cap to create a link so your first step is going to be trimming off the end of the head pin. Inside of the crystal clay package you'll find a pair of latex gloves. You gonna wanna follow the manufacturer's instructions on how to handle and work with the clay pinch off two equal size balls the clay typically has the colorant as that darker color or the color and the resin is always this beige color so I've already pinched and put it into round little balls, make sure they're equal sizes and then you're going to mix the clay together until its no longer marbled some of the clay is stickier than others and well really stick to your gloves in this video you're lucky to see that is not but sometimes it does really starts to stick and pull and you can bring it down into your palm and fold it over and until it is no longer marbled once the clay is completely mixed it is then activated and you have 90 to 120 minutes to work with the clay before it starts to harden and you're not able to embed anymore crystals into it. This is what it looks like when it's not marbled anymore once the clay is mixed you can then remove your gloves, it's much easier to handle the clay I like to roll mine into a nice little ball and I can see right now that I have way more clay then what I'm going to need. That's okay because we'll be showing you about to do with extra crystal clay in another video I miss going to make a nice round ball and I'm going to put it together in between the two bead caps and depending on how much of a space you want you could have a lot or you can keep on pinching it off so that there is less of a gap like the example that I have here so also depending on what kind of size of chatons you're using that will also make a difference of how much of a gap that you're using and in this example I'm using such a tiny stone I know that I want a very small gap and that looks good about right there when I'm working I typically always have wet wipes right beside me so that I can go ahead and wipe off any of the clay that might be getting on my fingers because it's easy to the fingerprints on the piece. I'm also making sure that the clay isn't on the finding because once it gets on finding and then dry it's like cement, it's really hard to get off then I'm going to use my head pin I already cut of just put it right through the center of it and this is another reason why I have my wipes handy is that I can then wipe it off really easily. when it comes to this part of embedding chatons, my 48-year-old eyes can no longer take it so I use my glasses, so if you are having a hard time seeing these itty bitty pieces you might want to put on some very inexpensive reading glasses so that you can see this level of detail. First of all I'll show you how I pick up the chatons and move them around with the beeswax toothpick a lot of times the pieces will be turned upside down so you can just flip them over and you just pick them up and then you gonna start just embedding them down into that small gap and that's why we took that time to make sure that the gap was just about right so that these little crystals would fit right inside of them and you can make it is tight as you want or you can make it loose, you can alternate colors, you can do all kinds of stuff if you're finding that to the crystals are not releasing from the little beeswax just place it inside there and then slightly rotate it and it will twist off, another thing that you might see is that the crystals start to have a little bit of the residue from the actual beeswax, don't worry about that because after its already dried and cured you can go back with your wet wipe and wipe away some of that residue that might be on side of there. If you don't have a big enough gap to put those crystals in you can just make it wee bit wider if you like. Now just go around the outside edge or the inside edge and lay the rest of these crystals when I'm laying these in I'm not pushing down too hard at first because if you push down too hard sometimes they get all cattywomped I'm showing you a cattywomped example and then it's really hard to pull it out so I tend to put my crystals in really lightly but deep enough so that they're sticking into the clay and then once I have finished it I'll go back in and sculpt it a little bit more but even that cattywomped one that I showed you earlier still looks fine and you can press it down with your fingernail or use an eye pin to go in there and just kinda straighten it out if you don't like that look. Now I'm just gently pressing them into position, pressing them farther down into the crystal clay I'm also using my head pin that I fit through to make sure that that hole is nice and sturdy and straight and now I have a little fun bead and once that's dry it takes about two hours for it to start to really harden I'll then use a pair of needle nose to make the loops and you can reference that in another Beadaholique.com video & then you can go ahead and create your own bracelet or your own necklace or earrings or whatever you'd like to do. So this is the part of the video where I'm going to show you other Becky Nunn dog-and-pony show jewelry examples. So if you didn't want to use crystals inside your piece you can go ahead just put the two bead caps together and you're good to go. Down here I did crystal clay and just put a little bead cap and I just stuck another little chaton there to make a cute little pair of earrings here's other examples of using the two little bead caps to make a fun little balls to add, here it is in silver with garnett the piece that we did earlier and then on this one is just showing other ways that you can use the crystal clay whether you're just making a nice little ball inside of a jump ring, that's jump ring laid down first and then a nice little ball adding it onto charms here are two will bead caps inside another piece here are some right inside of my bead cap and then using the Cup chain on a toggle bar those are some fun other examples of the ways you can use the crystal clay and bead caps. Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!