Audio Transcript
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Hi this is Becky Nunn of Nunn Deisgn. I'm here at Beadaholique.com I'm the Guest Designer and I'm gonna be showing you a project how to use seed beads and crystal clay to make a little project like this this is a project that we did earlier. I think last month with Beadaholique.com and put online a downloadable instruction sheet but now we're gonna actually show you in a video how to make it for this you'll need to have a Nunn Design channel bangle and we also have a bezel bangle you can use and you'll need some crystal clay. I'm going to be using the white in this particular video and some seed beads whatever size that you want. For cleanup you want to have a little bit of wet wipes handy and a bowl of water and that will be for the second part of us using the clay inside to put inside the beads the first step of using the crystal clay is you're gonna wanna pinch off from the packaging two equal size balls once you've put your gloves on. Typically the clay is always has a color and then always has a beige color, this is the resin and we don't want to touch that with our hands while we don't have the gloves on and it's not mixed so you might take a little bit more time to look at the packaging on the crystal clay to read about that so I'm just mixing these two parts together until they are not marbled at all. You have approximately 90 to 120 minutes. It says it on the packaging to use the clay before it starts to get hard and not malleable at all and since we're gonna be embedding the seed beads into the clay that's why it's really important to still be really malleable but still 90 to 120 minutes is a quite a bit of time. You have plenty of time to work with it the white mixes really nice and it doesn't stick to the gloves but some the other colors do really stick that's what it looks like when it's not marveled at all anymore. After your clay is mixed and you've taken off gloves. You'll want to mix the clay roll it out into a snake about like that and about eight inches but don't worry about it exactly because you'll be able to pull and use it as you go along. So with my channel bangle and just slightly pressing the clay down inside and I'm using my thumb to either pullback or push forward to kind of make it as even as I can inside of the bangle. This is where you'll spend most of your time on this project just making sure that it's in there in a nice even quantity because if you go really fast it kind of get cattywomped. Some areas will be higher and some areas will be lower and since we're going to be putting seed beads and its gonna be a little bit more important that it be as even and flat as you can so I'm pulling the clay and I have to admit it's gotten pretty warm here in LA today this clay is now getting really soft so if your clay is starting to get really soft and it's really hard for you to work with this isn't hard but just in case it was you just let it sit for like 15 minutes and it'll start to set up a little bit, it might be easier for you to work with. so I'm pushing forward and I'm pulling at the same time to kinda get that clay down in that channel as evenly as I can, I'm also just pushing over to the side. See how those gaps are right there we're just pushing it over to the side to make it nice and smooth and that there's not any gap in that area. This is where you just put on some music of choice and enjoy your time of zoning out, pressing crystal clay into your soon to be fabulous bracelet if it breaks apart just go ahead and blend back together or if you didn't mix enough which I highly recommend that you under mix your clay verses over mixing your clay you should use your clay in a wise way and not waste it but if you didn't mix enough, you can just go ahead and mix a couple of like a pea size ball or whatever you estimate that you're going to need and then just blend it in the same way you saw earlier when you saw it separate I just like that drop down. I can blend it back together but another reason is that I noticed that I was starting to get a little bit thick right here, so I'm just moving it forward on its own and distributing you can either pinch off some of the Clay and move it to another location but I'm just pushing it forward sliding it until I get a good amount. I'll just take off the excess it's starting to get a little thin right there just pullback pat down, just take your time let it have some give-and-take see how moist this clay is. If you're starting to get it to stick on your fingers like you're seeing mine is you can go ahead and just wipe it with a wet wipe. I'm often working with a bunch of wet wipes right next to me so that I can make sure that I'm getting that Clay off of my hands and a little bit we'll go back and make sure that we're getting it off of the metal as well because when this stuff dries it's cement hard and so it's really hard to scrape it off at a later time. Alright so where my overlap was I still have a little bit of a higher area so I'll just pinch some one and blend that together alright so once you have it down and in the bangle again we're trying to keep it as smooth and as flat as possible inside that bangle but yet high enough so that it's above that side wall there. I'm going to take my wet wipe and I'm wrapping it around my fingernail. You're welcome to use a knife if you didn't have much of a fingernail I know that there are some of you out there that could be the case and I'm just wiping away that access from that side area and just blending it in then that will help it have a nice clean side edge also underneath here you'll want to make sure to clean it because my fingers were working under the whole time as well flip it from the other side and then pat down to make it smooth and now when I'm patting it down I'm kinda you know moving my finger away from that side edge so that we don't have to go back and clean it up one more time with the wet wipe alright so once you have your clay all the way inside of your bezel and you feel very confident that you got it looking the way you would like it you can move onto getting your seed beads ready to embed into it. I'm getting ready to start to embed my seed beads into the channel bangle. I already have the crystal bangle around the inside and I went ahead and just sprinkled assortments of these three different colors onto a piece of paper and I'm working on a a hard surface and I've taken two business cards, it's just what we had that was nice and firm so that I can kinda move them into a channel on that was kinda equal proportion approximately about an quarter of an inch which is the size of the bangle bracelet. Then also just trying to see if I can get them to be flat and on the table alone so they're not stacked up on each other and if you really really wanted to get into it you could start to lay them down so that they are all flat, not standing up but let's see what happens if we just have it be an organic process I think it will be great so once you have your seed beads laid out like that take your bangle bracelet and we're going to be rolling it across the beads like that and I usually handle it in the inside right here and I'm noticing I have a little bit of stickiness and so remember how we talked about earlier making sure that we're cleaning the piece all the time that stickiness will hardened so I'm laying it down inside that channel, pressing and moving it forward evenly pressing this as best as I can all the way across Look at that. Isn't that cool. So than when I restock I'll have to add more seed beads let's see how much more do we have to do we're halfway, so I need a lot more seed beads kinda reminds me of those little sprinkles. I don't know what it is about those sprinkles my kids so crazy about those. What are they called? Jimmies? Sprinkles that you get on cupcakes. Alright so see I laid the beads out. I just squished them together with the cards to try to keep that channel and then I'm just going through and flattening it to make sure that I don't have a lot of beads stacked up on top of each other we're halfway through rolling this way, pressing down that rolling process forward until we get to that other area where we started and then if you have gaps or if some of the beads didn't take, you can take your fingers and you can just push them down manually into it or you can go ahead and rotate it over the pieces where we have those gaps. Alright so once we're here we're gonna start to just squeeze and press down securing all of though seed beads into place. Some of them will drop off, those were the double-decker piggy backs maybe or so we can go back in there and add some more so like I said you have 90 to 120 minutes to work with this so we've got plenty of time for this part and then as soon as we're done with just making sure that all of our gaps are filled we'll let this sit make sure all those external hangings are off and is pressed I'm pressing in making sure that all of the seed beads are down inside of there before we let it set for a couple hours that will make the crystal clay harden so that we can do the second step which is going over the surface of it and applying another layer of watered-down crystal clay and that will fill up all the holes inside of the seed beads creating that look that you're seeing here so I'm just pressing down with my thumb and squeezing from the bottom and rotating around and I'm going to use my wet wipe again go along those edges like we did earlier, just cleaning it up getting that excess off. So it's always better to have less clay and less height than it is to have too much because it will squeeze over on the sides when you roll it like that and then you let that sit for a couple hours. In the next step we're going to be taking the piece that we've let dried for approximately two hours now were going to be using crystal clay to go over the top to embed it down into the seed beads what you'll need is some white crystal clay that you've mixed together the same way we did before a little bit water and this is just to keep everything nice and moist and to wet down the crystal clay even more and I always have a pile of wet wipes so go ahead and get the bangle bracelet a little bit moist and you'll also pinch off a small bit of the crystal clay getting it moist as well. In this process it's pretty messy, don't worry, we'll clean it all up at the end what we're doing is creating like a pottery slip that is nice and thin and pressing it down into all of the little crevices of the bangle bracelet I'm using some pretty good force and that's why I wanted to make sure that my seed beads were fully embedded before I started this process just going back and forth, sometimes I'll even if I have a really big mound that I'm having a problem getting it to thin out, I use the edge of my finger as you can see I got a pretty good stretch started right there pressing that clay down inside of there if you do have any seed beads that pop out go ahead and remove them and fill it with the second over glaze on the clay keeping it nice and smooth take your wet wipe and scrub away that excess so that it's just down there inside the seed bead once you're finished going all the way around go ahead make sure that the excess is off to the sides and off of the inside because when this hardened it is really hard to get off and there you have such a fun project using seed beads and crystal clay This is Becky Nunn for Beadaholique.com creating a project hopefully inspired your creativity. Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!
