How to Add Crystal Clay to an Open Back Bezel

	Open Back Bezel Pendant, Circle Eclipse 23.5x37mm, Ant. Gold, by Nunn Design (1 Piece) SKU: PND-435 $5.29
	Nunn Design Antiqued Gold Plated Textured Cable Chain, 4mm, by the Foot SKU: CHA-9806 $5.35
	Nunn Design Jump Ring, Twisted Rope Open 17 Gauge, 8mm Antiqued Gold (10 Pieces) SKU: FJR-3045 $3.59
	Nunn Design Toggle Clasps, Hammered Toggle Bar 19mm, Antiqued Gold (1 Piece) SKU: FCL-02052 $2.09
	Nunn Design Toggle Clasps, Hammered Toggle Ring 17mm, Antiqued Gold (1 Piece) SKU: FCL-2060 $2.09
	The Beadsmith Magical Rhinestone Pick Up Tool With Cleaning Kit - Great For Placing Flatback Rhinestones SKU: XTL-4004 $17.99

Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
hi this is kat with beadaholique.com beautiful bezels here from a nun design and these are from the winter 2020 collection so these are going to be really fun to work with because they actually have two different channels so today I'm only going to be adding it to the single channel there but you could absolutely do a very cool thing where you're doing some color blocking or some different colors of crystals so I'm going to talk a little bit about that so I'm gonna be using this particular bezel here but I want to show you some of the other designs and some of the other styles that you can do so she has these that are also that double sort of well and then we also have some little Etsy charms here in some fun little shapes for you to work with as well and incorporate into your design so the other components that I'm going to be using is of course can be using some crystal clay and today I'm going to be using that sage green color and I have some crystal iridescent green at Swarovski crystals now you can use any color of crystal I just wanted to kind of coordinate and I thought these are really pretty to bring out that antique gold I have a couple of the Swarovski buttons these are actually sew on buttons but we're going to use them as cold connections in our design here i have a nun design a toggle clasp and some then design twisted jump rings and also some Nunn design chain that's gonna work really really well for us today here so the only other tools that you're gonna need is we're gonna be using the magic pick to help us with our crystals however you will get your wax in the crystal clay so I'm going to talk about that so you have an option to use that we're gonna be using a little bit of wax paper so this you can just get from a grocery store or supermarket and then we have two pairs of chain nose pliers and that's it all the other tools are gonna be right in our crystal clay so let's go ahead and open this up because this is a French pack I just want to show you what you get inside so we have our gloves and we're gonna put those on and we have our epoxy clay this is a two-part clay so we're going to use a and B and then we have this is what I was referring to this is that little pick that has a little bit of beeswax on the end of it so let's say you use your wax your you've used your crystal clay before and you accidentally threw this away the magical pick is a great thing to use so I'm gonna show you kind of how how to use both but they're pretty much the same so I'm just going to set those aside now one thing I want to show you with the crystal clay is that it does have an expiration date so it'll say best buy now this one is best by October 2021 if it is past that date you can still use it the only difference is that your clay might be just a little bit hard so you might need to work with it a little bit more so I'm going to show you kind of what that looks like - all right so let's go ahead and set that aside and if you've worked with crystal clay before I'm gonna go a little fast here kind of going through the process but we do have a how to use crystal clay video and I can provide that link for you above and I'm just gonna unroll my gloves here now if you've used your gloves before these are sort of a one-time use gloves you can just use any any gloves again it's something that you can get at like a craft store or a supermarket or anything like that so we're just gonna roll on our gloves make sure your work surface is protected there you go perfect alright so now we're all set to go so now I'm gonna open this with my gloves on of course and I'm gonna take these guys out so this is Part B this is your hardener and this is Part A this is your colorant your resin ok so what we're gonna do is I want to focus on making sure that I get just enough resin or excuse me just enough crystal clay to fit into that single little bezel there so I'm gonna take Part A and I'm gonna just gonna pinch off just a little bit probably about the size of a pea just go ahead and kind of open this up I'm just gonna pinch off a little corner there and just kind of roll that in my hand just to kind of get a little little ball sized there we go alright so yeah so it actually looks like a little tiny beat alright so I'm gonna fold that back up make sure that you keep it sealed so I'm actually going to pop right back in the bag and then I'm gonna do the same with the hardener so just open this guy up and this is gonna be a little bit softer which is funny because it is the hardener but this should feel a little softer okay and just try to eyeball and pinch off about the same amount kind of roll that in your hand we think I got just a little less there on that one so now I'm gonna hold them side by side oh yes I definitely got less okay so let's get a little more of that hardener just rolling that in my hand there we go and I actually made it a little bit too big go ahead and pinch off a little all right that should do it for us so I'm gonna set that down before I really get into my clay because you have about 30 minutes to work with it before it starts to really harden so we want to make sure that before we start mixing we have everything kind of put away here and set aside all right perfect okay so you can see that I already have my little wax paper here I have not taped this down now if you're doing an open back bezel and you're putting resin in it we usually recommend using tape on the backside but because we don't have to worry about spillage because obviously this is going to be a clay we can just use a little bit of that wax paper just because we want a nice smooth finish on the back all right now this is probably even more clay that I'm going to need to fill that so it's always good to have a couple of extra little bezels hanging around for some extra projects that you might want to do so what we're gonna do now is we are going to smush this together and start just kind of working it in our hands until all of those little striations are gone so what we're looking for is a complete ball of that little green without any white showing through so you just kind of work it in your hands just like this and here's where I get a chance to talk to you about what happens if your crystal clay starts to go if it starts to get really hard this process here is warming the clay so it actually will help if your clay has gone bad you can see how kind of smushy this is if your clay is not if it's maybe a little bit crumbly this process can help kind of revive it a little bit you can also see that it's getting a little bit later but I just wanted to take a moment to see that's what I mean about striations so you see the little of that little marbling that's happening there so it's not quite ready so we got to keep working with it but I just want to show you because we get that question a lot of how do you know and it looks you know solid and done so I'm just kind of folding it over you know there's no rhyme or reason to this don't worry you're not adding bubbles or anything it's not like I said it's not like resin in that way so you can just kind of keep working it but yes if you're if your resin has gone a little crumbly this can help it because the hardener can kind of help activate it if it's still crumbly after this step you might need to toss it and just get some new crystal clay all right and you can see that it's a lighter color than what we started with it's because that hardener tends to lighten it up a little bit so if you just want to look side by side not very much but just enough all right so now I can already tell it this is way too much crystal clay for my bezel right there so what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna pinch off a little bit of it okay I set that to the side and kind of roll that into a ball so I can start testing the size and I even think that might be a little bit too little this is why you get a nice good half-hour to work with it so don't worry you have plenty of time don't rush make sure you get the right amount okay okay so now what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna kind of place it down there and the wax paper is gonna keep it so that it is still in that space but what we're looking for is it to be almost kind of flat and flush up against that bezel there so you can just see that I'm just kind of working it and just kind of patting it down into place don't worry that it's a little you might have some marks from your gloves on it don't worry about that we're just gonna kind of keep pressing it in and I think that's actually good that's a good good style to it actually I can actually kind of peel off a little bit from the sides you can see it come off there because I want it to get it nice and kind of flat across the top because when we add our crystals here they're gonna go into the clay so it's gonna cause it to kind of bubble up a little bit so I'm actually just scraping a little bit with my nail just kind of getting that off the top there and if you have any crystal clay if you get it on that bezel you can usually just wipe that off with like a baby wipe so those are always good to have on hand as well that's a little tip from becky nunn all right so now we just want to kind of give it a couple little final press downs make sure it's nice and flat there and I'm just gonna peel it off the back and you can see that it's not quite as flat on this side so we're just gonna flip it over and I'm gonna you try to use a cleaner finger now you can absolutely start to work without the gloves which is probably what I'm going to do here in a second just to smooth it all down but what we want to do is we want to achieve a nice little look on this that's nice and flat alright perfect so I'm gonna flip that back over and use this as my front side now I'm gonna take my glove off I'm gonna kind of get a clean finger in there and just sort of smooth that out and I'm barely touching it I know it's hard to kind of tell but I'm just barely touching it because I just want to smooth out that top surface there and just get those edges nice and clean all right so this is what our piece should look like now I'm gonna take my other glove off as well all right I'm just gonna get in close to examine here we go No looks really good okay so the next step is we're gonna take our magical pick here and let me break out that beeswax you can see it's how that works as well all right so let's get back up here close to our little crystals and I recommend leaving it on the wax paper you can go ahead and kind of just set it to where it you know make sense for you so you can hold it with your fingers but this little wax tip it's gonna be nice and sticky so you can start by picking up a little crystal there and you can pick it up by the top and then just sort of finding where you want to place that into the center now I'm gonna try to get a lot of crystals in here but this is the basic step and you can go all over the place you can go in concentric circles I'm gonna kind of work my way around here just see how many crystals I can get in around the side and then I'll sort of assess where I want to go so that's how that piece works the magical pick has this extra little guy here now this is just scotch tape and this is sort of your activator so all you need to do is just tap that and it gets it nice and sticky and you can come in and it's the same process of just picking up your shirt on and bringing it over to your piece all right so I'm gonna work all the way around and get that piece totally covered in crystals and I'm gonna show you what my final result is okay so I just added my final crystals here so what I'm doing is I'm just kind of going around and kind of touching on each of them just to push them down into the clay a little bit further we want to make sure that none of those sheet ons are poking up but you can see that I did I started in like a little concentric pattern but then as I got closer I just wanted them to just look really sparkly because I wanted to fill the space you can choose how you do it but I'm just sort of adding the sin and you can use this other end to sort of just kind of make sure that they're all nice and nestled in there and this is why we want to keep it on that wax paper because we can then peel off that wax paper to make sure that it is still nice and flat on the back you can if you wanted to flip this over and add more crystals to that back part this is still pliable right now so if you did want to adjust this at all you can also add a mica powder or something to the back just to finish that look I'm gonna leave mine as this nice little green because I think it'll be a fun little pop if you sort of twist it around it becomes two little pieces so what I'm gonna do to let this dry is I'm actually gonna turn it on its side and hope to balance it so I'm actually gonna kind of leave it just like that oops mm hmm let's see let's see if I can find something better to balance this on so what we're gonna do so I'm just gonna balance it just like so let it dry in a nice position again this is not quite like resin where we have to worry about it spilling or sliding or anything like that but I just don't want it to dry in that wax paper because I don't want to have to try to deal with peeling that off a little bit later so I'm gonna let this dry fully and then when I come back I'm gonna show you how to construct a necklace using our Finnish dependent okay so I've let my piece dry for 24 hours I'm gonna remove it and this is what our finished piece looks like I had those beautiful PP 14 sheet ons in there and they just Sparkle so lovely and you do see a little bit of that green pop through but it really becomes nice and glittery and gold and here's the backside just in case you wanted to see that it's nice and it actually is a little bit shiny which is very cool but it's nice and flush with the back of the piece so this is the front so what we're gonna do is we are going to turn this into a necklace and to do that I have brought in a couple of the Swarovski buttons that I think are gonna be really fun these are sew on buttons and I'm gonna actually use them as links in this project by using the Nunn design jump rings here I'm also going to be completing with a toggle clasp and some Nunn design a chain so let me start by kind of breaking apart some of this chain now you'll notice on my desk I don't have flush cutters and that is because the chain itself actually has open links so you can open and close these little links like jump rings now I'm going to be connecting a jump ring on either side and a jump ring in the middle there but to connect that little link what I'm gonna do is I'm going to count 21 links so that I get that nice up-and-down on both sides so you're gonna want to do an odd link that no matter which length you choose for this particular part so let me just count off 21 and let's see so 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 so 21 so I'm gonna go to the 22nd link there and just find the seam it's on either either end of it because these are like little oval jump rings almost and we're just gonna pop that open alright you can just kind of remove that from the side there we go and I'm just gonna link this back up so that it's ready to go for my next one so that way you're not wasting any chain you're not cutting any links and that's the really nice thing about the Nunn design chain so let me just kind of eyeball and just double check here that I have the link that I want there we go alright so what we're gonna do first is we are going to link one side and I already have this open I'm just gonna crack it up and just a little bit more and I'm gonna hook on one of my little buttons there and link on my chain just like so and close that up make sure have a nice enclosure alright so the other thing with these buttons is that they are one-sided so you want to make sure that they are gonna be facing the right way and the right way to do it is sort of I'm going to show you here let's open that jump ring link that on you actually just go ahead and kind of close that jump ring I want this to be free-floating you can attach it to one of those links if you want but I'm just gonna kind of thread that chain down through that jump ring come on use my fingers in the way area all right so it can free float on that chain there so now that I have my chain attached and you can see that I'm trying to pull it to the side there so you can see the up-and-down of each of those chain links so what I want to do is I want to keep it just like so come to this side and take one of my jump rings that's already open and kind of link that on and now what I want to do is I want to make sure that I'm linking my button the same way you'll know right away if you've if you've done it correctly and if you haven't just open that jump ring up one more time and just close it I just sort of reverse it but you can take your buttons stretch them to the side and you see how that chain is perpendicular all the way across regardless of where that Center pendant hangs so you'll see that it'll hang right in the center there so the 21 links gives you about an inch on a little a little more than an inch on either side so you can adjust that but again keep it an odd length and you'll be fine all right so on one side I'm gonna take this chain I'm gonna open this up add on a jump ring and add it right on to this side right here just like so and close that up all right and then pretending I'm coming all the way around here to the other side I'm gonna do a little bit of a different thing here so we're gonna take that jump ring again a little gentle twist to get it nice and open go ahead and attach it to the chain don't worry about whether it's twisted or not because I won't matter for this part right here slip it on to our button and now we're close that up you always want to make sure that you have a really good closure sometimes I tend to overshoot and then let it fall into place just like so okay so you have a couple of options here what you can do is you can add your toggle in the back if you want or you can add an extra jump ring and a lobster clasp however you want to kind of finish off the necklace but I'm gonna do a fun little design thing here so I'm going to move to one side of the necklace here and I'm gonna count up 13 links here so 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 and on the fourteenth link here I'm gonna come and I'm just gonna find that seam again it's on this side and I open it up slip off the chain and I'm just gonna close it so now to this side this is where you're gonna want to be aware of that chain again so onto one side here I think you have another jump ring give it a little gentle twist to open it up slip it on and we're gonna slip on our bar close that up and now on this side go ahead and open up that jump ring slide on and the best way to do this is to just kind of put it on and then we'll see if it's the right way but these are both sort of 360 elements here so I'm just gonna kind of separate out my chain there just make sure I've got it going the right way and twisted the right way before we close our necklace and it's just a very simple little toggle clasp there but that's how and perfect there we go and it fits so that is the necklace there but it just adds a little bit more of an element to the front piece now you can adjust where all these piece are on the necklace you'll have some extra jump rings as well so if you need to add a length or you want to lengthen apart or add jump rings here you're more than welcome to do that you can add jump rings down here make it a little bit more of a whi necklace but that is the little necklace there and you can have a lot of fun creating really cool pieces with the crystal clay and some shit ons you can also if you want to take it up a notch you can add resin to the open well there you can add resin to the small one it's entirely up to you but that is how you can add a crystal clay to an open back bezel and create a necklace thanks so much for watching you can get all of these supplies and tools over at beadaholique.com and if you're new here to our youtube channel be sure to hit that subscribe button below