How to Make a Metal Stamped Cuff Bracelet with ImpressArt Tools

	ImpressArt Antique Stamp Enamel Marker, Darken Stamped Impressions, 1.1 OZ, Black SKU: XTL-7200 $12.99
	ImpressArt Metal Punch Stamp Set, Assorted Hearts 1.5 / 2 / 3mm Sizes, Steel (3 Pieces) SKU: XTL-8244 $18.00
	ImpressArt Soft Strike Stamping Blank, Bracelet Strip 3/8 x 6 Inches, Aluminum (10 Pieces) SKU: XTL-8200 $14.99
	ImpressArt Soft Strike Stamping Blank, Bracelet Strip 1-1/2 x 6 Inches, Aluminum (4 Pieces) SKU: XTL-8203 $14.99
	ImpressArt Steel Stamping Block, Small Size with Rubber Feet 2x2", Steel (1 Piece) SKU: XTL-6236 $18.99
	ImpressArt Bracelet Guides Booklet, for Spacing Stamped Designs in a Line, 36 Stickers SKU: XTL-8259 $9.49
	ImpressArt Brass Hammer For Metal Stamping - 1 Pound - 1 Piece SKU: XTL-0277 $20.00

Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi, this is Julie with beadaholique.com flowers I have some wording here and we've actually been able to shape this cuff so that's a really fun project it's great for gifts great for the holidays great if you're making and selling jewelry and what we're gonna use is it basically our starter kit is this right here it's by impress art and you actually get the bracelet bending tool which is this and you get seven of these little aluminum blank strips and they measure six inches long by five eighths across so a lot of good space for you to work in right there and I already have one set open now if you wanted a different width or you wanted more blanks we do offer those at beadaholique.com as well so you see here we have different packs and this is the same one here that comes in with your starter set but we have wider ones as well as narrower ones and you can see on some of these you get quite a few strips so a lot to play with especially if you're making a selling jewelry or making gifts really a great option so for the particular project that we're gonna be doing here we are going to be using one of these little planks we're going to be using our little steel block which is also by impressed art we're going to be using a one pound and press art hammer then I'm using something which is really cool now these are bracelet guides and you can see I've used the first page of them that you get a bunch of pages and these are little ruler guides so these allow you to eat evenly spaced out your letters and also Center them on your piece of jewelry whatever you're making so we're gonna use that in just one minute but I also want that you know we're gonna be using these little hearts so this is a little set also by impress art three different sizes of the same heart so we have a 1.5 millimeter a two millimeter and a three millimeter I'm gonna be using a little letter set by impress art this is newsprint so that's what I'm gonna be using for that and then to really make everything pop you see how these really stand out we're going to be using a little stamp enamel marker and black but does come in green silver gold as well as brown so just to prep our workstation before we begin and to give you a few little tips and tricks first off when you get this out of the set here this comes with a little film on it it's just like a little clearer almost clears kind of blue sticker go ahead and peel that off and I say peel that off first because I'm a little example thing here that I've been practicing on if you're doing these little teeny tiny hearts the some of that little blue sticker can get stuck in there if you leave it on when you do it to begin with also another note you can see this is my little sample piece always keep if you do make a mistake always keep it so you can use it as a sample piece and you'll notice and I did it twice because I was practicing I misspelled my word twice because I wasn't paying attention to what letter I was crapping out of my little letter set so be careful with that hopefully I won't do that on the video but just kind of keep that in mind as well so before you actually bend your bracelet you're gonna stamp it so stamping it's the first step and we're also gonna put in on our little bracelet guide so there is a little instruction sheet at the beginning of it which is handy tells you how to line it up now we're gonna go to the page that has one available and we're just gonna peel it off and this is a really thick kind of cardboard like sticker and so what you want to do is let me take it off over there you're gonna line it up wherever you want it on your bracelet link now there's a guideline up top and there's a guideline on the side now I like to use these little side guide lines right here you see that little blue notch that I want to line up with the edge of my bracelet link and I want to make sure that corresponds on the other side as well and you have time to play with these these you can just pull them right off so I'm gonna eyeball the center and then I want to lay it down so that blue line is on the edge for both of them now you could measure from here to here as well if you wanted but now I've got a center point a nice line with markings and then I have also got this lined up here now for your letters you're gonna have a couple different types of letters of course for letters such as here's a B so when you're reading this you read it up right here this is a mistake I made so that is a B and then let's see here you have a deal finally here's a P so with the letters that have a little bit that goes down below the base line here you're gonna line them up with that second little blue line so for most of your letters you're just going to line it up with the top line if it's a P or a Y or a Q or a G you're gonna line it up with that little blue line below and you're just going to stamp right on top of this little sticker and it's going to turn out fine for you so those are the basics of what we need to do to begin and now we're gonna go ahead and do our stamping all right I've lined up my work surface a little bit differently right now now that we're ready to stamp I have two little tricks to show you first off I want to write happy thoughts and so I wrote that right on my tape so I know where to put my letters secondly I went ahead and I pre-selected my letters here so that I'm not having to hunt around in my case also hopefully that will prevent me from choosing the wrong letters as I carefully picked them out all right so we're gonna start stamping I'm gonna start with our H we're gonna grab this and put it right on to our block and then we're gonna grab our hammer so the trick to using these little bracelet guides and this might be a little bit hard to see on camera so if you look here you want the edge of the letter itself to line up against the edge of the bracelet guide sticker and the way you do that is you put it where you want it so I lined it right above the H here that I had written and then you drag it down until it catches and you will feel it actually rests up against that guide so once you've got it rested you're gonna try to give it one good whack so there's eh now I want to do an A and so you always want the impress art logo and the letter facing you so I'm going to bring it like this and turn it up like this so that should always be facing you and then again I'm just gonna drag it down until I feel like catch and I want to make sure it's centered on that line so you want the center of the line that you're lining it up with to be centered right here and this does take practice allow yourself the freedom to practice so eh eh now here's our first letter with a little bit that goes down below the sticker line so this is our P and what we're going to do is we're going to feel it catch and then we're going to scoot it down even more so it's on line with that little blue line P and then a Y and the Y is gonna do the same and that's why I chose this word because I really wanted you guys to be able to see what you do when you're confronted with one of these letters Y so there I've got a happy and now I want thoughts because we all want happy thoughts all right again I'm lining it up so I see the little logo facing me and I spread this out because this is a short little saying on a big blank you could have made them closer if you wanted to but I decided to space them because I'm gonna put little hearts between up I am double triple checking my letters each always make sure you're happy with the placement before you punch it's kind of like sewing it's a measure twice cut once same thing with metal punching you G and again this is gonna go below so I'm gonna drag it down and then scoot it down a little bit more H and then what I consider the fun part are the little random hearts because you don't have to line them up T and s it does really help to be able to write on that actual sticker all right we've got happy thoughts so now what we can do is pull this sticker off and then what you'll notice is sometimes if you do right over the sticker a little bit left behind so you just take your nail or a toothpick or something and just make sure that tape is off of there I say tape it's like a sticker all right so I got happy thoughts now I want to do my little hearts o so for my little hearts and again if you want the heart to be upright make sure that that logo is facing you I'm just gonna do these randomly and they don't have to be straight up and down and grab the next size I love that I get three sizes of the same heart and the set makes life really easy whoops watch your hands luckily I did not hit it but I was too overzealous I was having fun with my hearts it's the teeny tiny little one this is the one point five millimeter yep one more okay put that right here that's pretty good all right one more all right so now I could put this away I'm done with that I'm done with my punches all right so a quick note I want to show you my sample so here was a different spacing the spacing for my words smile was not every notch but every other notch so I did that along all the orange notches and you can see how that spacing is much further apart than what my spacing is here so that's just a quick note about the spacing now I'm ready to make this design pop so I'm doing basically all the finishing touches all the work on this blank before I bend it so this is my stamp in the mall and because I did have part of that little sign of this little sticker stick in a couple of those I want to make sure there's nothing gunky on here I'm just gonna rub it face down on a paper towel just to make sure I see a little bit of stick them right there so I want to make sure that's off and now what I'm gonna do I'm gonna have another one handy another paper towel and I've covered my work surface I'm gonna shake this up and now I'm going to go ahead and color these in I'm just going to go over their tops so what you're wanting to do is you're wanting to get into that stamped space and that's going to help to bring out your lettering and if you need more ink push it down like that and more ink will come out all right so you can look at it make sure you got it into all the little recesses and on the actual instructions for the stamp enamel marker it says to let it sit for one to three minutes personally I find about one minute is just about right so I'm gonna pull back and just wait a minute before I wipe it off all right it's been just about a minute I'm gonna rip off another little piece of my paper towel and I'm gonna start to wipe this and you can see how that lettering is just popping now it's really amazing how that brings it out now we can actually read it from a distance and if you notice I'm kind of getting a little gentle circular motion because I'm also kind of shining cleaning up my aluminum blank as I do this all right let's see what we've got there's a little bit stillness in the oh there we go all right we've got happy thoughts okay so looking at this I'm pretty happy with it turned out I do see that the oh and the U is a little bit close together so just a practice matter and the S is a little high but it will improve with time for all of us so definitely this is something that you do want to keep practicing always keep these little blanks but if you look this was my one of my first attempts using this new bracelet guide this was my second attempt and this is my third attempt so just in three attempts it's definitely improved a lot so that will happen with YouTube do give yourself time though with this technique because it does take a little bit of practice and just knowing what feels right and what looks right okay we are ready to go ahead and use our bracelet Ben plinth bracelet bending tool all right how do we do it there's a notch here there's a handle here you're going to hold it by the handle insert your piece into the notch and you're gonna use the leverage of the handle to bend it over the top now bend it most of the way but not all the way is what I found works best okay flip it around do the same thing on this side keep bending and there we go happy thoughts and we have a nice little oval blank now you can keep working and if you want to make it a little bit of a tighter oval so you can just kind of keep going at it and keep working at it I like it like this because it makes it really easy to slip on and off and also for people with different wrist sizes but there we go just like that we've created our shape and we've got happy thoughts now there is a little protective film on this side here I think you could take it off whenever you want I left it on throughout the whole process but I could have taken it off beforehand too so there we go and we are good to go this could be a nice gift for someone so I hope you enjoyed this tutorial on how to use this bracelet bending tool how to do the metal stamping how to use bracelet guides so a lot of fun stuff the enamel markers and you can find everything you see here available at beadaholique.com as well as other tutorials on metal stamping so this is something that interests you please do subscribe to our youtube channel here and also check out beadaholique.com because we have so many more videos that teach you different aspects of metal stamping and a lot more supplies for it as well