How to Make a 'Tuffet' Ring using Crystal Clay, Chatons, and a Bezel Ring

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Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi this Julie with Beadaholique.com and today I show you how to make this ring. I'm calling the "Tuffet" ring because it reminds me of a tuffet and what I've used is a ring finding and some crystal clay, bead cap and various sizes at swarovski elements crystal chatons so this ring is not hard to make. It has a really fun, very blingy appearance to it It's not too hard to make. So we're going to do it here in pink with rose chatons so I have a Nunn Design bezel ring. It has a nice design on the back it's adjustable It's got this great bezel setting to it and then I've got this bell shaped bead cap that I'm going to turn upside down and put in the center of the ring I've got cotton candy crystal clay and three sizes of chatons. I've got SS24, PP24 and PP10 and then what came with my crystal clay kit was a pair of latex gloves and this little pick which has some wax on the tip which is going to allow me to pick up my chatons and set them down into my clay so I'm going to don the gloves if you worked with crystal clay before you know that you need equal parts of A which is the color and B that's the hardest I've used this pack before to get an idea on how much you need you're just gonna have to estimate it and I'm going to put that in there. I can tell that's already too much for half of it pinch off a little bit put that back that might be about right. I'd rather be a little over than a little under What I like to do to make sure that I have equal parts I take each one roll it into a ball I set it down on the table and I see if me balls look even and it looks like I have a little bit more hardener than the pink clay pinch it off re-roll it and see what I have and those look pretty even take them squish them together keep mixing them until all striations are gone and you have a nice uniform color once you've mixed it and it's uniformed, roll it into a ball and set it down on a clean work surface and I'm going to take my gloves off at this point and then if you are taking your gloves off just make sure that after you're done working with your clay thoroughly wash your hands with soap and water it's a little bit easier to get a smoother ball with just my hands and make sure your hand are clean of course take that ball and set it down the middle of your bezel and press it down now take our bead cap, put it down the opposite direction of what you'd normally think to use it as, in the center press it down make sure it has a nice uniform shape to it I wanna mix up a little bit more clay to go into the center you could go ahead mix the whole batch and pinch a little bit off and keep that aside I'm just going to make a little more this is probably too much pinch it make it into a ball again and I'm going to drop in the center I think that's still too much drop into the center I'm going to place my first chaton make sure this is perfectly even because I don't want to do anymore adjusting on the clay itself at this point you have quite a bit of work time here it's nice to get it uniform before you start placing chatons start with the largest one go right into the center and the wax on the tip you can easily grab that Press it down you want the edge of the chaton to just be under the level of clay that's the first one now I'm going to take a small chatons and put them in each corner there should be enough clay there to grip the chaton if you want after its all done you can try to take your nail and see if you can dislodge those if you do dislodge one, use some E6000 glue to put it back in place it should stay fine but these are the only ones that don't quite have as much clay gripping them I think they add a nice element to the design and we're still centered we're going to do a nice even row of the PP24s all the way around the edge start with one place it as close to the silver edge your ring finding may be different color press it into place we're just gonna work our way around you don't want them to touch each other you want a little space between each that you do you want them as close as you can get them without touching when you get close to the end you want to see if you're going to have space for one or two looks like a I'm going to have space for two here if it's a close call you don't want to have the chatons to overlap you might also have to move to have a bit more space between the last couple ones so just keep in mind when you get towards the end of your row where you're at and how much space to put between each of them you want it to be informed so that row is done now I'm going to add, if you can see in here, a smaller chaton, the pp10 chatons that is between every other ones, the little gaps between the two larger stones, I've put the smaller ones go ahead and do that now you can create whatever pattern you want. This is just one pattern I came up with but you can load the whole thing with chatons, you can do stripes, you can do whatever you like so when you're done inspect your ring look at it from all sides and see if you need to adjust your clay at all, so I'm noticing that it looks like this side as a little squashed going to take my fingers it's a clean finger again press my clay and mold it how I want it. You don't want to stretch out your clay don't want to do this with too heavy of an hand a nice light touch you're helping to reinforce the bond between the crystal and the clay by padding your crystals down inspect your ring again check it from all sides, make sure you're happy with it and when you are, you're going to do is keep it in a up right position and let it cure over night I'm going to take a Kumihimo plate right here. It happen to be on my work table see if I can balance it on there there we go. I'll let it dry like that overnight and then you'll have a ring which is ready to wear and you can find the full instructions for this project on the Beadaholique.com's website under are free project section. Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!