How to Use Katiedids Channel-Set Components with Crystal Clay

	Crystal Clay 2-Part Epoxy Clay Kit 'Turquoise' 25 Grams SKU: TRC-249 $12.99
	Crystal Clay 2-Part Epoxy Clay Kit 'Black' 25 Grams SKU: TRC-230 $12.99
	Silver Plated Adjustable Ring With 16mm Pad For Gluing (4 pcs) SKU: JR-1058 $4.85

Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi, this is Julie with beadaholique.com and I wanna show you how to use a Katiedids channel component to make a focal piece. I'm actually going to make the focal piece that matches this ring so it's going to be the exact same pattern but I'll show you how to put some beading wire through it so you can then string it into a necklace. Before I get started I want to show you a couple other Katiedids components. These are actually the same one here but one has a bead in the middle the other does not and they've got two channel rows which I've put four millimeter Swarovski crystal beads in they make really pretty focals. You can either bead these focals, you put crystal clay into them, you can put resin you just have to be careful where their holes are. You can do a bunch different things with them in this video I'll show you how to use crystal clay which is a two-part epoxy clay and this pretty scalloped Katiedids finding what you're going to need is some crystal clay I'm using turquoise, some chatons I've got pp24 which is the size of these pretty turquoise Swarovski Elements chatons I've got a larger one here as well which is a size pp32 you're going to need some beading wire for this project you'll need the Katiedids component and then in terms of tools you're going to need some kind of applicator to get the crystals into the clay and I'm using this toothpick which has some beeswax on the end. That actually comes with the crystal clay packet and then I'm gonna use a crochet hook actually just to do a little clean up of my clay if need be. You could also use a wire for this step or if you have like a magical pick and use the pointed end of the pick a lot of different things you can use. I just found that a crochet hook is super easy for it and then you're gonna need some gloves as well. So before we mix our clay I want to do the first step for this project which is take your beading wire I've actually pre-cut mine to 24 inches and that's going to be to make a necklace which is the same as this one here and on your Katiedids component you'll see that there's a hole on both ends. Now different Katiedids components work in different ways. Some have four holes so they go all the way through, some just have two holes so just read the product description carefully. This particular one has two holes my beading wire can go through the first hole but then there's actually not another hole in that center ring for it to go through. So what we're going to do is put it through the first hole and we are going to then skip over that middle part and exit out the hole on the other end. I'm using a pretty fine beading wire a .015 I just want half of my beading wire beyond each side and go ahead and make sure that my ends match up. There we go and now we don't want that big piece of wire stretching across the front of it so I'm just going to take the wire and position it to wrap around the bottom of the inner circle. What's going to be nice too is it's gonna force my wire to arch this way, which will have a really nice affect when we add our beads. So that is ready to go now I need to add our crystal clay to it. I'm gonna put on a pair of gloves. Always use gloves if you're using crystal clay we have a lot of other videos on beadaholique.com explaining crystal clay and two part epoxy clay in more detail I'm going to go pretty quick over the explanation for this video because the video here is really about the Katiedids and how to make a focal piece like this but a quick overview I will do just in case you're not familiar with this product so with crystal clay you get two parts to it and these have already been used for another project but you get a good amount. This is the 25 gram pack you get part A here, the colored part and a pinch of about half as much as what you need to fill your Bethel sell regardless of whatever project you're working on as this one another one always remember in total you can eat enough clay to fill the entire peace but each part Part A and Part B you need half cell may need proximate this much just can't be about half so that much part a and I need it exactly equal amount party I find the best way to measure the is is to roll your facts right amount into a little ball shapes and then compare the size of so I think I need just a little bit more the part B escaping just a little bit more the curing process on crystal clay does not start kleenex that two halves and say don't have to worry about rushing to step up the process right now it's like I got a little too much Penshoppe a little bit put it back an essay that looks to be about right think I helped put my extra back in my container i think is less for another project and then I take my clay this question to false together and then I'm gonna work them mixing them using my fingers for a couple minutes basically what I'm going for as I want to get rid of this model the fact that you're starting to see I want to get rid of all the strange things have a nice uniform color this is almost mixed, you can see just a little bit of color variation in there I'll mix it for a couple more seconds. Epoxy clay air dries so it cures on its own, it doesn't need to be baked in oven like polymer clay which is a huge advantage because you can then mold it the side of things. You can add metal components to it. You can do a bunch of different things that you wouldn't be able to do if you had to put this in an oven in terms of your working time I like to get the main part of my project done within the first 20 minutes of mixing up my clay. I find after that it starts to lose its stick-um and it makes a little bit harder to embed objects that package does say you have about two hours but like I said I really like to do it with in about 20-25 minutes. You can see it is sticky, items are gonna stick to it without the use of glue and so we're actually gonna be able to put our clay right down into the bezel center of this channel component without the need of glue. It's going to stick there on its own I'm going to pinch off a little bit now you're not going to be able to save any part of this actual crystal clay that's been mixed once it's mixed it's going to start curing. So if you find that you have a lot of extra left over of the mixed amount you might wanna hurry and see if you can find another project to work it into I'm going to roll it into a little ball, place that ball in the center have my finding. I want to basically just see if that's the right size it looks just a tad big to me so I'm going to pinch off a little bit put it with the rest of my clay and re-roll it into a ball and to me that looks like a happier fit. So now I'll take my remaining clay and try to roll it out into a snake like shapes with what I'm trying to do here is I'm trying to roll it into a thin enough snake-like shape that is gonna fit into that outer channel keep working it so that my snake shape gets a little bit more narrow but I want it to be fairly uniformed pick it up see what it's going to look like. I'm pretty happy with that. If your gonna set this down on a surface make sure it's a clean surface. I have to some white computer paper right here so at this time I'm gonna take off my gloves the mixing portion is done and if you're going to touch the crystal clay with your fingers make sure you thoroughly wash your hands afterwards so now that I've got the gloves off I'm going to carefully pick up the ball gently roll it in my hand and this is just smoothing it out because the gloves did leave a few little like crinkly impressions in the clay. I'll set that back down into my center in the bezel and I'm going to gently press it into place I'm just working it starting in the middle I'm gently pushing it out to the sides and it is sticking to the base making sure the beading wire stays out of the way now I'm going to take my finger and rub it over the top to smooth out any fingerprints. Now I need to lay this tube shaped into the outer channel. I'm gonna lay it right on top of that beading wire. I'll force the beading wire down to the base of the setting. I'm just gonna put the clay right on top of it. I thought it might be a little wide, if that was the case I would have just rolled it until it was a little thinner just laying this down into it, going right over that wire I have a little thin spot right here I'm gonna force my clay to kind of bunch it up a little ever so slightly just to make that a little thicker right there keep working your way around until your two ends meet and at that point they overlap and just pinch off your clay and I do have this clay leftover this is not gonna be able to be preserved. It already actually started the curing process so if you want to use it for something you want to do that pretty quickly after you've finish this project now I'm just gonna take my fingers help press those ends together to make a nice join and then continue pressing my clay into that channel I'm happy with that and so I'm done touching the clay for now I'm going to wash my hands and I'll come back and I'm gonna apply my chatons my hands are all washed. I'm ready to add my chatons. So I'm gonna start by working on the outer row I'm going to take my applicator, a magical pic works very well as well but this came with the package of clay so I'm going to use it I'm gonna pick up a chaton and the first one I wanna place is gonna be over that join that I made. I can see where I made that join. Just press a chaton into it. I haven't pressed it all the way in yet I want to turn my toothpick around and use the side that does not have the wax to press the chaton on into the clay so the edge of the chaton it's just under the clay lining just like that do that all the way around. I don't want them to overlap but I do want them to be fairly close together. I'm just gonna put a few down and now go back and press them into place and you'll feel your clay is moving a little bit that's totally fine just gonna work my way around it's nice if there's any imperfections in your clay you can hopefully push the chaton over. It's a little tricky when you get to the end You don't really wanna take any chatons off that you've already placed but you also don't really want to overlap. Hopefully you can just scoot the clay around a little bit to make it work I want to work on these guys first pushing them over ever so slightly to make room for that last one. Press it in to make sure it's firmly set that should be fine. So now I've basically finished this row I want to go back and I wanna press each one down into the clay one last time to make sure that they're set we're going to do the inside which we're going to use size pp24 turquoise chatons. These were aqua. These are going to be the turquoise ones and we're gonna start on the outside and apply them in the same way and again I'm not pressing them into place until I've set a few. I just find that to be a little bit easier. It goes a little quicker especially if you're doing a large project and you have a tight time frame with your clay drying now press those in and you can probably see in the video here the clay is moving around a little bit but that's fine now I have a decision to make how many I'm going to be able to fit in that middle section I could also do another big one but I think as you see in this ring I was able to fit three in the middle and I'm going to do that again one, two and three and I pressed them into place and let that clay move around a little bit to make sure thy all are secure and covered all are secure and firmly placed in there we're going to let this dry overnight and then we're going to add our beads to the side which I'm not going to do on the camera because that's just a simple stringing technique we'll have the full instructions for this project on beadaholique.com and then one final thing, one little tip before we sign off here is if you do have any areas where perhaps your clay has gone over the edge like right here while it's still wet just clean that up a little bit to make sure that's nice and nice. There we go and then I said that was one final quick tip and I misspoke. I'm going to add one more. So this was actually a mistake I'll be honest. I forgot to add my beading wire and so I turned it into a ring you can see it's got the little holes right there but they're not really very noticeable all I did was I made this setting. I found a glue on ring finding and I put some E6000 glue between the two let it dry overnight and I've got a very fancy cocktail ring so if you happen to ever make a mistake like that you can do this or you can do this intentionally as a really pretty ring the way it is. Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!