Mokume Gane Pendants with Beaded Bezels - Beading, Polymer Clay & Resin

I've been doing some beading instead of wire wrapping on my last batch of MG pendants because I liked the look so much more. It is not really a cost effective thing to do though! If I were to sell these factoring in the actual time it takes to make one....well, I'd have to charge more than many would want to pay, I think. It is the problem with doing something you love...:)

This one is reversible. I would also have to take that into consideration as a cost factor!

The black beads in the bail below are matte finish Toho beads. Love how symmetrical they are.

Here is the other side of the pendant above.

I used some matte finish Toho beads on the pendant below. Loved the verdigris look with the polymer clay colors! There is so much foil in this cabochon...hard to see in the photograph but the color really pops. I had someone ask me where I got all the colored foil to make these pendants with! That's why I love this method so much...all the sparkle! This one reminds me of a dragon eye!

This one is from my second batch of the Mokume Gane method Marilyn Ray Knopic teaches.

This is one of the older ones, too. I didn't really like this Mokume gane batch until I put the resin on!

This one is actually made with scraps. I think it's my best beadwork in this batch! :)

But those aren't the only things I've been working on! Here's some others...

I've made these flags before...there's a simple tutorial on the internet here for it - but the person I made it for told me the finding turned immediately....that's what I get for not buying real silver! So this replacement I made for her is 999 sterling. :) 

I've also been playing around with resin some recently and had these tiny dragonflies and gears from Lisa Pavelka that I thought I'd use with this setting I came across. I really like the way this one turned out.

This is another resin bracelet I came up with using my tiny gears and sprockets with Lisa Pavelka Magic Glos. :) First steampunk items I've ever made that I liked! :)

Now you know what I've been doing lately! Let me know what you think in the comments! And make sure to stop by my Pinterest page to see a lot more of my creations, and please like my Facebook page, Karmic Confetti!

Non-Fused Fusing Glass

I got very familiar with my MWK over the last few weeks, especially after making all those flowers! But "real" glass fusing, with dichroic? My results have been sporadic. I do love the ones I've made but the very textured dichroic - I end up losing the beautiful texture and ruin the glass. It's still beautiful but loses a lot of what I loved about it.

The photos below show my recent experiments with some of the dichroic I've been saving up. I have a lot of beautiful tidbits from scrap packs I bought. Here  are just a few of the nicest pieces! Luscious, aren't they??

You can see how I laid out the green piece from above for the MWK. I used some scrap red as the base...don't ask me why. :D You can see in the texture that the green becomes a blue color at an angle. Dichroic is so beautiful!

This was the result. I screwed it up. I didn't let it fuse long enough and put it back in before it had cooled all the way down. The result was I got a crack and fired it just a tad too long the next time. And in my opinion, I am not crazy about dichroic without clear glass over top...it just doesn't pop! I should have waited until I was more familiar with the MWK before using the good stuff! (I made this before I did all those fused flowers! I might be able to know better when to stop the fusing process, now!)

So, I cut that piece in half and put a clear cap on them and refused. They are the ones pictured on the top right, below. Big difference with the clear on top, right??? They are even more beautiful in person.

While these are truly beautiful in how they turned out, I wasn't happy with the loss of texture. The blue green ones kept some of it by showing a different color where the streaks are, but the purple triangles basically lost the dots it started out with. (The red/clear dichro ones were made by fusing the clear textured piece (from the photo at the top) face down on the red scrap. I did like the texture these kept a lot more...)

So, I was a bit hesitant to melt some more of my favorite pieces and have them come out badly, so I decided to use my trick of making a bezel with the flat aluminum wire I've been using recently - and not fusing the glass at ALL. I found some gorgeous copper colored flat wire and made this. What do you think? This piece of glass was just like this in a scrap pack...didn't even grind the edges. You can see it in the photo at the top.  I just love that natural little rainbow gleam in the corner! It's even prettier in person!

These two below are made from a piece of glass pictured at the top of this page. I love the way the light reflects from this glass! It looks green if you look at it one angle, orange another! As you can see in the picture...they are from one piece of glass, just facing different directions....All I did was cut it in half. So maybe I'm a chicken for not fusing these pieces but I am VERY happy with the results! :)

Let me know what you think in the comments! Thanks again for visiting!

More Engraved Stained Glass Pendants

I DID say the next post would be the topic I've been holding back on, but I am still futzing around with the results, so it will have to wait one more post! I hope you find this one interesting anyway! I started off asking in one of my beading groups how to bezel a square pendant. Being that the stained glass is only one layer, it's a bit thin, which makes it harder to bezel. I would probably do better if I rounded the corners somewhat. I was pointed at a design on Youtube and came up with a netted bezel. Below are pictures of the front and back. The Swarovski crystals are actually on what I consider the back! Don't ask me why, it's just how it came out. :D I just couldn't leave the back plain so I engraved it, as well....

The front is mirrored. I love this glass! Not THAT happy with the beaded bezel, but you can't love everything you make! :D It looks a little crooked in the photos but I promise it is not. It is just how it sits on this thin glass....

 I've also been playing around with the flat aluminum wire bezels again, this time with my engraved stained glass experiments. I found some copper colored wire in my stash, and I love the way it looks next to the glass! I came up with this novel method to wrap the stained glass so there are no sharp edges and no chance of breakage. The wire that holds it in is minimal and yet strong and decorative. It has a clean look and feel to it. At the same time, it is much faster, cleaner, and easier than wire wrapping OR beading. What do you think???

This one is in black bezel wire. Sorry for the picture quality! I think I did better outside...

Another copper colored bezel. Love this color! The glass looks so different in person. This is also the mirrored green.

Just to show you the difference...here is one photographed indoors. 

Same pendant, outdoors! :) Aren't the colors just luscious?? This one is a little large for a pendant, though. I think it might be a Christmas ornament! :D

Last, but not least! Thanks for looking and come back now, y'hear? :D

Tomorrow...the unveiling! 

Stained Glass Windchimes

Another one of the recent Facebook groups I joined was a stained glass group. I've made a few things in stained glass but I never felt that my soldering was sturdy enough. I saw someone post a project on the group that didn't require any soldering, though, and decided to make my own version!

I got some thick copper wire at Home Depot in the electrical department. I am not sure how long the spool of it was but I have enough to make about four of these, for around $15. I have a stash of stained glass due to lucking into someone selling a huge bin of it at a yard sale once....got the glass and some tools for $25! I used iridescent and clear. 

I have a set of glass drills from Harbor Freight (best place to buy tools and some supplies cheaply!) but didn't want to bother with using them, so I decided to use my grinder's wheel to grind rounded indentations so I could use that to attach them to the wire instead. Much faster! I used this rubbery clear/white hollow tubing I bought for jewelry at Hobby Lobby - it comes in black and white together in the package, but I have never had a use for the white until now! I think they use it for pony beads. 

So I had a lot of that on hand and decided to reinforce it with some fishing line inside it. I cut small pieces of the tubing, ran some fishing line through it, wrapped it around the indentations in the glass and then secured it with some 20 ga copper wire I had from jewelry making. Then I added some beads, and more tubing, and attached it to the wire with some more wire wrapping. The pictures might make that clearer!

I have a large stash of beads...a lot of these were from a package I got from a friend who had purchased them at a yard sale. I am not sure about whether this should be used outdoors, although all of the materials are rather weatherproof I will have to decide whether or not to seal the copper so it doesn't tarnish. Below is a closeup so you can see the variety of beads I used and how I secured the pieces to the wire. I wrapped a package of 20ga around the thick wire and left spaces where I could run the individual danglies I made. It is a pretty simple project, just requiring a glass cutter and the supplies I mentioned. I didn't cut straight lines, it is mostly freeform. I just ground the sharper edges off and left it rather - whimsical, shall we say! You COULD wrap the edges but then the glass wouldn't "chime". It doesn't really make a sound like windchimes are supposed to, though, anyway! More of a tinkle. :D You can vary how it hangs, by making the spiral wider...which would shorten it up some. Or make the circumference smaller and then it would hang lower. I have to take it outside and get some pictures with the sunlight hitting it! 

Update! Here's one in the sun. :) I just love this glass! <3

As always, thanks for looking! Make sure to stop by my Pinterest page and like my Facebook page! 

Polymer Clay and Beaded Yorkies

I've been back to playing around with clay again and I was making some hair for my little fairy faces (a couple of posts back) and had some Yorkie colored clay to fool around with and decided to try making one. I adore Yorkies...we have four of them! They such wonderful, fun dogs. Ours are not show dogs, by any means! They are far too active to have long hair but love to play in the pool when it's warm enough and although they are all getting older now (the youngest two will be ten this year!) and sleep a lot, they love to fetch a ball or a toy. 

Anyway, I had this leftover clay and my clay extruder and this is what I came up with. I think I'll try again soon and make a larger one, but I like the way this little guy came out. I used black glass beads for his eyes but the rest of him is entirely polymer clay. I used Primo "Jewelry Gold" and "Copper", neither of which looked like I thought they would, but they were still a nice color for a Yorkie. I used some antiquing on him, sanded some highlights into him, and then dusted some glittery black chalk on him after it was baked. 

His neck came out a little thick but he's my first try! :)

This is the last Yorkie I made, a little beaded guy. I adore this one. :) He's a pendant. She, actually, because she has a bow! I think I will make a clay bow on the next PC one I make. :D 

Thanks for looking! Make sure to stop by my Pinterest page and like my Facebook page! 

Bezels and Stringart

In my post yesterday, I touched on the subject of making bezels out of flat aluminum wire for polymer clay pendants. Pictured below are a few I have planned for the next time I want to make a polymer clay item...I'll use them to cut the clay out and it should fit tightly. Pictured with them is one of my fauxpals encased in a bezel. If I had planned it, I would have punched holes in the bezel and poked matching holes in the clay before baking. This one I just glued in. Using the wire in this manner makes a nice, professional, polished edge for the pendants. (UPDATE: I must have subliminally copied these ideas for my bezels below! Hers are SO much nicer though!)

The sun below shows how I used it to cover the edges of my back to back polymer clay faces. I retrofitted it, meaning the pendant was done but the edges were ugly, so I had to cut pieces of wire and punch holes so it would fit tightly around the wires holding the wire sunrays on the baked clay. I'm happy with the result. It's not noticeable that the black bezel is two pieces!

Now to get to the point of this post. :) I also tried the bezel technique around a previously made faux ivory/bone pendant that I wasn't crazy about the sides of, seen below. It really punched up the appearance of it. Gave it a nice finished edge. Then I tried something a little different..I used my metal punch to punch holes as evenly as possible along the edge of the bezel wire before bending it around the pendant (polymer clay with Lisa Pavelka foils on it, love that stuff!). I did not bother to glue the bezel to the clay this time because....

...I decided to wire wrap it instead. Sort of the old technique we learned in school where you used string and nails to make a picture...this time used to hold the pendant in place. It also held the bezel onto the pendant. As you can see in the photo above, the punch left jaggedy holes along the edge (I wasn't as careful as I could have been because I was experimenting!) and although I used a file on the edges, I was a little leery it would scratch or catch. But once the wire wrapping went on, it filled all the holes and covered the sharper edges, so it worked out nicely! The holes keep the wire from slipping. Next time I'll be more precise about hole placement!

Below is a different type of string art pendant I was making a couple of years ago. It is a pink fauxpal and I wrapped it by encircling it with a coil of wire and wrapping in between the coils. It takes a little practice but is a neat way to finish a pendant. Especially when you can find pretty pink wire to match your clay. :)

Hope you enjoyed this post and got some ideas from it for your own designs. Thanks for looking! Make sure to stop by my Pinterest page and like my Facebook page!  Later!