Let’s Make a Ring: Beadalon Flat Artistic Wire Ring

April 25, 2017 By candiecooper 1 Comment

Today I will show you how to make a cute ring made with Beadalon Flat Artistic Wire. There are very few tools required for this ring and you don’t have to have a lot of wire working experience to make it. Anyone can make this project and have a great ring to wear in about 30 minutes or less. Let’s get started on our own Flat Artistic Wire Ring.

Read below to see the supplies and steps to create this tab ring. You can also watch the FaceBook live video that I hosted about this project for a step-by-step tutorial.

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Filed Under: Show Notes

Using a Wire Guardian to Protect Your Beading Wire

April 17, 2017 By candiecooper 1 Comment

Many of us use beading wire for our projects. My favorite beading wire is from Beadalon and is 49 strands. This is a perfect go-to wire for any project. When the finished piece is something that is going to we worn often you want to make sure to protect the bead wire. By using a wire guardian to protect your beading wire you can lengthen the life of your jewelry.

Spring cleaning was at the top of my list the other week and I was going through my TV projects that I had left over. A little secrete between you and me is that most of the time when I create a design for a TV show the piece is not finished in the back. When the show is over I have a pile of projects that are designed and just shy of being finished and ready to sell or wear. I found this great piece that I designed for kits on JTV with Dakota Stones. Having never finished this piece I wanted to turn it into a great over the head necklace, my favorite.

To finish off the necklace I will be adding some Lipstick Ranch chain to give it the extra length that I want. Rather than just using a regular jump ring to connect my chain I will be using a decorative bail as my connector. Since there will be movement of the beading wire through this connector I will be using a wire guardian to protect the beading wire and extend the life of my necklace.

A wire guardian is a horseshoe shaped finding that had two tunnels at each end and a channel across the top. Your beading wire will go through the tunnel, over the track and back through the other tunnel. Before you attach your wire guardian be sure to add a crimp tube. To find the size crimp tube you need be sure to look at the packaging, it will tell you on the front. If you are new to beading wire you can see my post about choosing the right beading wire that I did for you. Once you string your wire through the wire guardian and your bail then you will crimp your wire as normal.

After I crimped the beading wire to hold the bail on I decided that I wanted to cover the crimp tube to clean up the design a little more. You can use any color crimp cover that you like for your piece. The crimp cover adds finishes the piece off just one step more.

You can see the Facebook Live show that I did showing how to use wire guardians and how I created this project on my Facebook page or below in this post. I always recommend using wire guardians when the piece will be worn often or in a high traffic area, like a bracelet.

Post your pictures on my Facebook page of any projects that you create that use these techniques. Join me each weekday at 2:30pm EST for a Facebook Live video with a new project.

Using a Wire Guardian Facebook Live Video:

Filed Under: Jewelry, Show Notes

Making Baked Marble Jewelry

April 6, 2017 By candiecooper Leave a Comment

“You Crack Me Up”

Making jewelry from cracked marbles is a wonderful way to use found objects that you might not typically think to use in your projects. Baked marble jewelry is a project that you could make with your kids and teach them a little about science in the process. If you take some time to look on Pinterest you can find many projects to make with the baked marbles technique, but today I am going to talk to you about turning them into a beautiful pair of custom earrings.

Baked Marble Jewelry Supplies List:

Marbles (you can get these at the Dollar Tree)
Oven
Baking Pan
Container of ice water
Safety glasses
Glue (E6000)
Bead Caps
Earring Findings
Head pins
Pliers-round nose and chain nose
Bowl of uncooked rice

Before getting started there are a few things that you will need to think about. First, this project is made in the oven at a high temperature and for a solid amount of time. I suggest doing this on a day that isn’t too hot or it will make your house hot too, but it can be done whenever you like. When you pick out your supplies for your baked marble jewelry you will need to look for clear marbles. Opaque marbles will not work well for this project. Due to the nature of the coloring in opaque marbles you won’t be able to see the cracks in the marble, which is what is giving us the uniqueness of the piece. Another tip that I found was to not use the two tone marbles. You can see below how my marbles turned out and I have a few that were multi colored that worked out just fine. Be sure to make a few extra marbles to be sure you have two that you like for your earrings.

Baked Marble Jewelry Directions:

You may be surprised at how easy it is to get the cracked effect in the marble. You will preheat your oven to 500 degrees (F) and then bake the marbles for 20 min. Once you have baked them long enough you will take them out and immediately dunk them into your ice water. As the marbles hit the ice water you will start to hear them crack.

After the marbles have been cracked and cooled you will then be able to assemble them into your earrings, or whatever piece you want to create.

Assembly of Baked Marble Jewelry:

In this tutorial we are talking about making earrings. If you have one marble that you really love and there isn’t a match to make earrings with you could always get one of the cage pendants that I have in stock in my Etsy shop to display the marble. The cage charm will allow you to display your favorite marbles and change them out to match what you are wearing.

For the video tutorial below I made a pair of earrings. In order to attach the marble to earring wires I added a bead cap with glue. Be sure to use E6000 on this project NOT super glue. If you use super glue you run the risk of frosting the marble if you get excess glue on it. Super glue will frost any glass surface once it dries, this will hide the cracked effect that you worked to put into the marble. Before you start glueing your piece together be sure that the marble is completely dry. Any moisture on the marble will not allow the E6000 to adhere securely. One tip about using the E6000, be sure to pull the glue away quickly when you are finished. If you pull it away slowly you will get the strings as you would see if working with hot glue.

Ann Gardan bead caps are one of my favorites and what I really wanted to use in my baked marble jewelry. As I was putting the piece together I noticed that my Ann Gardan bead cap did not give me enough contact with the marble. Without a fairly flush connection (you want as much surface area connection as you can) you run the risk that the marble will come off of the bead cap if stressed. To get more contact between the bead cap and marble I decided to add another bead cap that had better contact first and then stacked the second bead cap on top. Finishing off the earring I used a wrapped loop to keep the stack of beads together.

When choosing your bead cap you will want to test out the size of your head pin. If the head pin is too small it will fall out of your bead cap and you won’t be able to put another in once it is glued. As you test your bead cap and head pin size together if you find that it is too small just add a spacer bead to the head pin before threading it through the bead cap. This will stop it from falling out.

Drying Tip:

After you have glued your piece together you will need to allow the glue to dry for about 12 hours to be sure that it is completely dry. It is tricky to set up a round object to dry without moving the stack of beads on the top. My tip for allowing the pendant to sit up right is to use a bowl of uncooked rice. This will give your marble a nice bed to sit upright as to not move the glued bead cap on the top.

The Facebook Live video posted below will walk you through the creating of the baked marble jewelry that I made today. Please share any items that you make from this technique on my Facebook Page. Like the Facebook page to be notified of what is going on and you will be able to see the Facebook Live Videos. I go live every weekday at 2:30pm EST, unless I am traveling, with a new project idea for you. See you around online!

Filed Under: Jewelry, Show Notes

How to sketch your jewelry designs

February 13, 2017 By candiecooper 1 Comment

In preparation for Bead Fest Santa Fe I have been designing some new classes. The first step that I take when working on class material is the sketching process. I thought that I would share with you how I go through sketching jewelry designs. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Show Notes

Hammered Filigree Earrings with Beadalon Chasing Hammer

February 6, 2017 By candiecooper Leave a Comment

On today’s show I showed you how to take simple filigree pieces and make them into something artisan and handmade as hammered filigree earrings. *This video was sponsored by Beadalon but all opinions are my own.*

To complete this project I started with some filigree pieces, you can use any that you find at your local store. I then used ball side of my Beadalon chasing hammer and small bench block to create the texture. You will want to make sure that you have something under the bench block to help dampen the sound. For this project I used a folded up bead mat. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Show Notes

These Boots Were Made for Embellishing

January 27, 2017 By candiecooper 1 Comment

Over the past few days I have been showing you what I am working on for the CHA runway. Today I am showing you more of the boots that I have been working on. All I can say is that the more I work on these boots the more I see that these boots were made for embellishing. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Show Notes

DIY Earring Ideas with Jesse James Beads

January 16, 2017 By candiecooper Leave a Comment

Today on the show I wanted to share with you some DIY Earring Ideas using Jesse James Beads. *Jesse James Beads sponsored the show, all opinions are my own*

I made three pairs of earrings today, two that were simple and one that was a chandelier pair. You can see the full video below of how I made each of these pairs.

To start us off I pulled out some chandelier findings, which you can find at Jesse James Beads or in my Etsy shop. I went for a true boho style on this earring and had fun playing with the turquoise and purple colors.

One of the cool things about using chandelier findings is that you can use them as earrings or alone as a necklace pendant. The first thing that I suggest doing is counting the number of spaces you have to see where the true middle is. This allows you to figure out how you want the piece to cascade down. If you have a chandelier finding like the one that I used that has a lot of loops, you can use chain to connect them to lighten the look.

When starting your design think about what you want in the middle, this is the center of the whole piece. When making earrings, any earrings, make sure you count your beads out. Make sure that you have enough to make both sides match. For this project I wanted to use jump rings and the wrapped loop to give it some interest. I also like to mix and match the head pins that I use. I like some that are flat and some that are more decorative, like the ball head pin.

As we worked through the design there were some beads that I wanted to be a little lower. A way to accomplish this is to make the loop larger when doing a wrapped loop or to use multiple jump rings to make the bead hang lower. You can also use jump rings as spacers when you don’t want too many beads close together. I did this on the top ring of the chandelier earrings with the micro tassels.

If I were to sell this pair of chandelier earrings I would make sure to put a little bit of white school glue on the tassels to make sure that they don’t come apart. It will dry clear and you won’t even see it, but you will know it is more secure. A tip when working with multiple colors is to separate the colors with mental findings. This could be with using a metal bead or using the jump rings as I did in this piece.

After making the chandelier earrings I went with two more that were a little more simple to give you some other DIY earring ideas. For the blue pair I used the Lapis connectors from Jesse Jame Beads and cage beads. This was a quick pair of earrings that look super expensive. They are just a great go to pair of earrings.

For the third pair I used some of the drop beads that I had been wanting to use and paired them with the Green Agate Stone Connectors. Again another simple pair that look expensive. All I used was the connector and some head pins.