More Fun Things at the Rings & Things Bead Show

I had a chance today to run over to McClellan and check out the Rings & Things Bead Tour for a short while today and I picked up a few things I had been needing (more about that in a sec). While I was there I ran into some of my jewelry buddies from the Midtown Bazaar! Steven from New Old Jewelry was there as were North and Sharon of Jewelry by North, and it was a first time for all of them!

So, what did I get you might ask; well, lemme tell you!

I got four packets of Crystal Jams, which are a 1 gross (144 pieces) mix of 4mm Swarovski xillions and bicones in complimentary color themes AND they all have cute names too! They are $12.00 per packet (which works out to $.08 per bead-CHEAP!).

I got (from L to R, top row) Walking on Sunshine and True Colors and (from L to R, bottom row) Jailhouse Rock and I Knew the Bride

I also got these cool, copper gears and sprockets. $4.10 for a dozen pieces per style ($.34 per each).

The style are Gear, Gear Outline and Sprocket

And last but not least, I picked up these beautiful, faceted smoky quartz beads. Here is why going to the R & T Bead Tour shows is such a great thing...These beads are 50% off the ticketed price and then another 15% off on top of that! So the 6mm faceted rounds are tagged at $23.00, so that means I got the strand for $9.78! The 16x20mm ovals are tagged $32.5o; I paid $13.81!


While I was there, I also got to meet Dave Robertson of Rings & Things (he is in charge of us blog partners). He was really nice and we had out picture taken and he will post that on the Rings & Things Blog! Look for it!

Better Late Than Never!

I am not normally a skin-of-my-teeth kinda gal, as we all know, but this November has totally gotten away from me! Way back at the beginning of the month, I was given a fabulous opportunity from Rings & Things (Yup, the jewelry supply company from Spokane, Washington) to do a design challenge using some of their new glass bezels and tiles. Apparently my big challenge this month was designing some stuff for the challenge! The first picture at left is the assortment of tiles, bezels and some bails that I received from Rings & Things to use in the challenge.

I started with the tiles, and some images that I had hanging around from ARTchix Studio, that I cut down to fit the tiles. I then sealed the images, and after letting them dry fully, I adhered them to the back of the tiles. I added the bails after the images & tiles were fully dried with a dab of 2-part epoxy resin.

The pieces that were stumping me, were the glass bezels. What, you say. Yes, I know, I've been working with bezels for at least a year now, plus resin, etc. But I was completely intimidated because, well, you can see through the glass. (I understand that that is the whole idea...) ...but I was completely stumped! What to do? Add images to the back? Just float some stuff in the in the bezel and then add resin and cal it good? Well, my super awesome pal, Krissi Sandvik (of Krissi's Art Studio), noticed that some of the glass tiles fit on top of the glass bezels! MAKE A BOX? Why not! Still, I was trying to decide how to deal with my "fear" of the clear. I jumped in with both feet and put a couple of metal leaf charms (I cut off the loops) into the bezel and then epoxied the "lid" to the bezel to create the box, then waited for the epoxy to dry. While I waited, I tried to decide what I wanted to do with all that clear space. I decided to add gold foil to the outside of the box, adding to the overall Autumn feel to the piece. Once the epoxy

was dry, I sanded very lightly around the edge of the box and then cleaned the outside of the box with a little bit of rubbing alcohol, after which I added leafing adhesive to the bottom of the box. After the adhesive had dried to "tacky" I took random colored flakes of gold foil and tapped them onto the piece and allowed the adhesive to dry fully. I brushed off the excess foil and then added the adhesive to the sides and repeated the process. I intentionally scraped off a few spots of the foil to "age" the appearance of the piece and add a little light to peek through. I added a bail to the piece with 2-part epoxy. I am very happy with how the piece turned out and look forward to working with the glass bezels again.

I was given the tiles and bezels for use in this design challenge, but have not been compensated by Rings & Things in any other way. I also have not been compensated for the use of the images by ARTchix Studio, the images were purchased for my own personal use.