DG3, one of the glazes that works really well with glass tile jewellery, can also be used to fill some shallow bezels. I thought glittery jewellery was a good and super-easy project to explain how DG3 can be used to do this.
I got together my DG3, some small bezels (here I have 10mm silver plated shallow round bezels of the kind I sell with my dangly earrings) and some glitter.
Simply spread a drop of DG3 inside the bezels making sure it covers the entire surface and then carefully sprinkle your choice of glitter on top.
It will make a little mound of glitter - and you leave this to dry for a day or two.
When dry, you can shake off the excess glitter, you will see the inside of the bezels will have flattened and may dip a little - nothing to worry about. Add a final layer of DG3 over the glitter straight from the bottle, again making sure it reaches all edges and the glitter is all covered - however be careful not to add too much, you just need a thin coating.
Leave to dry for a couple of days and hang from some earwires, for a beautiful pair of earrings that look like they took a lot more effort to make than they really did.
However, DG3 does have its own peculiarities and I want to tell you about them to make sure you know what it can and cannot do. Firstly, it's important to note it is not a resin - it is a glaze, and so it can only do light coverings over your chosen inserts.
Too many layers, too-thick layers, or glaze added over layers that have not dried will result in bubbles and a cloudy finished piece:
However, if you go slow and are careful not to overfill your bezels, you can even use a large pendant tray:
This one was made on a 25mm square tray with three different colours of glitter, yellow in the middle, orange around it, and then red on the top edges. The glaze does not fill the tray to the top, I think if I had added any more DG3 to this, it may have turned cloudy, so I am happy to keep it as it is.
And a super important bit of information: DG3 does not dry rock-hard - in fact it retains a lot of flexibility and it will not stand up well to knocks and scratches, therefore I would not recommend that you use it on items of jewellery that would receive a lot of wear - generally rings and bracelets have to survive the most wear, whereas pendants and earrings do not. Still, I could not resist having a go:
Gorgeous huh? Sadly it's not exactly practical. See the darkest red bezel? When I stored this bracelet the bar on the toggle clasp sat over the DG3 on the red tray, and look, you can see quite clearly how it has left a rather deep mark! So no, this lovely thing will not live up to normal daily wear, so it is not recommended that you use DG3 on bracelets and rings, and just to be on the safe side, you should warn your customers that they have to handle and store very carefully any pieces that you have made with DG3, to prevent them knocking against one another, as it will mark.
However, there are plenty other things you can do with DG3 - like Diamond Glaze and resins, it has a tendency to pull into itself and form a drop, so you can use it over flat surfaces as decoration. I made some colourful glitter droplets over the flat pad hair pins that I have - I think these look rather nice:
You must dry them straight however. Want to know a little trick? Jewellers working with metal clay already know the wonderful multi-uses of an old pack of playing cards! And here, they were used to stand the bobby pins perfectly horizontal until the glaze dried. But of course any sturdy bit of card or plastic will do.
There are many other things to use as well as glitter, however you need to ensure it is small enough that you won't need a deep covering of DG3 that could turn the item cloudy.
Oh and one last thing - Diamond Glaze and DG3 do not behave the same way. Diamond Glaze will often dry bubbly if used to fill bezels so it will be risky to use it on the ideas shown here as more layers usually mean more bubbles - having said that, it can be used to glue things and as a glossy top layer over a sealed image.
See what ideas you come up with and show us your makes on our Facebook page @ Jasmin Studio Crafts!
