Back to School!

Things are getting busy here preparing for a new year of school.  For now it's important (in our house at least) to ensure coats and bags will not get lost in the coming year...  So in between getting orders ready we have been doing a bit of quick crafting.  Starting with a little someone's lunch box...

And her coat...

And for her friend's book bag,

And another friend's sports bag.  Difficult to see, but we chose a basketball background here.

All were made super-easily in a matter of minutes using a few images overwritten with text using Photoshop. If you don't have Photoshop and are struggling to tweak your images, we have discovered a free system that covers more than all the basics (woohoo, layers!!)  Try it, it's called Paint.net and is available to download from CNET here.

You can use most smooth papers here, and most inks (however felt tip inks seem to run after some time, so watch out for that).  The trays are our 18mm silver plated round trays, and we have used epoxy stickers glued onto the tray using just a smidgen of tacky glue.  We have attached the trays to the garment using either our new little ball chains or split rings.

Cool, customisable to your little poppet, and easy enough that they can help to make it.  We can't guarantee that they will sit still for a photo however!

DG3 Project - Glittery Jewellery

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!

Bright Idea - A Blackboard Pendant

Super easy to make and a cute way to wear your own message.  These pendants use the new wooden tiles available in the shop, backed by a pendant tray and simply hung from a chain.

Here's how I did it.  Gather your supplies - here we have 25mm round wooden tiles, 25mm pendant trays, blackboard paint, paintbrush, E6000 glue, and of course, chalk!

This stuff is thick and gooey and quite smelly - make sure you cover all surfaces well!

Simply cover your tiles with a good few coats of the paint.  Blackboard paint generally covers well but a few coats will show less of the grain through.  Ok, I skimped and only did one!  I was in a hurry!

When it is completely dry, you can glue it to your choice of tray - here I have used a round silver plated tray.  I find E6000 glue is ideal for this as it will hold fast, or you can use any superglue type of adhesive that you may have at home.

When that is dry, you can hang it from your favourite chain.  I have added a little ribbon and a little felt heart rubber to this one.  Finally, use a sharpened chalk (use sandpaper to get a fine point on your chalk) to draw your message, package simply in a cellophane bag with a teeny bit of chalk and give freely!  

With a tiny bit of supervision (especially around the paint and the glue) you can easily let your kids make them as original gifts for their teachers now that the end of year is almost here.  Let them state proudly "here you go Miss, I made this one for you!"

Friends' Makes - Cockburn High School

I recently got chatting to the lovely Kath who works in the art department at Cockburn High School in Leeds.  She promised me she would send me pictures of the items that she and her students had made using some of my items.  Little did I know I would be in for such a treat...   just look at these works of art:

Make sure you click on the above picture for a glorious close-up (click twice and it gets even bigger!).  Any one of these pieces could happily sit in the window of a jewellery boutique.  The colours are beautiful and the combinations remind me of the work of Kandinsky (though they remind Kath of Klimt!)

And this is how they did it - carefully moulded canes of polymer clay in stunning colour combinations.  The ones with multi coloured circles are extruded through a square die and then stacked into 4x4 or 5x5 squares, then the canes are cut into slices, placed into some of my pendant settings, baked in place, and varnished for a gorgeous finish.

Just beautiful.  I really look forward to seeing what Kath and the girls come up with next!