Carly Cais, over at Chic Steals calls herself a notorious cheapskate. She has been on fire lately with a couple of awesome jewelry tutorials. The inspirations for her designs came from very expensive designer items.

Arrowhead Ring by Chic Steals
Her tutorials are outstanding because she was able to create the pieces using cold connection methods i.e. no soldering at all.

What she used, besides her ingenuity and some basic metal and wire work skills, was Apoxie® Sculpt, a two part clay. The clay works not only like a dimensional adhesive but allows the addition of all sorts of findings, crystals and beads before hardening.

 Her tutorial to make an arrowhead ring came about because she loved a Pamela Love ring which no longer available. So Carly made her own starting from a bought hand carved arrowhead. The black clay was used to bond the arrowhead onto her hand cut ring base made from embossing metal sheet.

Carly used cut off round head pins for the studded edge which was embedded into the clay. She was also able to hammer flat a length of wire to create a shaped bezel.

Carly's crystal crescent necklace tutorial is the other gem. The inspiration is also another Pamela Love creation. What Carly did was bought a couple of necklaces with crescent components and was able to "sew" them together with wire. The clay was placed inside the sandwich and the crystals were then embedded in it.



If you are unable to find crescent focals, cut yourself some from metal sheet, texture them with the round part of your hammer and punch holes for the chains and along the bottom of the crescents for the "sewing" holes.

Even if you aren't up to the basic metal smith techniques for making the above pieces, the tutorials should inspire the use of the clay in ready made pendant and ring bezels.

 Before You Go :
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Original Post by THE BEADING GEM
Jewelry Making Tips - Jewelry Business Tips