I have had a wonderful time playing with some new Vintaj brass pieces this week--I can feel a new crafting addiction coming on! If you like the look of soldered jewelry but prefer not to have to pull out solder and a a soldering iron, then this might be a good line of products to try. If, on the other hand, you already enjoy soldering as I do, then consider this a way to get more use out of some of the tools that you already have, like your specialty pliers.
I started with a charm circle bezel and a piece of Webster's Pages die cut paper. I used a 1-1/4" punch to cut out my image, but I still had to trim it by had since a 1-1/8" circle would have been a better fit. I then used some Ranger Matte Accents to glue the piece onto the blank.
My hand-cutting of the circle wasn't perfect, so I used some Matte Accents around the inside edge of the bezel to add little seed beads. (Good tweezers help!) After that dried, I used some Ranger Glossy Accents to coat the entire piece of paper and seal the inside edge of the bead-ring. I wish I had had some Crackle Accents; it would have been pretty here, and I have now ordered some. (My parents were visiting, and my dad was surprised to learn that I didn't already own every product ever made. . .)
Since I was making this for my mother who likes dragonflies, I used a dragonfly connector to attach my decorated bezel to the necklace chain, via another jump ring. The tail was long enough to bend into a loop with my concave round nose pliers.
After adding a jump ring to the top of the dragonfly connector, I put the bezel on the figaro chain and then attached a lobster clasp to the ends of the chain.
I liked it as it was but still felt that it could use a bit more dressing up; so I pulled out my bead stash along with some 1" head pins and my concave round nose pliers to make a couple of little charms to hang from the chain.
See? The little bead charms helped. The Vintaj line has so many possibilities. . . I've already placed another order because I loved this project so much. In fact, I'm pestering Ellen to stock some more pieces already, so I hope that you like them too!
Thank you for visiting the CLASSroom today.
