Creativity In A Nutshell

crabble tile pendants certainly are all the rage at the moment, but there's no reason to settle for the typical cut and paste projects. This tutorial will walk you through using fun stamps, Pearl Ex Pigments and micro beads to create some one-of-a-kind pendants and charms of your own.




Ingredients:

• Scrabble tiles or similar (there are some scrabble tile look-a-likes out there)
• A variety of stamps - smaller stamps will fit the scrabble tiles, but remember that you can use just a part of a larger stamp for an interesting affect
• Ink pads in a variety of colors - I reccomend Staz On
• Pearl Ex Pigments
• Regular white glue (elmers or tacky)
• Diamond Glaze or Glossy Accents
• Modge Podge
• Micro Beads
• E-6000 and bail (unless you're going to drill your tiles)

Tools Of The Trade:

• Paintbrush
• Plastic pallet (for mizing pearl ex pigments)
• Safety Pin
• Waterproof, permanent pens - Faver-Castell India Ink pens or Sharpies work well
  

Process:

• Step One: Select your stamp. I am using some great small stamps I picked up at Michael's for $1. Ink your stamp.If you are using a stamp larger than the scrabble tile, ink a slightly larger area than you intend to use - it's pretty tough to get the stamp exactly where you want it on the tile. Stamp the image on the tile by laying the tile down on the stamp, not the other way around. Press down lighty, doing your best not to wiggle it around.

• Step Two: Try layering differnt stamps and different color inks. You can also use embossing powerder and a heat gun at this point if you'd like.

• Step Three: give the stamped images time to dry. If you are using an  "imitation" scrabble tile, more than likely it has an unfinished surface and the ink will seep into the tile rather quickly. With an actual scrabble tile, the ink will sit on the surface and need more time to dry. Once they are dry, you can add punch to the stamped images using pearl ex pigments, mixed with a little bit of water and glue. Use them just like you would paint- mix colors, play around. I suggest using a small brush to apply the pigment to your tiles.

• Step Four: Again, allow everything to dry. At this point, you can add 3-dimensional stuff to your scrabble tiles. I recommend starting with micro beads because they're small, however, by all means, play around. If you are using micro beads, I would suggest:
• Coat the side of the scrabble tile you're working on with a thin layer of mod podge or slightly watered down glue.

• Place the micro beads about where you want them - it's going to be impossible to play them exactly in the right place on the first try. Using a pin, push the beads to where you want them to be. Allow the mod podge or glue to dry completely.

• TIP: No matter what - DONT leave the container open. I... I guess I really am a clutz, though I wish I could say I was just multi-tasking too much, but of course... I managed to spill them. All over my desk. It was a disaster. Good luck!
• 
  Step Four: Once you're happy and everything is dry you can seal the tile. Here is the crux. If you've used a waterbased ink, you're going to need to use a sealant that is NOT water based. Otherwise you're going to end up with a blurry mess. Finally add a coat of diamond glaze or glossy accents. If you're working with non-traditional scrabble tiles, you're going to want to coat every side of the tile. Wait for one side to dry completely before working on another side - I've learned this the hard way...

• Tips for applying Diamond Glaze: Use even pressure, working around the edges, then moving into the middle. If you happen to get a bubble, you're not really going to be able to pop it. Drag it out using a pin.
• Step Five: Now it's time to complete the pendant. I always allow my scrabble tiles to dry over night - that way there's no risk of mess ups - and as I am clutsy as it is, I don't need to do anything to add to the liklihood of my messing up. Using a small dab of E-6000, attach a bail and voila!
• Tips for working with E-6000: If you're sensitive to strong smells, make sure you have some ventilation. I'm pretty sure there are warnings for this... In any case, I try to work with small amounts and leave the room if I start to get a headache. I dab a bit of epoxy on a scrap piece of paper and use the tip of a safety pin to dot a tiny bit on the back of the bail - a lot goes a long way. Then I place the bail on the tile, center it, and use another safety pin or a toothpick to carefully swab away any excess epoxy. This takes some practice :) 
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C'est Fin!

As I said in my previous post : It's Bottle Cap Week! This is the first of my bottle cap experiment tutorials. It's pretty sweet, check it out, make some modifications of your own and play around with this fun way of creating entirely unique pieces.


What's The Plan, Stan?

Ingredients:

• Bottle cap (for this toutorial, I'm using a basic crafting bottle cap)
• Sprinkles
• Diamond Glaze

Tools Of The Trade:

• Hammer or a rubber mallet
• Piece of scrap wood or a wooden worksurface
• Nail
• Fine grit sandpaper

Process:

• Step One: There are tons of different kinds of bottle caps to work with, and ways you can play around with them. For this toutorial, I'm choosing to work with a basic black bottle cap, purchased for crafting. If you are not working with a crafting bottle cap, for this toutorial you're going to need to gently flatten the edges. This picture shows you the difference between a regular bottle cap and a crafting bottle cap.
  

• Even though the bottle cap I'm working with already has somewhat flattened edges I am going to flatten them out a little more. Place the bottle cap top up on the piece of wood or your work surface. Gently hammer the cap so the sides are pushed out and down. Ok, so not sooo gently. These bottle caps are pretty tough, and trust me, they can take it. Later on, we'll experiment with taking it from a flattened edge, to a rounded edge. But lets not get ahead of ourselves... :)
• Step Two: Now we want to punch a wee little whole on the flattened edge we've just made. Use a small nail, and gently tap it on one edge. Don't push the nail through - you just want to use the small pointy tip to make the hole. Flip the bottle cap over and repeat to make it a clean and wide hole. If the edges are jagged or sharp, use a fine grit sandpaper to file it. (I started with a rough one, about 60, then cleaned it up with 220)

• Step Three: Ok, so now we're ready for the fun part: decorating! Since I've been wanting to play around with the sprinkles I bought for resin crafting, I've decided to use them for this tutorial. I sprinkled a layer of sprinkles :) in the bottle cap, then added the word yum. Last, I sealed everything with a coat of Diamond Glaze.

• Tip: Apply the diamond glaze thickly - you're going to want it to adhere the sprinkles in one go and you don't want to deal with reattaching things later. Once you've covered everything with the diamond glaze, you can still move things around using a pin. It takes quite a while for diamond glaze to set. Because diamond glaze is water based, the more you move the sprinkles around, the more likely it is the diamond glaze will get some of the color from the sprinkles in it. This can add a cool effect. Once you're satisfied with your charm, leave it alone until is solid hard.
• You Will Get Bubbles. It's a fact of life, or at least life with diamond glaze. I still haven't found a really good way to get bubbles out of diamond  glaze when you're working with a project like this. So, instead, I just break up the bubbles as much as possible and incorporate them into the overall piece.

• Another tip - if you're going to add anything into your charm... make sure it's waterproof. I guess I had a special moment when I wrote my 'Yum' with a waterbased pen. The result is a green blurry mess, but oh well.

C'est Fin!

More Similar Fun Stuff!

More Stuff on the Information Highway:

In my bead and charm-making adventures, I have often heard many people talk about working with Diamond Glaze. I have mostly been tampering with Glossy Accents, but I though, eh, what the heck?! Got ta try something new, right? Well... my first venture with Diamond Glaze was in my Artistry Beads Tutorial, and things could have gone better.

Problems:

• I found that the Diamond Glaze quickly began to set and harden, much like nailpolish lacquer. 
• There were literally millions of big and little bubbles, which were already in the bottle. I know that if you shake the bottle, you're going to get bubbles. I didn't shake the bottle. Still there were all these annoying little bubbles! Gah!

Good Things:

• I really like the nice, solid and hard finish with the Diamond Glaze. It's very shiny, and shiny is good :)
• It has no smell that I noticed
• It didn't take long to dry... but then again that's a good and a bad thing
• I have been told that you can mix watercolors etc into it, and it's water-soluble, so that adds other options, however, I have not yet experimented with that aspect of Diamond Glaze yet
  

What's the Plan, Stan?

• Well, I am going to continue to experiment with the Diamond Glaze to see if I can't get something to work. As I find solutions, I will post them to keep you all updated!
• If you have any tips or tools of the trade to use with Diamond Glaze, please, share! Email me at cagarp@plymouth.edu
  

Where can you buy some Diamond Glaze of your own?
Art fire

There's a lot of beautiful jewelry out there. I can get caught up on Etsy for hours and hours, just engrossed in all the wonderful ways people create jewelry. It truly is an art. That word right there, art, is the key to what I aspire to with my jewelry. I believe any necklace, earrings, ring, bracelet should be a unique and inspiring work of art.
One way to reach that goal, is to create interesting and innovative designs. Another way, however, is to create my own little art beads and charms. I have been working towards that with my scrabble tile charms and pendants. My next new idea is to create miniature watercolor paintings, which I will epoxy onto a shape and create a miniature mounted painting, which can strung on a necklace, or dangled from an earrings.
I am just in the beginning stages of this technique, but I am so excited about it, I just had to share the idea! I have a great deal of experience with watercolor painting. To see a collective gallery of my watercolor works, skip over to my art website.
On a side note, I will also be testing out Diamond Glaze for this tutorial. Since this is my first time using it, I have come up with a lot of problems and am searching for solutions. Stay posted to learn more about my adventures with Diamond Glaze!

What's The Plan, Stan?

• I'm going to walk you through my initial process of creating these fun, original works of art, with additional information on paint and paper.

Ingredients:

• First of all, you will need watercolor paper
• A note about paper: you will quickly notice that realm of artist watercolor paper is vast, and rightfully so. Different kinds and qualities of papers will have different affects. Here are the basics:
• Cold press paper will have a more rough, more visible texture to it. This can be good or bad, depending on what you want.
• Hot press paper is the opposite, which a much smooth surface, and minimal visible texture.
• To begin with, student grade is fine, at least until you know if you like this idea or not.
• You will also, of course, need watercolor paints
• A note about paints: while I would not suggest buying a crayola watercolor paint pallet  you should not spend a gazillion dollars on the firt project. Try a cheap boxed tube set for $6-$7 at Michaels
• For this adventure, we are going to work with two scrabble tiles to mount our pictures on. A - because we are (hopefully) already familiar with them, and we already have some (again, hopefully)
• If you have something else you can mount your paintings onto, by all means, try it out, and feel free to let me know how it went via cagarp@plymouth.edu
• Epoxy - there are tons out there but E9000 is a good one
• Mounting bail 
• Diamond glaze, or similar
• Modge Podge to seal the painting

Tools Of The Trade:

• Fine round point watercolor brushes - synthetic work just fine
• Scissors
• Ruler
• Masking tape
• Watercolor pallet (you can get one for $.99)
• Art cloth - any clean old rag will do
• Mechanical pencil

Process:

• Carefully trace the scrabble tile on the watercolor paper, using a mechanical pencil. Make sure the lead is pressed right up against the tile.

• Next, keeping an extra boarder of about 1/2 inch, cut out the square.
• Tape down the paper, lining up the edge of the masking tape with the edge of the traced scrabble tile. Watercolor paper gets distorted as the fibers expand and soak up the pigment, but if taped down, it will shrink back to its normal shape.

• Paint your design/picture using whatever variety of watercolor techniques you know. Allow to dry completely. Remove the tape gently, so not to rip.

• Trim off the extra border around the painting. 

• At this point, you may want to prep the scrabble tile. You could paint it, stamp it, do anything at all. Be creative! You may want to seal the scrabble tile with a coat of Modge Podge or lightly watered down craft glue.
• Attach the painting to scrabble tile using Modge Podge, or basic crafting glue. 

• Turn the scrabble tile face down and trim off the extra paper.

• Seal top of painting with a coat of Modge Podge.
• Don't use watered down glue, as the water will cause the painting to smear.
• Epoxy the bail to back of the scrabble tile.
• Coat one side at a time with Diamond Glaze or Glossy Accents and allow to dry completely.

C'est Fin!

Bead Artist Showcase
Your work could be right here! Submit your own artwork beads to Creativity In A Nutshell via email to cagarp@plymouth.edu. Feel free to include pictures, anything new you tried and suggestions you have for improvement.

More Similar Fun Stuff!
Project: Scrabble Tile Jewelry
Tutorial: Scrabble Tile Pendants and Charms