Waching daily Mar 17 2017

Hi there, Sandy here.

Welcome to another Friday Findings video at KeepsakeCrafts.net.

As I've mentioned several times, I love being able to make my own jewelry findings and customize

them so that they are exactly what I want to go with my project perfectly.

And I've gotten requests from many of you to make more findings out of polymer clay.

So today I'm going to show you how to make a simple tube bail.

So the first thing you'll need for making your bail is a little bit of wire.

I have 18 gauge.

You could also use 20 gauge and you need to cut just about a 1" piece of the wire.

This is going to make the hook that is going to be embedded in the polymer clay so you

can use this as a bail to hang a pendant from.

So just center your piece of wire in your round nose pliers or bail making pliers, depending

on how big you want to make it to decide how big of a loop you want.

I'll make it about as big as these pliers can go.

It's about a 4mm loop.

Then just bend that wire in half around the pliers.

Then grab those ends with flat nose pliers and just bend them out and that's that.

Just make sure that the wires are on the same plane in all directions so they will fit nicely

inside your tube bail.

If you need to, you can trim these shorter depending upon how wide you're going to make

your bail.

So once your bail is made, you need to get out your polymer clay and we're actually going

to make this is 2 layers.

I tried a few different ways and I found this was the easiest.

So this bit of clay has been rolled out on about the second or third thinnest setting

on my pasta machine.

It's a number 7.

It's about just under a millimeter thick and I've also prepared a dowel and this is how

big I want the inside of my bail to be and you can use anything you want as a form.

It just depends on what you're using as a stringing material how much of a hole do you

need in there for your material to go through.

So this is a 1/4" dowel and I've wrapped it with a piece of paper and taped the paper

and the paper and the tape are just fine in the oven that you bake your polymer clay in,

a 275 degree oven.

So now I'm just going to trim to the width I want my bail to be, make sure I have a square

end, and then go ahead and wrap it around the paper.

And then we'll just wrap.

I don't know if you can see that line there that it made, but that shows me where to cut.

I'm gonna cut just inside that line.

You get a neater finish if you have to stretch the clay over a little to make it neat rather

than if you have too much and it overlaps and that's just kind of messy.

And I'm just gonna rub this a little.

You don't have to have a perfectly smooth seam as this is going to be hidden and if

you find you've distorted your sides at all, you can straighten them out with your blade,

but if you have a gentle touch it should be fine.

Then this is going to go into the oven.

I put it in for 20 minutes, probably 10 minutes would do, but I tend to bake things longer

rather than shorter.

And here's one I did earlier, all baked and hard.

Just go ahead and leave it on the paper and leave it on the dowel for now.

And now you need another sheet of your clay and this one's a little bit thicker.

This one I rolled out on 3 or the third thickest setting on my pasta machine.

It's about 1.5mm thick.

If you want to have a textured bail, now would be the time to apply a texture.

This is kind of a fun set of Christi Friesen textures that I got called random textures,

which is best for this is some kind of random texture.

It can be tricky to keep it neat.

You can do it, but it's easier on yourself if you just start with a random texture.

Now I'm just going to trim one edge and then my short edge at a 90 degree angle and then

I'm going to flip this over and just line up one edge of the pre-baked bail and give

it just a light press is all you need.

Not a lot of pressure, just enough to mark how wide you want to cut this.

You may have to trim it later, but if you cut it just right that's fantastic.

And then I'm going to, just for strength purposes, make sure that I don't start on that seam.

Go ahead and roll this and then go ahead and do the, oh I forgot.

You do want to apply just a tiny bit of liquid clay.

You don't want to add much because it will get slippery and just be really difficult

to manage.

So I dipped my brush in and then I wiped off both sides of my brush.

You can hardly see it.

It just makes it tacky.

Like I said if you add too much, it just slips and slides all over the place and is rather

difficult to manage.

And once again, let the clay mark where you want to stop and then cut just inside that

line.

Add your little metal piece that we prepared earlier and this is really the only fiddle-y

part.

I have a clay shaper here.

I really love this tool.

I use it a lot to smooth that seam and I'm going to do it, not try to do it all in one

push, but just lots of gentle little nudges of the clay, and yes, we will have to re-texture

this part, which is why I suggested using a random texture and not something with a

lot of straight lines that need to line up.

You don't need to use a lot of force.

If you do, you'll just get something distorted.

You just want to use a lot of little nudges and pushes.

You can take the smallest crumb of clay, I mean tiny.

Roll a little tiny rice shape and pop it right in there and then smooth that out.

This isn't production work.

This is one of a kind sort of stuff that it's our work and our artistry and you're probably

going to be hanging a nice pendant that you created from this so you want it to be nicely

done.

So I hope you've been encouraged and inspired by these videos that I make for you and put

up on my YouTube channel and if you have you might consider becoming a patron.

Not only do you get the satisfaction of knowing you're keeping these tutorials coming for

everyone, but you also get great rewards like chances to win some of my creations, bonus

videos, bonus templates, sneak peeks and such.

If you check out my Patreon page, you'll see how you can help out for as little as a dollar

a month or whatever you can afford.

One thing I like about this textured sheet by Christi Friesen is that it's not just square

edged.

It has all these innies and outies and I found that helpful here because I put it on here

and just kind of put the texture back in.

Now these edges are all wonky because of the texturing.

Take your blade, sharp side towards the clay please, and just ever so carefully start cutting

until you feel the edge of the baked clay.

The sharp edge is against the paper, the edge of the blade is against the baked clay and

then you can just roll it around and clean up.

That wasn't bad at all and if need be, we can clean this up further after baking by

sanding.

I was able to do it earlier a little bit neater than this, but it can be tricky to do it for

the camera.

So once you take all the time to get it just nice. Now one thing to remember, one thing

I had to kind of get over, as a cook, most of us have baked for our families,

baked cookies and cakes. So you're making a cake,

you take something that looks like a gloppy mess, you put it in the oven and out comes

cake or brownies.

It just gets better.

It doesn't work that way with polymer clay.

With polymer clay, what you put in the oven is exactly what you get out.

It's not going to be any better so make sure before you put anything in the oven that you

really take the time to look it over and make it exactly what you want it to be because

that's what's going to come out of the oven.

So here's one that I made earlier and this came out pretty nice with straight edges.

Actually it'll go like this, have a nice thick cord going through it.

If you wanted to refine these ends more you could like I said, sand, and you could even

add more clay.

You could add a little extruded rope of clay, a shape or something to finish off those ends

if you like, but there's the basic premise and now I hope you'll take it and run with

it and make your own bails.

I thought this one would be a lot of fun and of course you can do all sorts of things with

these.

I'm coloring this with Gilders Paste.

You can brush them with mica powders before you bake them, add Gilders Paste or whatever

you like to get exactly the look you want and if you want to learn more about Gilders

Paste, I've done a whole Friday Findings video on using those.

So if you're interested in the supplies I used, click on the little 'i' or the tag in

the upper right of the video or the link in the description box to go to my blog post

where I always have a complete supply list with links to the products.

Be sure to subscribe if you haven't already and take a peek at my Patreon page for how

you can get great rewards and help support these tutorials.

Happy creating.

Bye bye.