Posts Tagged ‘beads’

Creating Fimo Beads

Monday, February 6th, 2012

One of the most popular styles of beads today is the fimo bead. Fimo beads are made using polymer clay that is molded and baked. With the right tools and techniques, you can create a wide variety of shapes and designs for your beads that can be used for making jewelry such as bead bracelets.

Soften the polymer clay until it is warm, rubbery and moldable. This is also a good time to mix any colors together if you attempting to make a custom color or marbled effect. Make sure to work out any air bubbles. An easy way to do this is to roll your clay flat using an acrylic rolling pin.

Using your hands or some plexiglass, shape your beads. You can make them into balls, squares, bits of multiple colors rolled together and sliced, or any other shape you can think of. You are only held back by your imagination.

Assuming you plan on stringing your beads, you are going to have to put holes in them. You can do this before or after baking. The easier method is to make the hole prior to baking. To do this, gently twist a skewer back and forth into your beads. Put multiple beads on one skewer for baking and make sure they do not touch each other. Alternately, you can drill holes in your beads after baking. Drilling is more difficult, but will not deform the shape of your beads.

Next, make sure that the beads don’t touch one another, place the beads on skewers on a bead baking rack. If you are drilling holes afterwards, place the beads gently between two pieces of cardboard. Bake the beads according to the instructions for the type of polymer clay that you bought. This usually takes about 30 minutes in the oven. Once your beads have cooled, slowly take the beads off of the skewers and sand any rough spots that may have developed from making the holes. Spray them with a coat of varnish, if you want.

Is there anything more you would like to find out about beads or bead bracelets? Come to Novobeads.com and check out great, American made products that are fully compatible with all major bead bracelet brands!. This article, Creating Fimo Beads is released under a creative commons attribution license.

Cleaning and Storing Jewelry

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

In the event you discover that your pearls as well as a couple of gems are scratched and your silver is tarnished; it could be which you aren’t storing and cleaning your jewelry correctly. Cleaning and Storing of Jewelry does not need to be so tough nor does it need to be pricey. Jewelry could be stored appropriately employing low cost readily accessible supplies and cleaning could be achieved using the use of ordinary household cleaners. Here are some guidelines that you simply could discover handy when cleaning and storing valuables.

Cleaning:

Toothpastes and dish soaps are very best left for use on the kitchen sink. It’s not advisable to utilize these merchandise when cleaning jewelry as they could be abrasive and trigger stones to loose their luster. It really is then advised that you simply use a sudsy remedy when cleaning jewelry.

Soak jewelry in warm sudsy water for at the least an hour just before rinsing them under warm running water. Immediately after the jewelry has been rinsed. Pat them dry using a towel or yet another absorbent fabric.
Most of the time, running jewelry under water is adequate to obtain them clean but you’ll find those which are studded. Grime and grease gets into the nooks and crannies. For these stubborn dirt it is possible to use and eyebrow brush or perhaps a soft baby’s brush to gently clean it.

To get rid of greasy residues on diamonds soak them in alcohol a couple of minutes ahead of running them under water. Do not use alcohol on all your jewelry since most of them aren’t as tough as diamonds and might be damaged when they come in get in touch with with it.

If you’re interested in Jareds Jewelry, please visit us on Jareds Jewelry

Be cautious when working with commercial cleaners mainly because they may possibly harm your jewelry when utilized improperly. An example of a commercial cleaner is an ultrasonic cleaner. Do not use an ultrasonic cleaner on the following stones: Emerald, Peridot, Tanzanite, Topaz, and Opals. When utilizing ultrasonic cleaners, do not soak jewelry for much more than some minutes.

Storing:

Gems and precious stones have distinct gradients of hardness. Stones are on the best of the list. They’re incredibly tough to scratch but they are able to scratch other items. Diamonds are the hardest, below them are sapphire, rubies, and so on. in the lower end of the list you are going to locate pearls and metals like gold, platinum and silver. With that in mind, it can be wise to store jewelry separately or no less than in individual containers or pouches.

Velvet, cotton and felt are fantastic for storing delicate stones like pearls. These supplies are simply readily available in fabric shops. Swatches may be cut from the fabric and created to wrap about delicate jewelry. They are able to even be created into pouches producing them less complicated to utilize.
It really is not advisable to cram jewelry into 1 box. This may well result in scratching and chipping.

Maintenance:

Preserve your jewelry in tip leading shape. Appear out for loose stones and take them to your jeweler to have the settings reinforced.

Have pearls restrung when the strings start off to fray. Do not wait till the last minute or you may wind up loosing all your pearls.

Please visit our another articles about Osterman Jewelers and Key Jewelers