How-To Archives - Page 18 of 31 - Rings and ThingsRings and Things

Summer Road Trip part 3

June 29, 2012

Hi bloglandia! Today is the deadline for entering the Vintaj Summer Road Trip design challenge. Mollie was a little late in getting her inspiration piece completed…seems her idea of a summer road trip is wandering in the woods. There are no clocks or calendars in the wilderness! Her “Day in the Woods” necklace is well worth waiting for, however. She combined a number of sweet little elements together to make this piece. We’ll have to look closely to see them all, as the sunlight can be a bit distracting!

The vial hangs with a cluster of wire-wrapped bicones in shades of smoky blue and gray from olive green velvet ribbon.

Mollie painted a wee brass feather charm with Vintaj Patina in a muted blue-green color before hanging it inside a glass vial. The vial top is adorned with a Vintaj bead cap, Swarovski rhinestone wheel and a crystal bicone from our new Idewild Blue Crystal Jam mix.

A DecoEmbossed Vintaj leaf and a metal stamped and dapped round Vintaj charm complete the grouping.

And here is a view of how Mollie finished the ends – ribbon clamps (simply flatten with pliers -the teeth inside grip the ribbon securely) and a Vintaj clasp.

With jewelry this pretty, who wouldn’t want to wander in the woods? Hope you all have a lovely weekend! ~ Cindy

Vintaj Summer Road Trip Jewelry Inspirations part 2

June 26, 2012

Hi bloglandia! For me, a summer road trip means just one thing: camping. I’ve never met a national park I didn’t like, but I especially love Yellowstone. However, I never saw a bear the whole time I was there. Fortunately, the National Park Service has an amazing online archive of public domain images which includes vintage photos of bears in Yellowstone! I put the image in a bezel, covered it in resin and layered it over a stamped Vintaj natural brass disk to create my centerpiece.

For the tassel, I hung clusters and clusters of wire-wrapped crystals from our new Wild Flower Crystal Jam with a few imperial jasper rondelles. The way the dusky rose, green, tan and slate hues of this particular jasper coordinates with the crystal mix was what inspired this whole design! The cover for this craziness is a Vintaj bead cap. I really like our drawn cable chain because the links open and close like jump rings – so the whole thing is connected by chain links!

Multi-strand designs can become kind of high maintenance, so I like to layer coordinating pieces together instead. And since knotting is a jewelry technique that is super easy to do on a road trip (so long as you’re not the driver!) I made a long strand of jasper on 0.5mm natural hemp.

There a few 6mm crystal metallic light gold rondelles randomly interspersed on the strand to add a bit of bling.

You know what I am really terrible at? Taking photos of myself. Hence the blurry headless photo above. But I wanted to show how the two pieces look together, and laying them on a table just wasn’t working. This probably isn’t much better, but I hope you get the idea…and that you are busy making your own Summer Road Trip jewelry ideas into reality! Only a few days left to enter… ~ Cindy

Vintaj Road Trip Design Challenge!

June 20, 2012

Hi bloglandia! We are really excited to be partnering with Vintaj for their Summer Road Trip design challenge this month. Visit their blog to see the great jewelry their designers created by pairing beads & components from Rings & Things with Vintaj products. The Vintaj blog also has all the details about how to enter the contest! Submissions are due by NOON (CST) Friday, June 29. But wait – don’t go yet!

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll share some of our own Summer Road Trip jewelry pieces, starting with Sondra’s “The Trail Less Traveled” bracelet:

This mixed metal bracelet contains all kinds of mementos!

She used so many fun techniques that I’m sure I’ll miss a few, but here are the highlights:

The Vintaj luggage tags were DecoEmbossed with the Sizzix BigKICK. Sondra punched holes to in the tags to link them with textured locking jump rings.

She curved the postcard charm and souvenir penny using bracelet bending pliers.

The Vintaj bee and several other charms have the tips of rhinestone crystal head pins soldered onto them for extra bling.

The memoir stamp bezel from Vintaj is filled with a scrap of map coated with SuperClear resin.

The rest of the sparklies are from our Karma Chameleon Crystal Jam. Check out our Crystal Jam color themed design boards on Pinterest!

Ok. Now you can go get started on your own Summer Road Trip design challenge piece! We can’t wait to see what you create! ~ Cindy

Jewelry Design Gallery Tricks

June 12, 2012

Hi bloglandia! It has been awhile! I’ve been busy preparing our summer catalog (set to hit mailboxes early July). Once again it features lots of fun new beads, jewelry findings and mixed-media supplies. Our design team puts in a lot of work to create jewelry that fits with current trends and also helps illustrate how different products might be used. Sometimes it just isn’t so obvious how that little hook with crimp, or whatever it might be, could tie into a design!

Spring Skies necklace featuring blue lace agate, Vintaj natural brass, feathery chain and the Bohemian Rhapsody mix of SWAROVSKI ELEMENTS crystal bicones.

We integrated our design gallery with our online store to make it easier for you to purchase the supplies for designs you like. However, we soon discovered a drawback: while it is easy to browse the jewelry designs, it is somewhat difficult to find one in particular. If you search for the name of a jewelry piece, our website brings back zero results (so sad!).

But – there is an upside. If you search for a certain stock number, you can now find jewelry designs that use that product! This is really exciting, to me at least.

For example, say you are looking at different types of clasps. You find hook and eye clasps on p. 273 of our main catalog and wonder if they’d really look right on your jewelry. Here’s how to find a design that uses those clasps:

1. Go to www.rings-things.com.

2. Enter the base stock number (39-293) in the search box and you’ll see all the colors of that clasp, AND:

Several of the category results up top are the names of jewelry designs. Sweet!

3. Let’s click on Spring Skies.

Wait, where is the necklace? Hold on a sec. We are looking at the exact clasp used on that necklace – but the necklace itself is nowhere to be seen.

4. Click into the product details.

Same clasp, but now look above the product to see the category we’re in…Spring Skies!

5. Click the Spring Skies text link.

And voila! At long last we’ve arrived in at the design gallery listing for the Spring Skies necklace. Here you’ll find tips on how to make this piece, links to popular (and free!) jewelry-making technique sheets as well as all the products you need to create this design.

Obviously, we’ve got thousands of products and not all of them are going to have designs (I said our design team works hard – but we do have to sleep sometime!). Searching for just the base stock number (with many exceptions, the rule is that the final -# designates the color or plating of a family of items) will increase your odds of finding example jewelry that shows exactly what you are looking to find! Also, just take a look at those top category search results from time to time to see if anything intriguing pops up – it might lead you to a whole new look!

Happy designing! Please feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions about our design gallery or website in general. ~ Cindy

Floral meadows filled with handmade jewelry!

May 22, 2012

vintage june 2012 challenge Hi bloglandia! Our friends at Vintaj have a blog challenge every month. This month the theme is “Vintage Meadows.” We created a special category in our shop to make it easier to find vintage-y meadow-y components to create with, but it is really just a small sampling of what we have. I also thought it would be fun to show you a few of the jewelry designs we’ve made here at Rings & Things. Hopefully their vintage-y meadow-y feel will help get you inspired!

Vintaj hammered rings, bead caps & bee charms, linked with sturdy 10mm jump rings, make up the Busy Bees & Blueberries Bracelet. Use a quality hole punch to make the second hole in each hammered ring.

Vintaj game piece bezels with bone flower buttons. The sparklies are 4mm bicones from our Bohemian Rhapsody Crystal Jams mix. Understandably, they are named Galileo Figaro Earrings – but if you go!oh!oh!oh!

Czech glass flower bead caps, antiqued brass head pins and antiqued brass leaf chain compose this sweet Bell Flowers Bracelet.

And finally, my favorite: Tequila Sunrise Earrings. These also use the hammered brass rings from Vintaj, plus their small bird charms. I love the gemstone colors (rainbow new jade and olive jade) layered with the brass.

The deadline is fast approaching for the Vintaj Vintage Meadows challenge, so get busy! AND – do you follow Rings & Things on Facebook? You should! Right now we are having a May Flowers design challenge. Simply post a floral jewelry piece that you’ve created on our wall by 5/31 for a chance to win great prizes!

New Beads on the Block – Gemcolor Crystal Pearls!

May 13, 2012

Hi bloglandia! Take a look around and what do you see, fashion wise? That’s right: color. Big bold blocks of vivid color.

These beads absolutely pop with gemstone colors.

Incorporate this season’s love for pure color into your jewelry designs with Swarovski “gemcolor” crystal pearls.

An easy to make bead bar necklace with red coral, pink coral, lapis, jade and turquoise crystal pearls.

I really love gemstones natural variations in color. However, even I am a fan of these not-so-natural crystal pearls. They are just plain fun, perfect for summer or anytime really. The color palette is really versatile, too. The gem colors make many great combinations. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Red coral and turquoise is a classic gemstone combination. The pearl in the middle is ivory color.

Coral, pink coral and jade crystal pearls.

Dark lapis, turquoise and mystic black crystal pearls make a cool blue mix.

Notice how shiny the little buggers are too – I couldn’t avoid getting reflections in my snapshots, especially that last one (the rings are light bouncing off the clear bowl the pearls were in.) That is one of the perks of crystal pearls – unlike natural pearls, which will get destroyed by common things like perfume & hairspray – crystal pearls are very durable. The shiny, uniform coating is meant for fun in the sun. So go get some – of both! ~ Cindy

Little House on the Pendant

May 8, 2012

Pendant frames for all styles and tastes.

Hi bloglandia! Today’s design question: What memories or images do you have that are worth framing?

I just stumbled across this photo of some little house hinged pendants our design team made awhile back. It always amazes me how you can give people, in this case 9, the same jewelry component and end up with such completely different results! Our hinged glass frame pendants are reversible, so you can have two images inside if you’d like! (Also check out the memory boxes, which aren’t two sided but are deep enough to hold all sorts of treasures.)

From the bottom right going clockwise, you see the following jewelry designs:

Selina made the Dia de los Muertos paper collage, another jewelry designer used fabric and a peace sign, Mollie has a spritely fairy with star charms, Lindsey made a ginormous, interactive wooden pendant, Amy captured summer childhood memories, Sondra soldered up some enlightenment, I used one of my favorite vacation photos, a bulldog earned a crown and wings, and Rita created a wee house inside her frame. Hopefully one or more of these designs will inspire you to frame some mementos of your own! ~ Cindy

Vintaj BigKick by Sizzix

April 16, 2012

Our precious…

Do you ever feel possessive of your favorite belongings? I moved our jewelry team’s Vintaj BigKick closer to the windows – a distance of maybe 15 feet – to get pictures and no fewer than three people stopped me!

Mollie made this sweet necklace during a demo in our Spokane showroom.

“What are you doing?!?”

“Where are you going with that?!?!”

Kickin’ it Vintaj style!

Really guys, the BigKick belongs to *all* of us – but I understand wanting to keep tabs on it: it is a super fun tool! Despite the name, the BigKick is actually a very small rolling mill. It is designed specifically to texture Vintaj Natural Brass blanks with their DecoEmboss folders and DecoEtch design plates.

Birds, trees, leaves, keys, clocks – embossing/etching folders are available in a ton of cute designs.

Simply choose a blank, lay it on the design, sandwich it between the plexi-glass plates and run it through the BigKick. The metal comes out with a reversible design, and since Vintaj brass has a natural patina, just few swipes with the metal reliefing block to polish the high points really brings out the details. (We’ve linked Vintaj’s YouTube demo videos right from the product listings in our online store if you’d like to see it in action!)

Simply turn the handle – it really is that easy to add beautiful texture to your jewelry!

We recommend using only Vintaj Natural Brass blanks with the BigKick machine as they are the right gauge and softness. If you use other items, you may be risking this precious machine! [ Update April 2016: These new 30-gauge aluminum blanks also work great! ]

One roll and you’ll be in love…

The Vintaj art heart blanks are sold in pairs – perfect for earrings!

If you’re buying a BigKick, you need three other things:

Embossing folders or etching plates

Flat Vintaj brass shapes/blanks

Metal reliefing block (sand paper or steel wool also work, but are not as easy to use)

And that’s it – instant gratification! Have fun kicking your style up a notch! ~ Cindy

spring bling

April 9, 2012

Hi bloglandia! Today we had a make n’ take event in our Spokane showroom. I taught customers how to make wire-lashed bling pendants using rhinestone chain and 24-gauge Artistic Wire. Very fun! You get a lot of sparkle in a very short amount of time.

Rhinestone chain wrapped onto hoops with turquoise wire.

A common complaint we get is that our showroom is just too far away for most of our customers, who happen to live all over the world. Sadly, we can’t transport our showroom to y’all, but I thought I would let you know that the techniques we used today are available here on this blog and in our design gallery. Plus I wanted to show off the insanely sparkly earrings I made while teaching. Happy Monday! Hope you find time to do something creative! ~ Cindy

springing forward!

March 30, 2012

Blink and you miss it – March is already behind us! Here in Spokane we were teased with one gorgeous sunny day last weekend…following by a week of pouring rain. The Bead Show crew has found pockets of nice weather here and there, but spring is a most changeable season.

I had a lot of big plans for what I wanted to accomplish this week, but they’ve gotten derailed by the need to do some basic computer housekeeping. I’m not going to admit to how many pictures I have saved on my hard drive – I mean on the network. Yes, I always make sure all my files are backed up on the network drives! That’s right techs, no worries here! But um, yeah, it is always a good idea to purge old files periodically. So that’s what I’m doing and I just happened to find this picture of a necklace I made in February and neglected to post. I used the new Knew Concepts saw frame to cut a fiddle-head fern shape from nickel silver and soldered it to brass sheet metal with a Blazer micro torch.

The message “unfurl” seems especially appropriate today – what looked like dead branches just a week ago are now alive with new growth. Spring has sprung! Hope your creativity is unfurling as well ~ Cindy

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