Brads Into Pendants Take Two

My 4th attempt at making a pretty pendant from a big brad definitely showed improvement!  (If you missed trials 1 – 3 look at yesterdays post).  I’m using the back side of the brad as a bezel for holding my decorative paper, beads and embellishments.  I covered the paper with a thick coating of Glossy Accents and then waited about 45 minutes.  Then I added the decorative brad to the middle and a mixture of micro beads all around.  The fuchsia beads are bleeding in the glue, I’m not sure why.  I’m not going to use them anymore even though I really love the color.

Trial #5 was done leaving the paper out of the bezel for the Glossy Accents and beading process.  It’s a much thinner coat of gloss than I was getting with the paper inside but the trade off is that the color of the image is pretty true.  I will tack this into a bezel.

And my 6th attempt is really my favorite so far:

This image has just a light brushing (as in with a paint brush) of Glossy Accents over the top.  I placed the micro beads and the topaz gem and let them dry in place.  Then I went back over the image and the micro beads with another brushing of Glossy Accents to seal them.  The thinning covering is starting to grow on me.  I originally imagined filling the bezel to the top with a clear drying glue so for awhile this one felt like a failure.  Then I changed my perspective and now it’s my favorite.

I think I will try using a two part acrylic pourable medium on my next attempts, just to see if they will dry clear even when applied thickly over the images.

Hugs, Suzanne

P.S.  Most of the backgrounds I used are from greeting cards made by Papaya.  I love the colorful images and had a lot of fun going through my cards and selecting what to “punch” from them!    The papers are 1” in diameter, so the 32mm brads leave a nice border around the edges as a frame.