Learn to Make Amazing Resin & Epoxy Clay Jewelry: Basic Step-by-Step Projects for Beginners

Jewelry-Making Basics

This book focuses on resin and epoxy clay, but it incorporates some standard basic jewelry-making terms and techniques that you’ll need to know in order to turn your resin and clay creations into actual wearable jewelry. Review this section if you’ve never made jewelry before!

Tools

To make jewelry, you’ll need a pair of flush cutters, which are essentially small jewelry wire cutters, for cutting wire. You’ll also need, at a minimum, one pair of jewelry pliers (either round-nose pliers or straight pliers), but it’s best to have two pairs (see Jump Rings, right). Pliers allow you to manipulate the wire, jump rings, findings, earring hooks, and clasps you’ll use to assemble wearable jewelry. You should always have a standard, good pair of round-nose pliers in your jewelry-making kit. If you want to, you can buy a special kind of pliers called rosary chain pliers, which are round-nose pliers with a flush cutter included, making creating bead links (see page 10) an even faster process. Straight pliers (or chain-nose pliers) are also useful depending on how you are assembling your jewelry or what specific wires/beads/findings (i.e., clasps, chains, etc.) you are using. In general, for the projects in this book, you can use round-nose pliers.

Jump Rings

Jump rings are the building blocks of a lot of jewelry. They are simple metal rings with a break in them that can be opened and closed, allowing you to easily connect different items. It’s important that you know the basic rule for opening and closing a jump ring. Shown below are both the correct method (marked with ) and the incorrect method (marked with ). Use two pairs of pliers, one gripped on each side of the jump ring’s opening, to direct each side away from the other in a vertical orientation. Do not simply pull the opening straight apart horizontally, as this will weaken the metal and potentially break it. The rule to remember is simple: twist open, don’t pull apart.

Round-nose pliers

Lora S. Irish

Flush cutters

Lora S. Irish

Straight (chain-nose) pliers

Lora S. Irish

Jump rings

Lora S. Irish

Findings, including chain, a lobster claw clasp (top right in silver), and earring hooks (bottom center).

Helen Driggs

Findings

Findings are any of the various jewelry-making building blocks you can buy at the store and use to make jewelry. Jump rings are an example of findings. Clasps, such as lobster claw clasps (which you attach via jump rings), are another example you’ll use a lot in this book to create closures for bracelets and necklaces. Earring studs and hooks allow you to attach items to create earrings. Blank pendants and metal hoops can be used as bases for creating with resin and clay. Lengths of chain that you can cut to size make creating necklaces and bracelets super easy. All of the various miscellaneous findings mentioned in this book (and more!) can be found at your local craft store.

Wire

Wire, typically sold in spools, is useful for attaching things together and for creating bead links (see page 10). One of the most important decisions you’ll need to make when creating with wire is what gauge to use. Wire gauge is measured from thickest (lower numbers) to thinnest (higher numbers). Use the thickest wire (the lowest gauge) that the beads you want to use can accommodate. Fine wire is often quite delicate. 20-gauge wire is a good choice for necklaces, and sometimes 18-gauge wire is good if you need a piece to be really strong. Men’s and children’s jewelry are good projects in which to use 18-gauge wire. For smaller, daintier projects, 22-gauge wire is a good choice.

Lora S. Irish

Gay Isber

Beads and Bead Links

Beads come in a limitless array that will surely inspire you as you shop for them in stores. In this book, you will be able to use countless different beads by embedding them in resin or clay, but you’ll also want to incorporate them indirectly through jump rings and wire. Stringing beads onto a wire or thread is pretty self-explanatory but also somewhat limiting. Creating bead links is more interesting and requires a bit more effort.

A bead link is simply a bead (or beads) collected on a short piece of wire, usually with a wire loop rolled on each end. The loop secures the beads in place and acts kind of like a jump ring. Connecting beads by creating bead links is one of the most basic jewelry-making skills you will learn. You’ll often need to use this skill to connect your clasps to your finished pieces, too. Once you have mastered the skill of creating bead links, sometimes called the rosary style of linking, you can make anything. Follow along with the tutorial starting on page 11 to learn all the basics you’ll need.

In order to follow this tutorial, you’ll need a variety of small and large beads, flush cutters, pliers, 20- or 22-gauge wire, a length of chain, jump rings, and a lobster claw clasp. When it actually comes time to make specific projects in this book that include bead links, you may need some or all of these supplies.

HOW TO MAKE BEAD LINKS

Gay Isber

1. Thread a bead onto the wire and hold it in your left hand. You’ll need about ½" (1.3cm) of wire to protrude from the top of the bead. Do not cut the other end of the wire off of the spool yet.

Gay Isber

2. Bend the short end of the wire 90 degrees, into a right angle. You can push it over with your fingertip, or use pliers if doing it manually hurts your hands.

Gay Isber

3. If your wrist could rotate 360 degrees, you could do this in one step, but our wrists don’t work that way. Therefore, completing the loop is typically a two-step movement. Use your pliers to create a J shape at the tip of the bent wire, using a rolling motion.

Gay Isber

4. Now grab the wire in the pliers again, at the J, and continue to roll the wire closed so that the end connects neatly with the bead’s hole. Keep your eye on the bead’s hole when you are making this final movement. It needs to match up, not sort of or almost—it needs to be a clean, closed loop.

Gay Isber

5. Now flip the bead over, cut the wire off of the spool leaving ½" (1.3cm) of length, and repeat on the opposite side to create a second, identical loop.

Gay Isber

6. Once the first bead link is finished, start on the next. Before you close the second loop of the second bead link, link it into one of the other bead link’s loops. Only then should you close the second loop