Amazing Casting Products: Taking a #Cre8time Trip to the Pumpkin Patch... a jewelry tutorial by Tracy Alden

Monday, August 18

Taking a #Cre8time Trip to the Pumpkin Patch...
a jewelry tutorial by Tracy Alden

Hello! Tracy here with another Amazing Crafting Products tutorial! My inspiration for this craft project came to me while I was watering my pumpkin patch. I grow one each year and love watching the plants start from seeds, grow into the trailing vines, to big beautiful leaves with flowers that eventually grow into lovely pumpkins. I wanted to create that same story of a pumpkin patch with a necklace. I found I had the perfect leaf and flower beads but no pumpkin beads! So with the help of Amazing Mold Rubber I was able to create the beads and make a wonderful necklace.

Supplies:

Amazing Mold Rubber
Amazing Clear Cast Resin
Alumilite Dyes - Brown and Florescent "FLO" Orange
Ultra Fine Glitter
Mini Clean Deli Cups (such as the ones you get with red pepper flakes in with your pizza)
Toothpicks
Needle and Flat head Nose Pliers
Gold tone jewelry wire (21 gauge), chain and jumprings
Leaf, flower and crystal beads
Craft Knife
Craft Scissors

I found silver metal beads that had the shape of pumpkins, but the wrong color and look for my pumpkin patch necklace idea. However, I knew I could make a mold of them! I threaded them on the nail head jewelry wire and using jewelry pliers curled the wire over to form a hook.

I carefully poked two holes, opposite each other,

into each mini deli cup and threaded through a toothpick.

I was then able to hang the beads with the wire hooks from the toothpicks, just far enough off the bottom of the cup to allow for mold rubber to flow under the beads.

Carefully following the instructions {CLICK HERE to view} – I mixed up the Amazing Mold Rubber and slowly poured the Mold Rubber around the beads hanging off the tooth picks. I had to do this very slowly as to make sure the beads did not shift position. Thankfully since the beads were metal they were not inclined to float in the Mold Rubber. I covered the beads with Mold Rubber all the way to the top of each bead and let the Mold Rubber cure.

Using a craft knife I cut "X" shaped slits on the top of the molds to remove the beads. After I have extracted all of the beads, I cut and trimmed the Amazing Mold Rubber in a tiny circle with the craft scissors, to leave room to pour resin into the bead molds.

Using Flat Head jewelry pliers, I carefully curled one end of 4 pieces of wire as shown in the photo. The curled end of the pieces of wire were placed in the molds and the excess wire bent at a right angle. The curled part acted like an anchor in the resin so I can later make a loop for the bead.

I mixed up a batch of Amazing Clear Cast Resin following the easy to follow instructions and added a few drops of Alumilite Fluorescent "FLO" Orange Dye and one tiny drop of Brown Dye to get the perfect bright pumpkin color I wanted. I added a touch of Ultra Fine Glitter and poured the resin into the bead molds using a stir stick.

Once the resin beads were fully cured I carefully removed them from their molds. The jewelry wire acted like a perfect handle to grab hold of the tiny beads.

Using the needle nose jewelry pliers, I carefully curled the excess wire sticking out of the top of each bead once, making a loop and bent back the last bit of wire over the bead to give the illusion of pumpkin vine.

I placed all of my beads out next to the gold chain, to get an idea of how I wanted the necklace to look. Going right to left: I started with green acrylic leaves; going to tiny yellow crystals for flower buds; to flower beads for the pumpkin blossoms; the green crystals as unripened pumpkins; to the pumpkin resin beads and ending with the brown leaves that all pumpkin patches become.

I threaded the crystal and flower beads onto a jewelry eyepins. Carefully I snipped off the excess wire, and using round nose pliers I rolled the end of the wire into a loop. I repeated this with all of the crystal and flower beads.

I opened up a jumpring with the flat nose pliers and put the jumpring through one of the beads and a necklace link. When I closed the jumpring with the pliers the bead became a beautiful dangle. I repeated this for the rest of the beads, resin, crystal, leaves and flowers.