Amazing Casting Products: Skull and Skill Collide just in Time for Halloween! AMAZING Halloween Jewelry Tutorial by Tracy Alden

Hello! Tracy here with another Amazing Crafting Products tutorial! With the Fall season coming up so quickly and so many great craft ideas out there, I can't wait to get started on Holiday projects. Color for me can make or break a project and Amazing Crafting Products makes that easy with all of their wonderful dyes. Their dyes inspired me to make cute and colorful little beads perfect for a Halloween necklace.

Supplies:

Amazing Mold Putty
Amazing Casting Resin
Alumilite Dyes in Black, Violet and Flo Green {Flo = Fluorescent}
Polymer clay
Ceramic tile
stylus
acrylic block
Martha Stewart Crafts Multi-Surface Craft Paint Beetle Black
Pentel Outline Markers in Pink, Green and Black
Jumprings 5mm
Jewelry eyepins
6mm green glass beads
Jewelry clasp
Two mini flat nose and One round nose pliers
Small hand drill
Craft knife
Sharp Craft scissors

I started with carving some cutie-style skulls out of scrap polymer clay using a craft knife. I placed them on a ceramic tile and used a stylus to draw in the details. I then baked them on the tile to manufacturer's instructions.

**You could always use instead of polymer clay pieces your favorite Halloween buttons or craft embellishments to make molds for the beads!

I placed the polymer clay skulls to the acrylic block flat side down and mixed up some Amazing Mold Putty. I use acrylic blocks to make sure that the molding putty is plumb to the piece and that there is little to no creases forming when placing the molding putty on the piece. I then let the mold putty cure.

To tint the Amazing Casting Resin in a small measuring cup I put 2 drops of dye per 1 TBSP part "A" of Amazing Casting Resin. I then added the tinted part "A" to a equal part "B", stirred well and poured them into the molds. The Alumilite Fluorescent (Flo) Green, Black and Violet Dyes are color rich, and as you can see by the photo I got perfect Halloween color tints.

Once the resin was completely cured and set up in the molds I popped them out and trimmed any drips and sharp edges off with scissors and a craft knife. I then very carefully drilled a hole through the top of each piece to make them into beads. Dust was easily rinsed off and the pieces dried.

I have found that the Martha Stewart Crafts Multi-Surface acrylic paint bonds well with the resin pieces. I used the Beetle Black paint mixed with a little water as a color wash to coat each bead. Before the paint dries I wipe most of the paint off leaving only paint in the indentations. I let the paint dry completely before moving onto the next step.

Using the Pentel markers I then ran the markers over the high points of the beads, highlighting the sculpted elements. The green pen for the green beads, pink for the purple and the black for the gray beads.

Once the markers were dry I could start making the links for the necklace. Using an jewelry eyepin, I added a green glass bead, one resin bead and one more green bead.

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 resin beads.

I opened up a 5mm jumpring with the flat nose pliers and put the jumpring through two of the resin and glass bead links. When I closed the jumpring with the pliers I created a two part link. I repeated this for the rest of the bead links and added a jewelry clasp at the end to finish off the necklace.

I added some earrings and now I have a fun and festive Halloween necklace!