Your Love is Worth More Than Gold: Instant Glam Blog Hop

"Remember this December, that love is worth more than gold."

~ Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon

Before I forget... I chose TWO winners of the Illuminated Chevron necklaces from my Challenge of Color Blog Hop. Congratulations.......................Karin Slaton of Backstory Beads and Sandra Stein of Sanni Panni!
I will be in touch with you to arrange the two colors of your choice for the necklace!

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I met the talented Miss Carmi Cimicata of Resin Crafts blog back in June at the Bead & Button show. I have been following her blog with great interest since she does a lot of really cool and innovative things with Envirotex Resin. I use resin here and there, and I even have used Envirotex with great results, but what always draws me in is what she uses for a bezel.

All that resin needs to be trapped, sort of like my clay in the Simple Truths line. And I love the way Miss Carmi fearlessly jumps right in and her playful attitude toward her materials and her process.

So when she came to me and asked if I would be interested in a little blog hop with a new product, I jumped at that chance! I had no idea what she was going to send me, but I was honored that she asked!

What I received in the mail was a brand new product designed for by Fernando Dasilva called Instant Glam. Fernando is a whiz with crystals and makes glamorous jewelry. This new line of his features large bezels in very interesting shapes, like a three sided flower called tres and a sort of shield shape. What makes this even more intriguing is that there are Swarovski crystal inserts that are in the same shapes. I received a bright silver teardrop shape and golden colored crystals to fit.


The first thing I noticed is that this is a LARGE bezel. The dimensions are 2 1/2" long by 1 1/2" at the widest point. Much, much larger than I typically work with for jewelry. What to do? I have been making a lot of ornaments of late, so I thought that this might be good for that purpose.

The crystals are double pointed like a bicone except that they have no holes. Instead, they are backed by a clear sheet of hot fix adhesive. That means that they can be added to fabric! But for my purposes, I had to use a little glue.

See how nicely the crystal sheet fits in the bezel?

My husband and I have a tradition where we gift each other with one ornament in our stockings each Christmas. We don't buy each other gifts so this is our way to do something special for each other. I decided that this would be the perfect quote for my husband because his 'love is worth more than gold.'

I decided to try cutting the crystal sheet into a heart shape. I traced the shape on the back. The thing is, that adhesive backing is tough stuff! It was not easy to cut this out without marring the glass crystals. I know that I crushed a few of them before I carefully used a craft knife to cut the shape I wanted. 

As long as I am working with something new, why not add something else? I just got a shipment of some Kato Polyclay to test. I have never used that brand before! It works much the same as others, however it does have a bit of an odor I would have to get used to, but the consistency was good. So I used that for the bezel then stamped the words. I impressed the crystals into the clay before baking since I knew I would need to glue it after it was finished. 

After it baked, I painted the entire piece with brown paint. The borders on the bezel have a scroll design that I thought was lost due to the shiny silver plating. But my antiquing brought that design out. In reading the instructions Carmi sent, it was noted that the bezel can be antiqued with Liver of Sulphur or patinaed with Gilder's Paste. I grabbed my favorite paste color - German Silver - because I like the soft gold color of that particular one. I think I would experiment with other ways to change the look of the metal, like the Ranger metal patinas or Swellegant as well. 

Finally, I glued the crystal heart into the impression and added a pretty cream bow. I like the way the crystals catch the light. It will be perfect on our tree.

The perfect way to tell my husband how much I love him this Christmas.

Thank you Miss Carmi for inviting me to play with these new components in the Instant Glam line by Fernando. I look forward to seeing more!

Check back on the Metal Complex blog for a blog hop starting tomorrow, December 11th featuring all the projects created with the new Instant Glam line.

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Today is also my day to share a project on the Art Bead Scene for our annual 12 Days of Christmas holiday project ideas. Come on over and see how easy it is to make my Whoville Shooting Stars ornaments!