Beautiful Marble Focal Bead

Create a beautiful necklace from AMACO for your liking. Use marble focal beads from Friendly Plastics and you'll have your own jewelry in no time. Make your own jewelry or give it as a gift.

Materials:

• Friendly Plastic Strips:
  • White
  • Turquoise
  • Mauve
  • Silver Metallic
• Alcohol Ink – variety of greens and blue, magenta and orange colors
• Needle Tool
• Glass Marble – size and shape of choice
• 24 gauge non-tarnish silver wire
• Blending Solution
• Paintbrush
• Stylus with balled end
• Miscellaneous accent beads of choice
• Rhinestones in colors of choice
• Chain
• Scissors – Tim Holtz (very important as these are one of the few that can cut Friendly Plastic)
• Toggle or Clasp
• Non-stick cookie sheet
• Aluminum foil
• Griddle
• Heat tool
• Bowl of cold water
• Basic jewelry tools
• Baby Oil
• E-6000 glue

Tip: Lightly coat hands and tools with baby oil to prevent sticking. Heat griddle to 160-180 degrees. If the plastic bubbles it is too hot. Working with Friendly Plastic is very easy once you become accustomed to the different working temperatures. The more the plastic is heated the stickier it gets – just like chocolate. With each application of heat, there is also a cooling whether on it’s own on in a bowl of cold water. This helps to control the heat and allow you to work on specific places at one time.

Instructions:

1. Begin with a wash of blending solution over the piece of plastic that you want to color.
    
2. For the Mauve strip, drop mauves and red alcohol inks as background colors onto the plastic.
    
3. Dip brush into blending solution and drop solution onto plastic creating puddles. These puddles will repel the color. You can drop additional colors into the puddles to create interesting effects. Create a strip of reds, magenta’s on the mauve Friendly Plastic. Use the blue and green inks on the white strips. Create as many colorful strips as desired.
    
4. Lace Technique by Liz Welch:
    
5. Cut strips into random shapes.
    
6. Place shapes onto aluminum foil.
    
7. Heat “splashed” strips with heat gun approximately 5-10 seconds. (until lightly soft).
    
8. Remove from foil and place around marble as desired. Repeating this step until marble has been covered as desired.
    
9. Dip round ball stylus into oil and press just inside the edges of Friendly Plastic. Gently slide stylus outwards creating a scalloped edge on marble. You will also notice that this creates a hole with a lacelike effect in the Friendly Plastic. Repeat these steps until you have a pleasing lacy pattern throughout the whole piece. Cool in water.
    
10. Cut small strips of silver. Soften with heat gun. Apply heat to bead for 5 seconds. Use a needle tool or toothpick to apply silver strips as desired to look like ribbons.
     
11. Cut small 1/4” squares of different colors. Soften with heat gun. Use needle tool to create indentations in the middle of each side. Apply heat area to the section of bead with flowers. Press flowers to bead where desired.
     
12. Cut small triangles of green splash plastic. Heat and shape into teardrops. Apply leaves to flowers with heat.
     
13. Gently head desired areas for rhinestones and press into soften plastic with needle tool.
     
14. Create loops with wire. Twist ends to secure. Apply glue to ends of wire. Heat the plastic on the back side and insert ends to one side of bead. Cool in cold water. Repeat for opposite side. Add loop at bottom.
     
15. Attach chain as desired to loops and dangle beads or other findings from the bottom loop.
     

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