easy peasy charms to make...

So, there I am in Hobby Lobby minding my own business, getting a few supplies in the jewelry findings section for the flowers and such and what do I see?  Fabulous silver bezels that require no soldering!  Oh I still love me some soldering, and will show you in just a bit more of what I have been up to, but these are the perfect charm to share without the cost or fear of the molten lava hot soldering iron!

They require few supplies, the most important being your imagination and free spirit!

After said bezel has been located you will then need to purchase some diamond glaze. There are other products out there that are similar, it is a dimensional glaze that will dry like a resin without the mixing part.

The product I used is called Scrabble and Glass Glaze by Sun and Moon craft kits, I found it on etsy and I know you can find diamond glaze on there too. I have used both and they both work great.  Mod Podge also makes a dimensional glue now that I think works the same way, but I could not find my bottle of that and so haven't tried it yet.

note to self... clean out the workroom!

O.k. this is very important, find a sweet picture... and then it must be LASER copied!  You will not be able to copy these on your inkjet printer, for some reason when the ink and glaze are mixed, the ink will turn different colors and run.

You can also take a picture right out of a vintage book like I did here.  These two are Mary had a little lamb and little Jack Horner from a vintage nursery rhyme book.

  I used the pattern on the bezel package to measure how big the picture could be and then just traced that on top of the picture in the book.  seriously easy peasy.

I love how stinkin sweet these are, those little books always catch my heart with a bit of nostalgia.

This one is a snippet of an original photo, you can use those too if you dare to!  I was on a roll and tried not to think of how bummed I might be when I can't go back and use the photo again. But sometimes a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do! 

We don't have a print shop in this one horse town I live in. 

For this one I measured the bezel pattern on to a piece of scrapbook paper and then cut the little girl out of the picture and glued her on.   I then cut out the word precious from an old book and added some detail with markers. 

So this one was a bit of collage fun too!

So you cut out the picture, and then embellish if you like, I added glitter to the one that says precious by putting a very thin bead of glue around the background paper and then sprinking on the glass glitter (also found on etsy).

Then you squeeze enough glaze onto the collage/picture, enough to fill the bezel to the top and leave it alone!

This is always hard for me to do, cuz I'm a bit impatient. shhhhhh.

O.k. before you run out the door to buy you some bezels... here are two important tips... DO NOT shake the glaze bottle!  It will cause bubbles in your glaze and you do not want bubbles on your charm but if you do get bubbles then just take a pin or toothpick and pop them.  Spoken from experience, I promise.

Because I am a thrifty kind of girl, I bought the bezels when they were 50% off, which HL does quite often so they cost maybe 1.00 a piece for the big one and I think 1.50 for the set of two. 

So there you have it, cheap and easy!

Something I never wanted to reveal about myself!  LOL

This was your tip from Theresa for Tuesday...

Thanks for stopping by!

Theresa xoxo

this just in... I'm linking up to Hope Studios for Tutorial Tuesday. and Tip Me Tuesday over at Tip Junkie and the Glitter Party over at Running with Glitter!  I'm headed over now to see what I can learn today!