Baubles and Beads: Strawberries and Cream

Strawberries and Cream - a summer project

As part of a summer challenge for a Facebook jewellery making group I decided to create a fully loaded bracelet and charm pendant representing summer strawberries.

I have two lovely strawberry moulds and numerous leaf moulds which work well and I wanted to create hand made dipped beads in a clotted cream colour.

a home made mould

this is a Martha Stewart mould

To create the berry colour I used Diamond Clear with two reds - Cosmic Shimmer's Berry Red and Crafty Notions Ruby Red

because it was quite time consuming to create a batch of charms I needed to keep turning down the heat to stop the mix going too orange

the small mould poured

finished small berries

I also poured the large strawberry

the finished strawberries

Next I created the leaves using Crafty Notions Peridot and Diamond Clear

Martha Stewart moulds

completed leaves

To make the beads I colour mixed a clotted cream colour using Diamond Clear with a small amount of Ranger's UTEE white and a sprinkle of Cosmic Shimmer's Light Gold

colour mix for beads

I played around with this until I got a slightly lighter colour than I needed - knowing it would darken with the heat

To make hand dipped beads you need a head or eye pin and then dip the finding in repeatedly, building up layers. You need to gently rotate the pin to make a round shape although the slightly imperfect ones have an organic feel. To make sure the colour is consistent I dipped each pin in turn with each layer building rather than making a complete bead each time.