Monday, March 09, 2009

Melting Pot & UTEE

I bought myself a Melting Pot last week, well it was part of my birthday present. I watched all of Suze Weinberg's videos on You Tube to pick up some tips and got down to it.

This was made using clear UTEE and a few drops of alcohol ink. As long as you drop the ink into the UTEE and not straight onto the pan it works well. Thread a bead, I used a plastic silver one onto a head pin. You need to use a good amount of UTEE to enable you to swirl the bead around and get a good coating. Once it has melted drop some of the alcohol ink into the UTEE, gently move it around to mix the colour, don't be too vigorous when you mix it as this can form air bubbles. Take your bead and head pin and swirl it around to give it a good coat, don't worry that it goes up the pin you can cut that off later. You can build up the coats to give you the size of bead you want. I think this had two coats. As you use the UTEE be aware that the colour will dilute, so if you want all the beads the same colour top up the alcohol ink as you go. Once you have all the beads you need you will need to tidy them by cutting around the head pin to round off the bead, use scissors and not wire cutters, otherwise you may cut through the head pin. Use wire cutters to cut through the head pin but leave enough to make a loop to thread onto your necklace. Then all you need is all your other beads and thread to make up your necklace.



The necklace below was made in the same way but using clear and bronze UTEE, then a good amount of black embossing powder. It was very satisfying making this one, it had the consistency of chocolate.

Again it had two coats, the bronze and the black formed some lovely swirls and looks really effective.