Jewelry Again

I learned yet another thing at that Rubber Stamp Festival I attended in January. (Are y'all sick of hearing about it yet?) This time it involved something called Patera, which I believe is a brand for these little picture frame-like pendants. You can order them here. I'm telling you this because I thought I could find these things anywhere for less than this vendor had them. I was wrong. I scoured every craft store in my area, and none were to be found. I had to order them and pay shipping. So much for saving money on them!

This whole process looked so fast and simple when the vendor demonstrated. It was a lot of trial, error, and frustration for me, but I'm pleased with the end result, so I guess it's all worth it.

First, cut paper to fit inside the pendant. This isn't a necessary step, but I found that it helped things to pop:



Place paper inside (I glued it in):



Cut shrink paper to the appropriate size (easier said than done), stamp it with your chosen image, then shrink it. Once that is done, place it inside the pendant:




The shrink paper is the hard part of this project. Figuring out the exact size to cut the paper before shrinking it to fit inside the pendant was frustrating, to say the least. It involved many unsuccessful attempts at sizing before I finally got it right:



I did glue it in, but I don't think that's actually necessary. The last step involves placing a glaze over it all, and that should seal it all in. The vendor used a diamond glaze in her demonstration, but I used what I had, which was liquid embossing with a glass finish for paper. Be sure to remove any bubbles with a toothpick:



Let it cure for a couple of days, and voila! A lovely new pendant:



In case you're wondering why I chose the Chinese character for joy, it's meant to be a personal reminder to pray for the Christians in China who are being persecuted. I also thought it would be a great reminder to pray for our Christian worker in the Underground Church, who ironically, did not turn out to be Chinese; he's Vietnamese. They were out of Chinese workers, but that's okay. Steven and I just wanted to be of help to someone who is trying to spread the Gospel where it's dangerous to be a Christian.