Mixed Media Jewelry With a Story

I'm at the point in my experiments with mixed media jewelry where I will never say never. If you had told me three years ago that I would love making resin jewelry pendants for my bead weaving projects I would have never believed you! But, yes, I've fallen in love with resin, and now that I've been brave enough to try (and fail) with this popular mixed media jewelry technique, I'm starting to come up with all sorts of ideas.

A couple of weeks ago, I got my hands on an ICE Resin kit that included several bezels, decorative elements like glitter, papers, and even some sparkling cup chain, mixing cups and sticks, and enough ICE Resin to fill them all! So, one chilly January afternoon, I decided to take a break after lunch and play!

If you've never made a resin pendant before by layering different elements into an empty bezel, it's a wonderful way to create unique pendants and focal pieces for your beaded jewelry patterns. What I love most about this particular mixed media jewelry technique is how each of the resin pendants that I made have their own little story.

		This first resin pendant is dear to my heart. The mother-of-pearl Buddha in the bezel came from some of the jewelry that was passed on to me when my mother died back in 2008. The back of the little component revealed that it had most likely once been glued to a pin finding. I wanted to use it in a piece of mixed media jewelry, but because it was so delicate, I wasn't sure how to incorporate it securely. Layering it over a piece of decorative paper in a resin-filled bezel was the perfect way to include it in a piece of mixed media jewelry!
		Of all the resin pendants I made, I think this one is my favorite. Every year at Christmas, my mother-in-law gives us magazine subscriptions, notifying us with sweet little handwritten cards. This was one of our subscription gift cards this year, and I love the way the chain and the little bit of glitter on the picture make it feel a little bit like Christmas. Maybe it's because I don't usually do sparkly things with my mixed media jewelry, but I think this piece is just asking for some vintage crystals and a handmade clasp.
		Another successful resin pendant, this one perfectly matches an old pocket watch face plate that I've had in my stash for years. To create this pendant, I snipped off the protruding, sharp ends of the watch gears with my heavy duty wire cutters, layered them onto a piece of art paper, and poured resin over all of them! No need to glue these in place, either — I gently dripped the resin in with a wood mixing stick so as not to disturb the placement of the gears in the pendant. My husband said that this one was his favorite of the batch.
		This last pendant was another one of my mixed media mistakes. Oops. Another cutout from an Adirondack Life Magazine subscription gift card, the resin somehow seeped underneath the paper and created the grey spots you see along the edge and the lower right-hand corner. The glitter effects didn't come out the way I wanted it to, either, so I was a little disappointed with that. But, when my six-year-old saw it, he declared that it was "beautiful" and asked if he could have it. How could I say no? Leave it to a kindergartner to see the beauty in everything!

And resin isn't the only mixed media jewelry technique that I've been playing with lately. There are dozens of ways to use unique, recycled, and upcycled materials to create handmade jewelry! If you love making art as much as you love making jewelry, you'll love Cloth Paper Scissors magazine. Each issue is full of brilliant and creative ideas for making art with pretty much anything you have handy. Whether you like to paint, draw, dye, or stitch, you're sure to find something that will stoke your creative fire. For a limited time, you can save on a one-year subscription to Cloth Paper Scissors during the subscription sale, just for Beading Daily newsletter subscribers! (Don't worry — you can also save big when you renew your Beadwork and Jewelry Stringing magazine subscriptions, too!)

Have you found a new way to tell stories with mixed media jewelry making techniques? Leave a comment here on the Beading Daily blog and share your ideas and creations with us!

Bead Happy,

Jennifer