Sticky Back Necklaces...

Yesterday was a great day... in addition to enjoying an early Easter dinner with the "outlaws" :) I had the chance to relax in front of the tube and play with my supplies. I love doing some projects that way. Very therapeutic! :)

I have been playing a lot with Claudine Hellmuth's Sticky Back Canvas lately. I purposely brought a painted canvas home with me so that I could cut it up and create some fun handmade beads. I figured making the beads (in the quantity I wanted) would be a great in front of the TV project -- and man was I right!

For those who don't know -- Claudine designed a self-adhesive, artist-quality canvas and sells it in sheets ( 8.5x11 and 12x12). You can do pretty much anything with them.. I have seen a lot of floral embellishments etc created with it but after seeing someone in a mag creating canvas beads I thought this canvas would be perfect as it would eliminate the need for glue. So... here is what I did:

I thinly washed the canvas with black, red and gold metallic acrylic paints. Once it was dry (with the help of a heat gun :) ), I foam stamped in white randomly all over the canvas and added a little perfect pearls to the paint before it dried to give it a little extra bit of luster! The canvas looked so cool I ALMOST didn't want to cut into it :) hehe But, alas, as I was going to create beads so I got out the scissors and cut up the canvas.

This canvas is very easy to cut. I used Tim Holtz's signature scissors (by Tonic) as they are Teflon coated just to make sure the "sticky back" wouldn't stick ... I have cut this canvas with other scissors with no problems... I just wanted to use the tools I have that I KNOW will work well :) It's all about the tools, baby :)

I cut the canvas into triangles with an approximate 1.5"-1.75" base and then removed the backing to expose the "sticky" and rolled them up into cylindrical beads. As the canvas is already sticky... there is not need for glue! yay! As much as I love to get messy. This is one step I didn't want to take.

Now... for the fun stuff!! I covered the beads (rolled them into) a Perfect Medium stamp pad and then coated the beads in clear UTEE and set the UTEE with my heat gun. While the UTEE was warm, I dipped the beads into perfect pearls and other coloured embossing powders and embossing Puffs to add layers of interest and glimmer. I also got out my Angelina fibers and melted them into the enamel for some extra "stringy" bling. Woot Woot... Now you know its a Karen project!! Pretty fun and funky.

I whipped up a few dozen of these beads and "strung" them, along with some other metal beads, to a chain. I loved how these turned out... What do you think??

The Go Scrapping Studio carries everything you need to create these beads. Stop on in and check it out!! Love to "play"!!