I am very excited to have my first guest blogger post today!
From Wine to Whine Dee and I randomly met on Craftaholics Anonymous’ Facebook page. I was super excited to meet another Jersey blogger. Turns out we have a lot in common and are both working to grow our little baby blogs to something big! It has been great to have someone to bounce things off of and that can relate to the growing pains and learning of the big bad blogging world.
You’ll love her tutorial for stamping your own charm!
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I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but stamped pendents seem to be popping up EVERYWHERE! And although you’ve probably been tempted to buy a few pieces, did you know that they are super simple to make? All you need are the right supplies and a teensy bit of practice!
You are going to need a few things to start Stamping:
-Hammer
-Metal Hole Puncher
-Needle Nose Pliers (they make ones for jewlery, I just use the ones from the hardware store)
-Metal Blank (these come in all shapes and sizes, since we are doing a charm braclet I used tiny circles)
-Sharpie Marker (the thinner the point the better)
-Metal Stamping Plate
And of course you need metal stamps! (You can purchase them in kits or individually, and they come in a range of font and sizes. Just pick one that you like and give it a try! I have size 3/4mm.)
Ok, now that we are all prepped, it’s time for the fun stuff.. LET’S GET STAMPING!
-Take your Metal Blank, and place it on your Block.( I recommend taping your blank to ensure that nothing moves.)
-Once your blank is secured, choose the letter that you want to stamp. It’s very important to take a look at your stamp head and make sure you are holding the letter the way that you want it to face. (Only need to learn that lesson once!)
-Place the stamp directly where you want the letter to imprint, and in ONE fluid motion strike the hammer directly down and onto the center of the stamp.*I recommend practicing on scrap metal before stamping any metal plates. It’s not necessarily hard to do, but it takes a few times to understand how hard/soft you need to hit the stamp. For instance if you hit it to lite then your letter may not fully imprint, to hard and it may dent the surrounding metal, and if you hit it more then once then you get a duplicate letter shadow. So just take my advice, and purchase a scrap piece of metal so that you can get the feel a few times. Trust me, you will thank me later!
Now your Blank should look like this!
It;s time to punch a hole so that we can call it a charm! There are two different types of metal hole punchers. I used a Screw Double Hole Punch, you just give the top a twist and you have the perfect hole. They also sell a Metal Punch, which looks more like a hole puncher. I can’t tell you if one is better then the other, but I do know this one works pretty nicely and allows for me to be extremely careful in my placement.
Now you want to grab the fine tip Sharpie and color in the indention. If you get some outside the line, just put some nail polish on a cotton ball and dab at the excess.
Put the charm onto the jump ring, and add it to your bracelet! Pretty simple right?
Now, you could stop with one charm or add a few more like I did.
That’s the beauty of DIYing you can add/remove things as you wish!
So, all in all what did you think?! Think you can do it? Trust me when I say it’s really easy, it took me less then 15 minutes to make, and I actually assembled the charm onto the bracelet in the car on the way to a party (don’t worry I wasn’t driving : )) If you give it a try make sure you stop by From Wine to Whine and let me know how it turned out!! I’d love to hear from you!
xo, Dee
[...] all met her last week when she shared her DIY Charm Stamping with [...]