Piercing Polymer Clay Lentil Beads

00:00:03 –> 00:00:08 Hi guys, its Cindy Lietz, your Polymer Clay Tutor, and today’s PcT Mini Tute, I’m gonna

00:00:08 –> 00:00:12 show you how to pierce a hole into a lentil bead.

00:00:12 –> 00:00:17 Now this is a Polymer Clay lentil bead of course…and I have done a tutorial on how

00:00:17 –> 00:00:24 to roll these really cool swirly lentil beads, and this particular one was done using a Mod

00:00:24 –> 00:00:31 cane which I’ve also done a little video on as well, so you can check those out, but some

00:00:31 –> 00:00:37 of you have requested that I do a video on piercing the hole in them which is a little

00:00:37 –> 00:00:42 different than most other bead piercing situations.

00:00:42 –> 00:00:49 Now actually, I have a video on piercing beads as well, but the lentil bead is a unique shape

00:00:49 –> 00:00:54 that’s a little trickier, so I’m gonna just show you some tips on how to do that.

00:00:54 –> 00:00:59 Now I have on the table here some of the ones that I rolled up the last time, I’ve actually

00:00:59 –> 00:01:06 let them just sit, they’ve been sitting for…oh, I don’t know, a week or so and they haven’t

00:01:06 –> 00:01:11 been baked yet, so if they’ve been sitting that long, it’s actually really a good time

00:01:11 –> 00:01:15 to pierce them when they’ve been sitting for a little bit and they’re not all super warm

00:01:15 –> 00:01:22 and squishy…they distort really easily if they’re hot and squishy, but if they’ve been

00:01:22 –> 00:01:27 sitting a long time, like a week, which normally I wouldn’t wait that long, but I knew this

00:01:27 –> 00:01:30 video was gonna be coming.

00:01:30 –> 00:01:34 What you’re gonna wanna do is just sorta warm them up just a little bit, and you also wanna

00:01:34 –> 00:01:39 make sure that there aren’t any little flat spots, on this particular bead…though I

00:01:39 –> 00:01:43 don’t know if the camera will pick up, there’s a bit of a flat spot from sitting around for

00:01:43 –> 00:01:46 the week, so I wanna get rid of that.

00:01:46 –> 00:01:56 So I’m just going to take my…whatever piece of acrylic I had for removing…for making

00:01:56 –> 00:02:00 the bead in the first place, I’m just gonna do a quick roll to make sure that it is smoothed

00:02:00 –> 00:02:05 out, that little flat spot is removed and that kind of thing.

00:02:05 –> 00:02:12 Now these particular beads will fingerprint when you’re trying to pierce the hole, so

00:02:12 –> 00:02:20 this is a really good time to wear a latex glove, or non- latex if you’re allergic to

00:02:20 –> 00:02:30 latex, but whatever it is that… a nice little fitted glove will work great, and if not,

00:02:30 –> 00:02:37 you can also put a little bit of cornstarch into your fingertips and see how it’s filled

00:02:37 –> 00:02:44 up all the little gaps in my really manly fingerprints, well, this will also help keep

00:02:44 –> 00:02:47 you from leaving fingerprints on your beads.

00:02:47 –> 00:02:53 So the trick with these is to… if you’re piercing them this way, from side to side,

00:02:53 –> 00:03:01 is to hold them super gently, and just hold them kind of in this little V in your fingers

00:03:01 –> 00:03:07 right here, don’t squeeze it, don’t push hard, all of this has got to be done with the gentlest

00:03:07 –> 00:03:13 touch, if you’re squashing at it, you’re going to wreck it, and that would be a shame because

00:03:13 –> 00:03:15 these are really pretty little beads.

00:03:15 –> 00:03:20 Now you’re gonna want to have something to pierce your bead with, there are a few options

00:03:20 –> 00:03:28 but the finer and the stiffer and the straighter and sharper your bead piercing tool, the better,

00:03:28 –> 00:03:36 so these are some little bead piercing pins that came with my Amaco bead rack, you can

00:03:36 –> 00:03:41 also buy them…just bead pins separately, sometimes they have a little Copper tip on

00:03:41 –> 00:03:43 them and stuff like that.

00:03:43 –> 00:03:50 You can use something like this which is like a kitchen skewer thingy for like…trussing

00:03:50 –> 00:03:57 up turkeys and stuff, but usually the tip is not…its super pointy but it’s not super

00:03:57 –> 00:04:07 clean, so you may wanna sand it down and make it a real nice sharp point, and…but…and

00:04:07 –> 00:04:13 also the wire is a little thick, and the thinner the hole is, the better.

00:04:13 –> 00:04:22 This is also a bead piercing pin from the new Sculpey bead rack system, this would work

00:04:22 –> 00:04:26 it’s really nice and sharp, it’s really stiff and straight, but it is also kind of

00:04:26 –> 00:04:34 large, you’ll find that these finer wired ones will work really well, if you had a really,

00:04:34 –> 00:04:39 really long sharp needle, it would work as well, okay.

00:04:39 –> 00:04:46 So I’m gonna just…oh, and another option you can do is…okay so say you don’t feel

00:04:46 –> 00:04:51 like waiting for a long time or you really had to roll your bead for a long time to warm

00:04:51 –> 00:04:56 it back up and straighten out the shape or whatever, you can just throw it into some

00:04:56 –> 00:05:02 ice water…a bowl of ice water, and it will firm that up and make it a lot less… it

00:05:02 –> 00:05:07 will distort a lot less, if you throw it into some ice water first.

00:05:07 –> 00:05:12 Then you take your piercing needle, and you can either dip it in to the water or you can

00:05:12 –> 00:05:18 dip it into some corn starch…I’ll dry it off first, just put it in the cornstarch,

00:05:18 –> 00:05:24 but it’ll give more resistance to the needle, and then…now hopefully my head isn’t in

00:05:24 –> 00:05:31 the way, but I’m gonna come up from the top center and try to look over this bead, pierce

00:05:31 –> 00:05:39 it right on that sharpest edge, and look straight above so that I know that it’s nice and straight,

00:05:39 –> 00:05:46 then I’m going to just twist, twist, twist, twist, trying to keep it as straight as possible,

00:05:46 –> 00:05:51 and you wanna make sure that your line is going straight through the centers, and just

00:05:51 –> 00:05:53 keep twisting it.

00:05:53 –> 00:05:59 Now, when you’ve done this a few times… maybe practice on just a lentil shape that

00:05:59 –> 00:06:05 hasn’t got all this beautiful swirling to get good at it, but just twist, and notice

00:06:05 –> 00:06:10 it’s just barely sitting in those fingers there, and I’m just barely pushing down as

00:06:10 –> 00:06:16 I’m twisting, I don’t wanna put a…get a great big dent in the top there.

00:06:16 –> 00:06:21 And as I kinda twist, twist, twist, you can kind of feel it because it tapers down in

00:06:21 –> 00:06:28 here, your fingers are pretty sensitive, you can start feeling the wire coming through

00:06:28 –> 00:06:32 the other…coming down to the center of the bead.

00:06:32 –> 00:06:41 Now, as you come closer to this other edge, what you’re gonna do is come up really,

00:06:41 –> 00:06:48 really slow, and if you’re…now I’ve come up, now I don’t know if Doug will be

00:06:48 –> 00:06:52 able to pick it up, but I have not come in the center but I can see…

00:06:52 –> 00:06:58 I haven’t come right up through the right edge here, but I can see where I’m at…where

00:06:58 –> 00:07:05 the…so what I’m gonna do is back out and come from the topside where I want that to

00:07:05 –> 00:07:18 be, and if I do this gently and twist, it will find that channel that’s there and come

00:07:18 –> 00:07:28 through it…now hopefully I made that quite nicely, it should come out quite well to the

00:07:28 –> 00:07:35 other side, see and it came right out the hole there exactly where that channel is,

00:07:35 –> 00:07:42 so if you go all the way about 99%, come right up to the tip, even if you poke it out, now

00:07:42 –> 00:07:49 I accidentally poked it out a little bit off from the edge, if I just make a tiny, tiny

00:07:49 –> 00:07:55 little pierce mark there, it’s no big deal to fix that, just by smearing over it, and

00:07:55 –> 00:08:01 then come again from that side and meet up with it, now we’ve got a nice hole that goes

00:08:01 –> 00:08:05 all the way through and it’s right on the edges.

00:08:05 –> 00:08:11 Now, if this hole is too small for you, say you wanted to use a piece of cording that

00:08:11 –> 00:08:17 was much thicker than this wire here, you can always drill it out…drill the hole larger

00:08:17 –> 00:08:29 after it’s been baked, it’s a lot more difficult to try to drill one of these beads when…

00:08:29 –> 00:08:34 after it’s been baked straight, it’s just really tricky, you have to setup a jig or

00:08:34 –> 00:08:41 do something like that, but when it’s raw, it’s quite easy to meet up those two sides

00:08:41 –> 00:08:45 if you go all the way to the end and then just come back through this way to finish

00:08:45 –> 00:08:46 it off.

00:08:46 –> 00:08:54 Now somebody also asked me if I could show how to do it from point…from the center

00:08:54 –> 00:08:59 all the way through…now this one needs to be rerolled, I can see a little mark on it,

00:08:59 –> 00:09:02 or maybe I’ll grab one that doesn’t need to be rerolled so that we can just get going

00:09:02 –> 00:09:09 here, yeah this one’s fine, alright, so then I’ve got to grab another bead piercing

00:09:09 –> 00:09:15 tool…and while I’m thinking of it, see this one, I went to go grab it and then I tossed

00:09:15 –> 00:09:20 it to the side, it’s bent, you can really see it’s bent when I try to roll it with my

00:09:20 –> 00:09:23 fingers, if you use a bent one, the holes are gonna go right out the side and you’re

00:09:23 –> 00:09:29 not gonna get a straight hole, so make sure that your bead piercing wires are straight,

00:09:29 –> 00:09:32 so that you have a better chance.

00:09:32 –> 00:09:37 Now this is gonna be a lot simpler because it’s a shorter distance to go through the

00:09:37 –> 00:09:42 middle this way than it is to go through the long way, so I’m just gonna look and try to

00:09:42 –> 00:09:48 go as straight as possible, I’m going to do the same thing, I can just use a little water

00:09:48 –> 00:09:56 on here, make sure it’s lubricated, go real slow.

00:09:56 –> 00:10:03 And when I feel it, if I can feel it just touching my skin on the other side…so I’ll

00:10:03 –> 00:10:12 go really, really slow, there, I felt it but you can’t really see it yet, that way, I can

00:10:12 –> 00:10:18 come through from the center and make sure it was really in the center of that little

00:10:18 –> 00:10:23 swirl, and then meet up with it real easily now, because there’s a channel there already,

00:10:23 –> 00:10:30 I’ll just come through and it’ll end up poking right up through that hole, so you

00:10:30 –> 00:10:36 can bake it…do it that way as well, and that would have a completely different look

00:10:36 –> 00:10:38 to the…when it was strung.

00:10:38 –> 00:10:43 Now, just a couple of little quick pointers, you can bake them a few different ways, you

00:10:43 –> 00:10:48 can do it on the bead rack like I did here, or you can take your pierced bead and set

00:10:48 –> 00:10:53 it…if you don’t have a bead rack, and you just bought the pins, you could set that into

00:10:53 –> 00:10:57 a bed of cornstarch if you like.

00:10:57 –> 00:11:04 Or you can also bake them this way, you can fold… take some file folder or whatever,

00:11:04 –> 00:11:10 I actually have a little scoring tool like from Martha Stewart, and so I just scored

00:11:10 –> 00:11:15 it every one inch and easily folded it into an accordion, but of course, you can do that

00:11:15 –> 00:11:19 by hand, you don’t need a score thing, you can either leave it on the pin, and just let

00:11:19 –> 00:11:27 it bake in a spot like that, or if you only have one piercing pin, what you can do is

00:11:27 –> 00:11:32 back the pin back out…and the hole will stay there, and then you can just bake it

00:11:32 –> 00:11:38 like that inside your little channel, alrighty, you can have it a little tighter than that.

00:11:38 –> 00:11:46 So those are all my little tips for making…bead piercing, the big thing is to be gentle, go

00:11:46 –> 00:11:50 very slow, try to go as straight as you can.

00:11:50 –> 00:11:56 Go 99.9% of the way just let that little pin pierce out the other side and then come back

00:11:56 –> 00:12:03 through the other direction so that it meets up and it’s in the perfect location.

00:12:03 –> 00:12:10 You can use the ice water to make it firm, and you can use a glove or cornstarch to keep

00:12:10 –> 00:12:15 it smooth and fingerprint free, ‘cause you really can’t sand these very much at all,

00:12:15 –> 00:12:19 you could do a light, light, light sanding, but once you sand, that little swirl will

00:12:19 –> 00:12:25 get removed, so you can’t really sand these beads too much, you can…so you need to make

00:12:25 –> 00:12:30 sure it’s as fingerprint free before you bake it as possible, alright?

00:12:30 –> 00:12:34 So good luck with that, and try it out and take some time to practice it, but it is something

00:12:34 –> 00:12:37 that you can do, alrighty.

00:12:37 –> 00:12:40 So if you liked this video, do let us know.

00:12:40 –> 00:12:46 And if you have suggestions for techniques that you don’t know how to do, products you

00:12:46 –> 00:12:52 would like me to test or anything else in regards to Polymer Clay and working with jewelry

00:12:52 –> 00:12:57 and that kind of thing, then do leave us a comment in the comment section below.

00:12:57 –> 00:13:01 And don’t forget we have tons and tons and tons of videos, so we may have the answer

00:13:01 –> 00:13:05 for you already, so make sure to search through and watch some of those videos we’ve done

00:13:05 –> 00:13:07 before, alright?

00:13:07 –> 00:13:09 We’ll see you next time, and bye for now.

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