Tutorial: Chalkboard Beads

I received a request for a tutorial on these beads. 

The most critical part of this process is having the right kind of stamp. I designed the stamps because I couldn't find any like what I needed. 

The difference: the negative space of the stamp design needs to be the "solid" portion in your artwork so that it will end up as the raised part on the stamp -- the part that makes the impression. In other words, these stamps are set up in reverse of how most stamps are created. 

The stamps look like this:

The artwork that I had turned into stamps looked like this:

I like the design element to extend into the border area so each element breaks the edge of the frame. 

How to Make the Beads

1. Roll a sheet of black and impress two stamps. 
2. Cut each one out leaving an equal amount of space around the edges of the impression that is wider than the border you eventually want to have on the bead.
3. Cut a third rectangle of clay that is the same size as the two impressed pieces. 
4. Cut a strip out of that third piece to leave a channel for the stringing cord. (After cutting out the cord channel, the third piece is now actually two separate pieces of clay.)
5. Place one of the impressed pieces face down on your baking cardboard making note of the "top" edge, if that matters in your design. 
6. Lay the two channel pieces on top of the impressed piece leaving a channel where you want your stringing cord to run. 
7. Place the second impressed piece face up on the stack, making sure the "top" of this piece is aligned with the top of the face down piece. 
8. Gently pat to ensure that the layers are adhered to each other.
9. Trim all four edges of the bead to make the stack even and smooth on all sides. 
10. Your channel hole may disappear momentarily, but gently insert an awl or skewer to open the hole and channel up again.
11. Cure the bead.
12. After it is cured and cooled, sand it a little to get the roughness off the surface. 
13. If you want to make the edges of the bead smooth instead of sharp, sand all the edges and corners to give the bead a worn feel.
14. Use a tiny bit of white acrylic or oil paint to cover the surface very lightly, then wipe most of it off with a very level, light touch. My stamps have fairly shallow impressions so too much paint will overwhelm it and using a hard touch when wiping the paint will probably remove it all. 
15. After the paint dries, sand the bead again to get any remaining paint off of the high surfaces.

You can also use copper metallic clay and paint it with a mix of turquoise and white to look like copper patina. Two samples are in the photo at top.

There are some of my stamps available in my etsy shop. Just go to etsy and type in Artybecca to find it.

I get my stamps made by www.readystamps.com because I can squeeze a bunch of designs on a 7" x 9" area and then cut them apart.

There are also stamp makers on etsy who will turn your design into a stamp. I have not used them so I can't vouch for any in particular.

Make Large Stamps for Polymer (and nice coloring page designs!)

This is the process I use to create the designs that eventually get turned into stamps. I have access to the full Adobe Creative Suite and I use Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat (PDF) in this process. You may not have access to these programs. Don't worry, you can still make stamp art if you have good paper and a good black fineline marker for clean edges.

After https://www.facebook.com/PolymerClayAnnex/ on Facebook was nice enough to feature my stamps, I said I'd write up my method so here it is...

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

1. Lightly pencil a 7” x9” rectangle on no-texture paper. I make a very large continuous design stamp so I have lots of mixed-pattern surface area to impress on my beads. All of these were done with the same stamp.

    

Click on the photos to enlarge.  I purchase two stamps at a time so I can cup the clay between two sheets and impress both sides at one time. The stamps are unmounted and very flexible.

2. Fill the whole page with designs/doodles using a fine line or pointed permanent ink black marker. Add some repeating elements but don't make it all the same. You want to end up with lots of different pattern areas to use.

3. Don’t make either the black or white areas more prominent; keep the areas balanced. And keep in mind the scale of your finished items... I make beads so I want my pattern to be fairly small and multiple patterns will fit on one bead.  

4. Make lines in the drawing as neat as you can... smooth paper and a good point on the pen will help you make crisp lines. Make sure the black areas are pretty solid. (If you don't have access to Illustrator or Photoshop, you can skip way down to the bottom...)

5. Scan the drawing at 300 resolution using grayscale or color setting.

6. Open it in Photoshop and reverse it so black becomes white. Image > Adjustments > Invert

This was my first stamp. It was not a successful for beads because the my lines were too fat and far apart. I learned my lesson and made smaller patterns the next time. The items at the top of the page were made with my second stamp.

7. Print the reversed drawing and use your marker to clean up the edges. Because the black ink is now white, you can color black back into any area where the white areas of your original drawing ended up too thin. (Easier than using white paint to cover black areas or edges you're not happy with.)

8. Scan the drawing again and reverse it back to the original black design.

9. Open the jpg file in Adobe Illustrator.

10. Select the drawing using the black arrow tool. On the menu choose Object > Image Trace > Make and Expand. (If message box pops up asking you to rasterize, you can say no.)

11. After Make and Expand is finished, you’ll see a bunch of highlighted points all over your art. They serve a purpose but you don't need to do anything with them for this project. Click on the page and they will disappear.

12. Use the white selection arrow to click in a white area of your traced drawing.

13. From the menu, Select > Same > Fill Color to select all the white areas on the page at once. Click delete.

The black area that remains is now a vector art of your drawing, all beautifully smooth and sharp. 

The original scan of a marker drawing.
Try to make the blacks more opaque than shown above before you scan it.

The traced drawing. Click to see it larger.
I love the energy the variation in line weight gives to a drawing.
Uniform line widths are bor-ing!

You can use your art to make clean edged stamps or silk screens. The cleaned-up line drawing also makes a nice coloring book page. Because it is vector art, it can be enlarged to the size of a wall and it will stay sharp. If you were very ambitious you could project it on a wall and paint it or have vinyl cutouts made (Fastsigns.com will do it for you) to apply to the wall.

I save my vector art as a PDF in Illustrator and send it off!
  
14. Now, finally, here's who can turn your lovely art into a stamp: http://readystamps.com/
Read the instructions here before you start:
http://readystamps.com/instructions/ 

You can make some original stamps and help a worthy cause. What's not to love about that!?