Glass bezel

I hope someone can help me! I am wanting to create a bezel setting
for one of my watercolor paintings (it’s really small!) for a piece
of jewelry. I am not sure what to use for the inlay, if you will. I
don’t know how to cut glass, so that makes that kind of challenging.
But I am open to learning. Someone suggested transfering my image to
polymer clay and creating a bead. This is a possibility, but I had my
heart set on a bezel. Any suggestions would help!!

Rachael Loving
www.lovingjewelry.com

miniatures are not unknown as jewelry normally they were bezeled in
gold with a bail and or pinback

you want to protect your work with an overlay of glass this can be
also achieved using the art plastics that have uv protection matt
your minature and put the layer of protective thin plastic over it
then once you have the thickness measured do a proper bezel as a
frame it will be thinner than glass and safer.

You can always contact me offlist for more help as I am also a
wildlife artist and understand your framing needs.

Teri
An American Cameo Artist

Rachel,

I hope someone can help me! I am wanting to create a bezel setting
for one of my watercolor paintings (it's really small!) for a piece
of jewelry. 

I’ve created silver “picture frames” for some of my miniature oil
paintings on copper, which are designed to be either worn as jewelry
(pin/pendant) or hung in a shadowbox. You can see what I’m talking
about in the first four items heRe:

http://www.nolimitations.com/show_selections.php?series=y&series_id=1

What I found in the course of this project (once I had overcome the
oil-on-copper challenges) was this:

  1. You need a way to non-destructively remove the painting from the
    frame in order to clean/repair/maintain the frame or painting. I did
    this by using a slightly thicker-than-usual gauge of fine silver
    bezel wire to create a 4-sided bezel that doesn’t go all the way to
    the corners. This provides good support for the piece, but also has
    the gaps you’ll need when opening the bezel (makes it easy to get
    that acrylic fingernail underneath it to raise it). Fine silver is a
    nicely flexible metal that doesn’t harden all that much when
    burnished, so it’s not going to break on you when you have to do
    maintenance.

  2. The frame needs to be very much designed for each painting.
    Working in metal (rather than wood) requires a tighter tolerance in
    the way that the frame’s mechanics function in contact with the
    painting. Each one was modified or customized specific to the
    painting inserted in it.

  3. For oil (and particularly oil-on-metal) paintings, you don’t use
    glass over them, so luckily I didn’t have to tackle that. However,
    for some other projects I did look into this. Some sources you might
    want to consider for small-but-sturdy optical-quality glass: Watch
    crystals (if you’re working round, these can be a blessing) and lab
    slides (available in a couple of different sizes). Glass can be cut
    fairly easily, but be sure to wear very good eye protection when
    doing it as it can chip and fly about.

  4. The paintings that have a separate metal support behind them (a
    silver plate behind the copper painting) were much easier to work
    with and finish on the back than the others. Assuming that your water
    colors are on paper, you’ll need to figure out how you want to
    stabilize the back of them in a way that won’t show through the
    paper. For example, you might use a piece of silver with white gesso
    (or black or gray) on the side backing the painting.

Hopefully, this will give you some direction to explore. Have fun!

Karen Goeller
@Karen_Goeller
www.nolimitations.com

You can always get a (or have one cut) piece of clear quartz to
protect your painting as glass can be very challenging to set
(although great practice for if you can set glass you can set
anything).

A lapidary/stone cutter should be able to help you for a fair price
(a few dollars per stone). Glass, however, would be very similar to a
historical piece which could be fun, although to commoness of glass
nowadays means it is used only in costume jewellery, but it use to be
more expensive, hence more en vogue, than semi precious stones, but
that was a few hundred years ago.

Kindest,
K. David Woolley
david.woolley@unb.ca

Note From Ganoksin Staff:
Looking for a galss cutter tool for your jewelry projects? We recommend:

Find a good glass studio/blower with cold finishing equipment.
Preferably one with a glass lathe or a glass cutter on staff. They
will have the facilities to cut your bezel and to high polish the
bezelled edge of the bezel, so to speak, through a series hand
finishing operations using various grades of silicon carbide grit and
finishing on cork wheels with pumice and cerium oxide… the only
problem may be the size simply in terms of holding something very
small against a polishing wheel!

My two-penneth!
:slight_smile: Kimmyg

@Kim_Griffith

Rachael,

If I am understanding you right, you are wanting to make up a
miniature glass fronted frame for your watercolour. May I suggest
that you contact a watchmaker supplier and buy yourself some
wristwatch glasses, over here in the UK they are available in many
sizes and shapes, then make yourself a simple bezel mount to take the
watch glass with your painting set beneath the glass. I have done
this many times with miniatures and photographs, it is a cheap and
effective way of mounting miniatures.

I hope this is of some help to you.

Good luck James Miller FIPG
https://www.ganoksin.com/orchid/jmdesign.htm

Maybe I’m missing something, but why couldn’t this be set as a
triplet like an opal?

Reev

Hi Rachael!

Rio has/had a series of pendants that included a removeable "antique"
glass facing. Probably ideal for your purpose.

Unusual disclaimer. I’m at IJS, the competition. It’s like these Rio
folks have everything, plus access to brilliant scientists at
clandestine national labs in the NM Rockies. Sheesh!

dan