14 July 2014

Tutorial: Coloured pencil brooch


After seeing this video, I was really keen to try making some coloured pencil jewellery of my own. Last week I showed you a green and blue coloured pencil brooch, but I also made this pink one. Here's how I did it:


1. Select some coloured pencils in colours that you like.
2. Cut pieces off the pencils about 1cm thick (I used a bandsaw for this, and cut about 20 pieces for a brooch 3cm across).
3. Find or cut a thin piece of wood of the shape you want the brooch to be.
4. Using superglue (cyanoacrylate glue), attach the pencil pieces to the wooden base. Make sure to get glue under each piece, and in between each piece.
5. Allow the glue to dry, the longer the better to ensure it’s really hard.
6. Sand, sand, sand the surface. If you want the edges to be rounded, sand them to the shape you want.
7. If there are any tiny gaps between the pieces, add some glue to these, but try not to get too much on the top surface as it will darken the wood.
8. Sand again, working from coarse to fine sandpaper. Buff with a soft cloth to remove any dust.
9. Add a few coats of a high gloss varnish.
10. Glue a brooch pin to the back.



If I was to do it again, I’d make a little more effort to make sure all the pieces were the same thickness – it looked like a miniature Giant’s Causeway when I glued them in place, which did look quite cool, but it took quite a bit of sanding to flatten them!

6 comments:

Eglantier said...

Love it, just love it.

Curlygirl said...

really creative! looks great and i never would have guessed how you did that!

Emma said...

Thank you both :)

Bryn said...

I've tried to make something similar, but found that as I sand the surface flat, the dust from the "lead" in the pencils smears everywhere and then stains the wood a different colour. Any advice?

Emma said...

Hi Bryn
I didn't have this problem myself, but I'm wondering if it could be related to the colours (I mainly used lighter colours), or perhaps different brands of pencils behave differently. Also, maybe try rinsing it with water after sanding?

Bryn said...

Hi Emma - those are good suggestions, thanks! I've tried a water rinse, with mixed results, and lighter colours (eg purple, red, orange and yellow) resulted in a light, but still very noticeable staining. It doesn't look bad though! I think the solution will be to try and sand the beads flush individually (to avoid cross contamination on the colours) and, as you suggested, perhaps trying another breed of pencil. Thanks again!

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