Custom Cookie Cutters for Making Uniform Cutout Bead Caps

Here's a tip to make your life easier while making multiples in metal clay. Why multiples you ask? Multiples are the kind of piece you want to make more than one of, for earrings, for uniform pendants on one necklace, or if you're in a production cycle for a show. Bead caps can come in handy often. Here are a few shapes that look good on earrings, bracelets or pendants.   

The easiest shape would be a circle. I also like the 4 pointed star. 

This is a four-lobed piece that looks good bent over a bead.

I got myself a sheet of 28-gauge copper and just cut uniform strips about 1/4 inch wide with metal shears or tin snips. The copper is inexpensive and resilient and easy to form with pliers.  

I spent some time making drawings and then I shaped the cutters to their outlines. I don't worry about soldering the seams. The copper is springy enough to hold it's shape if you're not too rough with it. I made my 4 pointer 1/2 inch wide and the four lobed piece almost 3/4 inch wide. You can adjust your size and style to the beads you're using. 

I roll out my silver metal clay about 3 playing cards thick, then texture it. After the surface has set up a little but the clay isn't hard yet, I use my greased cookie cutter and cut out as many pieces as the rolled out sheet will hold. I'm all about having more than you need for your project, just in case you have another brilliant idea. Repeat as necessary. Remember to flip the cutter if you're making something that needs to be symmetrical or a mirror image of the other.  

When completely dry, I finish the pieces and and then fire them for the maximum firing time and temperature to make sure the silver is sintered enough and will bend easily without breaking. I've never done this with any of the base metal clays so if you want to, you need to blaze your own trail. 

Here's where my dapping block comes into service.  

I place a piece face down in a depression that holds the entire piece inside the rim. I place the dap in the center of the metal and hit it with a hammer, firmly but not too hard.  

In fact I hit it rather gently but surely about 4 or 5 times to get the piece to slowly form to the bowl of the block but careful not to punch out the texture on the other side. I move the piece to the next smaller sized depression and I do the same thing as the piece gets rounder and gets closer to the size of the bead I'm going to use. 

Your cookie cutters can be as simple or as complicated as your imagination lets them be. 

Rose bloom pendant.

Fire and Water rings

All made with custom cookie cutters!

~ Catherine Witherell