Raven Belt Tutorial Type Thing!

First thing I’m going to note is that I used a dremel for a lot of this. For safety reasons, you should wear a mask and goggles, because resin dust stings when it’s in your throat and hurts when it’s in your eyes (as I learned, from not having either of these things). Safety first!

1. First thing was getting the gems. I cast my gems out of Castin’ Craft’s Easy Cast epoxy resin. I use the transparent dye. I pretty much just follow the instructions that gives me, so there’s not much really to say here. I’ve got a full picture of the gems here.

2. Once all the gems were cast and good, I took a Dremel and cut notches into the sides of each gem so the chain of the belt would fit there. Do this only for the belt ones! The brooch I dremeled down the edges a bit so it’d fit into the ring better, which I explain a little better in step 4.

The belt itself I made with 2.5” rings and a chain that I opened the rings of and took apart. These things I picked up from our leather supply store. To get the length I wanted, originally I had five links of chain in between each ring, but that was really big, so I made it four. It’s probably about 36” around? It sits comfortably on top of my hips.

3. Normally I like using a better quality adhesive, but for my purposes, I used hot glue. The belt is glued on top of the gems, with the chain lining up with the notches.

4. NOT SHOWN! Because the gems were a little bigger than the rings, I took the Dremel again and beveled the edges of the back to have a smoother transition from the ring to the gem, and also to get rid of the sharp edge. This could also be done with sandpaper, it’d just take longer. This is especially where you’d need the mask and goggles because there are a lot of pieces flying everywhere.

5. I used a gold foil that I picked up at Curry’s for the backing, which I just carefully glued around the edges. I tried putting my gems on a bunch of different colours to see which colour I personally liked best as the backing, and chose gold. Had I made the gems darker, I probably would have picked silver. I also added a pin backing to the one that’s my brooch.

And that’s how I did it!