Recycling Designs for Cabochons

Often I stumble over a printed ad or the packaging of a new perfume with really lovely details that I use for creating cabochons and some lovely jewelry.

That way I give them a second life:

These two pendants I made from a perfume packaging.

All you need is some imagination and some glass cabochons in differetn sizes for testing.
And some more things:

glass cabochon(s) in the desired size
prints, fabric… whatever you wann use
white nail polish or other paint (optional)
glue
scissors
jewelry blanks (optional)

There is one thing you should watch out for: the pixels!!!
If the print has a low quality (most magazines, newspapers…) then you might see the pixels due to the magnifying effect of the cabochons.

Here you can see the pixels of the print – just open the pic to see the full size….

Recently I stumbled over paper that is used for various paper crafts like scrap booking. They come in different sizes and with printed designs on them.
Of course, not all are usable for cabochons because of the size of the designs, but most of them are.
So I tested them.

I wanted to make some lovely flower cabs, which I can use for a pendant or bead around it.

Now you can see if the print is a good quality by lying the glass cabs on the paper.

The next step is to find the design for the cab – slide the cab around and decide which one you like better.
Then take the glue, make a small dab (depending on the size of the cabochon of course).

Press the cabochon on it to get rid of possible air bubbles

And after the glue has dried thouroughly you can cut them out…..

And these are the little owl pendants I made with them.

They sream “Springtime”, don’t you think?

But you can use almost everything……

Magazines…..

….. this lovely hibiscus flower I found in my 2019 calendar……

….. you can also use fabrics. But the fabrics usually get darker by the glue – like getting wet. You can see it clearly on the pic below with the piece of denim I used.

The texture of the fabric can look interesting ….

I also used a former plastic bag…..

If you use fabrics you should watch out for this:
If the fabric is thin the glue CAN make it transparent.
Then it may look darker when gluing it into the jewelry blanks.

I usually take some white nail polish and paint the back of the cabochon so that the design becomes less transparent .
It may be possible to use other paints like acrylic but I never tested it before.
You can also glue the cab on additional white paper but the nail polish dries faster 😉