How to Cover a Brass Cuff in Lillypilly Copper Sheets

Hi this is Julie with Beadaholique.com and today I want to show you how to cover a brass cuff with Lillypilly copper sheeting a couple different ways of doing this. You can see on this one I covered the entire cuff and then this one I actually left a border. I'm going to show you how to do both of these techniques and what you're going to need is a brass cuff. You can see they're nice and smooth and flat there's several different types of brass cuffs on the market today some have a rounded top to them. You don't want to use those for this particular application. You want ones which are flat They come in a variety of sizes you're going to need some Lillypilly copper and these are great because they are long enough to go all the way around the cuff. I have one here that is embossed, you can see it has a pattern to it and I have another one which actually has the same patina finish but it's smooth not embossed and these actually come in a cardboard sleeve. You want to keep that as well because you're going to be using it for this project than the other items you need is some E6000 glue you need pad to put your glue on and something to apply your glue I just got some spare pieces of wire. A toothpick will work as well I have some hair bands. If you have a rubber bands that's great to. When the time comes you put these over the copper so that it holds it in place while it dries going to need a pen and a ruler I have a little diamond file right here, fine grit sand paper as well. You might or may not need this depending on how your project goes we're going to use a regular pair of scissors to cut our copper sheets Do not use your sewing scissors for this. If you have a craft knife use that. Make sure that they are sharp and that they work well. You don't want them shredding the copper but I would not recommend using scissors use for say cutting silk or anything like that on the very end of this project I'll show you how to actually embellish the cuff So I've got some fun little gears and I have a pair of bracelet bending pliers. These are actually curved and that's going help curve these gears so they'll fit on the brass cuffs nicely so the first technique I want to show you is actually covering the entire cuff so I'm going to pick a size and I think I will too this size right here and I'm going to start with the embossed sheet so go ahead turn your embossed sheet over and look at how your cuff is going to fit on and I want to leave an edge of about a fourth of an inch and then go ahead and just make a mark of about the same amount away on the other side, so about a fourth of an inch we're not being precise right here by any means we're just leaving enough of a border that we're going to make sure that the entire cuff is going to be covered and we don't have to worry if you want to be precise you definitely can be but you don't need to be I made three marks I'm just going to take my ruler line it up against those marks and draw a line take my scissor and cut right through the copper double-check that I have plenty of room and I do so now take my E6000 glue and for this particular application I'm gonna put it right on the cuff take my wire or whatever applicator tool you want. I'm going to spread it out. I want it to go pretty much to the edge but you don't want it to overflow and spill over when I put my copper on it so I want it to go to the edge but I don't want it to be thick at the edge of it if that makes sense if you see my other videos you'll probably see me use my fingers a lot of to spread glue do not do that with E6000 it's far too strong of a glue it's going to stick to your fingers. It's going to really hard to get it off of them it's not very good for your skin either just use an applicator for this E6000 does dry relatively quickly. Once you got the glue spread on there go ahead put your copper sheet on there and leave a lip, if you can see this just so that it's definitely exceeding the edge of your brass cuff and just walking it around make sure when you look at this that every part of your brass cuff is covered in copper press it together press the Lillypilly onto the brass cuff you're actually spreading out the glue even more when you doing this and I like to bend in just a little bit of the edge right here take the rubber band or in this case a hair band put it over the cuff take a second one and do the same I'm going to let that dry E6000 does take a little while to do a really good strong permanent bond. I'm going to let this dry for a couple hours and then I'm gonna come back and trim it so that is good to go for now and as that's drying I'm going to show you how to do this techniques here where you're just gonna leave a nice border so again we're just gonna pick a cuff I'm going to go ahead and pick the wide one again because I think that looks really nice with the border and this one we have to be a little bit more precise. You have to decide how big of a border you want and how big of a piece to cut. So as you see this cuff is about two inches and for this panel here I left about between an eighth and a fourth of an inch on each side I think for this design here I want to leave a good fourth of an inch on the sides, so I'm going to cut the center panel to be an inch and a half so once you've established that take your sheet turn it upside down again and this time instead of just doing those marks which were kind of random, they worked but I wasn't being too precise I'm actually going to measure an inch and a half here so I'm just gonna line up my ruler against one edge make a little dot at an inch and a half interval line up my dots and draw a line take some scissors and cut along my line be careful this is sharp so just watch out what you are doing, you don't wanna cut yourself on the edge as well, just keep that in mind, it is a piece of metal so for this one we want is to lineup you see it'll goes all the way around so I'm not going to trim the edges I'm just going to go ahead instead of putting the glue on the brass cuff. I'm gonna put the glue on the back of my copper and again I don't want to spill over so just put it in the middle spread it out I got a little close to the edge. Put that glob put it elsewhere I'm not going all the way to the edge and that's because the glue will spread out when I flatten it at this point flip it over, hold it on the edges I know it's gonna go over the side just a little do that to start with make sure I have an even border on either side I'm just holding it in place on one end and walking it around and press it down into place and again I'm just going to press down on the edges as well so now I'm gonna go ahead and take again my hair band or if you have a rubber band put it over it. You'll notice it's start to slip around It's another advantage to just put that glue in the middle section and not have spread to the edge because you're going to adjust this one final time once both of your bands are on I'm happy with that. New I'm going to let this one dry as well for a couple hours and I'll come back. I'll show you how to trim off the edges and on this one of course how to trim it completely and also how to add some of the embellishments we've been patient and we've waited a couple hours for these to dry now to take we can take our bands off. First I want to show you one thing so there was a little too much a E6000 on the back side of this copper piece and it's quished out the ends now what you can do is when this is dry you can just go peel it off and then if you just rub it your brass blank it'll get rid of the little discoloration that glue will cause so you can do that on both sides or if you do have this happen, you might not that's good to know that you can your fingernail scrap it away and inspect your piece now go ahead and take off your bands and now for these edges I'm just going to take my scissor and lineup the scissor against the side of the cuff and I'm just gonna follow the cuff and snip the copper off make sure you don't have any rough edges do that on both sides this is a very important part because you don't want any rough edges because this is where you're going to be putting the cuff on I have a piece of metal right there. I want to peel that off If you have any rough edges, take a diamond file or some fine grit sandpaper just sand it you see that helps to take any of the rough edges right off do that on both sides and that would complete your cuff with the border on the edge that is one that's done now for the second one we're looking and inspect to see if any of the glue came out the edges here, if it did before you start cutting this just peel it away it's gonna make it easier to cut through the copper so now to cut this what you're going to do it's again just line your scissor edge up with the cuff edge cut along the edge you'll see how easy this is cutting. The copper is just coiling away your going to be left with a nice neat edge the advantage of doing it this way vs premeasuring and and trying to fit it exact is that you run the risk of it not lining up right and then you having a gap and the brass cuff showing through the front so to do the inside edge here and we're just going to go ahead again line it up snip it off do the other side the same way at this point you want to make sure that the copper is fully attached to the brass. I see that I have a little bit here that has popped up so what I'm gonna do is take a little bit of E6000 carefully peel this back with out actually creating a crease in the copper and go ahead and put a little bit of glue there because this is already glued down and shaped. It's going to hold its shape okay. I don't need to go ahead and put more bands on it or anything if a little bit comes out that's fine, just let it dry and peel it away as you saw earlier in the video you might have some rough edges here and this is when the cardboard comes in handy that came with your Lillypilly sheet I like to actually take the cardboard and press it against the Lillypilly, the edge of that and pull away and what that's doing is that's helping get rid of some burrs also helping to push that copper against the edge of the cuff and just do that on both sides I'm applying a good amount of pressure there what it's doing is anywhere we have an instance like this, where especially where the embossed piece, it sometimes looks like there's a little gap what this does is smooth this out and gets it so it looks nice and flush so then go back lightly take your finger and again this might be sharp so do not apply much pressure and if you feel anywhere that has a really rough edge just take a diamond file or some fine grit sandpaper and file it away that is how you cover a brass cuff completely in Lillypilly copper sheeting and this is how you cover one and leave a border I did tell you we're gonna go ahead and show you how to do an embellishment so I've got these great little gears here and I love these. They are very steampunk and these two I've actually already gently curved but these are flat. If you have a flat piece on there it's just not gonna look right so what you're going to do is if you happen to have bracelet bending pliers handy you can put these little stampings into the bracelet bending pliers between the jaws if going to help start a curve press down. So now this has a slight curve to it you can curve it a little bit more with your fingers if you want now lay it flat. I want it a little bit flatter so there, it looks like it lays flatter so to embellish curve it a couple times decide what type of pattern you want and then take some E6000 glue put it on the back side try not to use too much glue for this because you really don't want it spilling out too much on the front side use what you need to then go ahead lay it down onto your cuff and press it into place and I would actually recommend letting that dry before you go on into the next one because you'll end up curving your cuff so that it will be whatever ones that you're gluing on next is gonna be able to glue in an upright position so it doesn't slide off like that and just keep doing that until you have all the embellishments you want and then just let the whole piece dry overnight before you want to start wearing it and that is all that is involved in embellishing the cuff and going ahead and making a cuff with a border and then fully covering a cuff with a Lillypilly copper sheets and these projects can be seen on Beadaholique.com in the free project section. 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