Big Beautiful Bezels

If you love big colorful cabochons and want to discover decorative ways to enhance their settings, this live, virtual class is for you! Students will learn to create dramatic step bezels and reverse bezels with stamping, ornamental line chasing, piercing, and roller printing that are perfect for showing off opaque or translucent stones. These bezels can be incorporated into jewelry or dangle alone from a chain. Students will also learn tips for setting cabs with corners, straight sides, and asymmetrical shapes.

As a bonus, Victoria will show the class how to transform an old screwdriver into a simple but highly useful chasing liner and how to use liners to chase freeform patterns and designs on your bezels.

This course will consist of two sessions. There will be a no-class day between each session.

There will be an Open Studio Hour at 12:00PM Eastern Time on the no-class day.

Class will be held live via Zoom during the designated time frame. A link to the Zoom room will be sent via email. 

Each session will be recorded and you will receive a password protected link to the recordings that expire after 30 days.

Please read the Materials & Tools tab! 

Meet the instructor

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Victoria Lansford works across multiple artistic media and is best described as a “one woman, big city, symphony orchestra.” Lansford has spent over 40 years working in the visual, literary, and performing arts to paint with fire, forge with words, and choreograph with color, line, and texture. Her award winning and genre busting art and fine craft combines centuries old techniques with cutting edge technology to create artwork that ranges in scale from wearable to hangable to architectural. Her painstakingly intricate art is made from precious metals, gemstones, ink, paint, skins, paper, hammers, punches, pliers, gravers, brushes, pencils, pens, or quills and takes many forms including art jewelry, craft objects, miniature paintings, calligraphic artist books, and metal screens. All of her designs revolve around the interplay of negative and positive space, the origins of the universe, and mythological archetypes to bring forth external displays of feminine power.

 

 

Lansford’s art has has been widely exhibited in galleries, museums, and publications, including the Lark 500 book series, Metalsmith and Jewelry Artist magazines, Repousse and Chasing (Brynmorgen Press), and on Home and Garden Television. She has created a world-wide renaissance for many, old world, fine metal techniques through her sold out workshops, videos, books, articles, and apps.

 

 

 

 

Lansford’s most recent large-scale commissions were for one of the world’s largest, bespoke, superyachts: a floor to ceiling, etched copper screen and Eastern repousse double doors, both depicting oceanic scenes. She won a 2019 Independent Publishers Award for Best Design and a 2020 e-Lit award for her ground breaking, animated ebook Giving Voice (Spiral Publications) with introduction by best-selling author of the Griffin and Sabine trilogies Nick Bantock.

 

 

 

 

Lansford lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband Chris, son Skyler, and two Shelties Boudica and Elizabeth

 

 

Materials & Tools

Students will need to have the following materials in preparation for this online workshop. If you do not already have them, a suggested item and/or a vendor from which you can purchase these items has been provided below. Click the vendor name (in red) to be redirected to a page where you can find or choose the item. The quantities you need for each item are listed first. Please be aware that some items may come in larger quantities than needed for this class. Please order these materials as soon as possible due to longer than usual turn-around times. We recommend not opening the item packaging until the day of the workshop.

Raw materials that will be needed to complete class objectives:

  • 6"x2" x fine silver sheet - 26g - dead soft or 1/4 hard (Rio Grande)
  • 6"x1" x fine silver sheet - 20g - dead soft or 1/4 hard (Rio Grande)
  • 2"x2" x sterling silver sheet - 18g or 20g or 22g (Rio Grande)
  • 6" x sterling silver wire - 16g (Rio Grande)
  • 6" x sterling silver wire - 18g (Rio Grande)
  • 12" x easy silver solder - wire or sheet (Rio Grande)
  • 12" x medium silver solder - wire or sheet (Rio Grande)
  • 12" x hard silver solder - wire or sheet (Rio Grande)
  • 2-3 x large cabochon stones - 20mm or bigger works best

A soldering setup will be needed to complete class objectives:

  • 1 x fireproof torch area - steel baking sheet will work (Amazon)
  • 1 x Solderite™ pad or fire bricks (Rio Grande)
  • 1 x compressed charcoal block - optional (Rio Grande)
  • 1 x torch - acetylene/air works best (Rio Grande)
  • 1 x #0 or #1 torch tip - if getting Silversmith (Rio Grande)
  • 1 x titanium soldering tweezers (Rio Grande)
  • 1 x tungsten soldering pick (Rio Grande)
  • 1 x paste flux (Rio Grande)
  • 1 x copper tongs - for pickle (Rio Grande)
  • pickle - for non-ferrous metals (Rio Grande)
  • crock pot or tempered glass container with lid - for pickle (Amazon)
  • tempered glass container or sink - for quenching and rinsing
  • small brush - for flux

Tools that will be needed to complete class objectives: ​

Students should bring

In addition to the above items, you will want to have the following common items available: 

  • hard work surface
  • dust mask
  • safety glasses 
  • dental floss
  • fire extinguisher
  • metal ruler
  • screw driver - to make your own liner tool
  • circle templates - optional
Virtual Course
Tuition
$255.00
Instructor
Victoria Lansford
Level
Intermediate and above
Pre-requisites
Jewelry 2 skills required
Location
Virtual - Eastern Time Zone
Length
  • 0 days
 

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