Hot Glue Bezel Tutorial

Thank you to everyone who responded and visited my blog. Many of you mentioned materials I have never used and now am curious and seeking them out to try.

I used a random number generator from http://www.random.org/ which gave me the number 13.

Congratulations to the winner: Debbie (Maine)

On to the tutorial: Here is the face I started with, he does have holes to sew on but I am going to show you how to create a bezel (a rim of a piece of jewelry in which a gem is set) around the face and attach to the fabric.

Supplies you will need are

• ceramic face bead (need one? I have several for sale in my Etsy shop)


• Hot Glue Gun


• Hot Glue - I used clear, but I have found that there is colored and metallic hot glue out there.


• Non stick surface to work - baking sheet


• Spray Paint - I used Krylon Brass

Lay the face on to the non stick surface. I used an old baking sheet. Heat up the glue gun and start covering the edges with glue. Be sure to make some loops and holes with the glue that can be used later to sew down to the fabric. Do you remember the Spirograph toy when you were a kid? That was what I had in mind to create the bezel. I did find this Spirograph drawer that you can play with on the web here.
Anyway back to my bezel. Loop the glue around be sure to go on to the porcelain face and the flat baking sheet surface. Now you let it dry. Here is what mine looked like. Do you see that hair like string of glue? After it was dry I used some scissors to snip a few of those off and clean up the piece.


After the glue was dry, I removed the face from the glue bezel...


Next (I did not photo this part) but I put down some freezer paper and sprayed painted the hot glue bezel with Krylon in a brass color. I should note, I only sprayed the top of the hot glue, since the glue is clear it did not seem to show any parts that were not painted.
Here is the glue and the face put back together. A closer look. I decided after I started sewing everything on to the postcard that I also wanted the holes covered up.Here are a few pictures of my postcard in progress. The face is about 1/2 inch thick. I selected the floral fabric so the face was the center of a bloom. I attached the fabric to the extra firm stabilizer and then started beading over the bezel to attach to the fabric.

And here is the finished card. I did go back and add some hot glue to cover the holes. Which presented a problem, how to spray paint. I opted for a brush and just sprayed a puddle of the brass paint on to some freezer paper.
A few observations. The gold paint does not adhere completely to the glue and with too much manhandling it will flake off some. Also if you scrap the glue with a needle the paint will come off.