July Clay Day - The finishing touch

July's clay day is all about clasps, hooks and toggles​

A lovely matching closure can make all the difference to a necklace or bracelet. A polymer toggle, a bead clasp with embedded magnets a handmade wire hook, bail or link is just what you need for a perfect finish. At our July clay day we will have a series of short demos of different ways to make your own clasps, hooks and toggles, and Ann will also demonstrate how to make best use of her products.

The Show and Tell table will have this as a theme, and we hope everyone will bring pieces with elegant closures they want to show off, pieces where the do-up raised a problem they’d like to get help on, ones where they just aren’t sure what to do with them...

To get the most out of the day you should bring:

• Your usual clay day kit

• Examples of good ideas for closures that you would like to show off and share with others

• Problem closures, or unfinished pieces where others can give help and suggestions

• If you work with wire or other materials to make your closures, do bring these materials and tools

• If you want to try making a magnetic closure, a large-ish finished polymer bead, at least 1.5 cm, ideally with a hole drilled.

We will supply

• Wire

• Wire working tools to share

• Magnets

• Glue

Agenda for the day

10:00 Welcome, setup, refreshments

10:30 Show and tell - Show your beautiful closures and the ones you want some help/ with

11:00 Demonstrations

Polymer clay toggles - Ruth

Making wire work hooks and links - Ann

Magnetic bead clasps - Theresa

Using Monkey Ann clasps - Ann

12:00 Working on your project

13:00 Lunch - including (a very short!) AGM for the group

15:45 Last oven bake