[Katherine Swift]

This question comes through email from Ursula:

i am an artist and paint dog breeds that put on gift products and sell to stores all over the country. i want to add jewelry to the line and love the look of the resin set bezels, which the artwork protected by medium and set in the bottom of the bezel. i’m having a big problem with round and oval bezels, in that the artwork is difficult to cut to get a perfect fit. I had originally asked about paper punches but haven’t been able to find any that fit the bezels i’m using and that aren’t cheapie craft punches. i would like a strong graphic punch where you can really line up the artwork…we’re printing on art paper so that the paintings when reduced to jewelry size, show up sharp and clear.
I had coated and set a bunch of the art but decided they needed to fit better so i scratched the batch and they are now soaking to get the gunk and paper cleaned out and start over. I didn’t want to do a pour on paper that wasn’t expertly fit into the bezel.
i didn’t have this problem with the initial rectangles i started with. i suppose i can just limit the line to square and rectangle, but i so love some of the ovals and rounds, especially for women’s jewelry.

[Katherine Swift]

Hi Ursula,

I agree with you about wanting to have the artwork fit perfectly into your bezels. Here are my best suggestions:

1. You can check with a punch/die/tooling company to see if a custom punch can be made. I’m guessing it will be a couple hundred dollars at least to get something like that done.

2. Perhaps a 3-D printer or laser cutting machine would work here. I don’t have any experience with them for paper, but I have seen several talk about cutting paper, cardstock, etc. into specific sizes. The one that comes to mind is Glowforge. Once again, it is going to be expensive. Perhaps you could pay someone to cut these for you?

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