A tut for making beads from things othere than rods...?
 

I see people's beads that are made from shards, and I can't figure it out for the life of me. How do they do it? What about bottles? Recycled glass? I used to drink a lot of wine, so I have many beautofully colored wine bottles. I'd love to make things from that glass. (Can I with a HH?) Pickle jars, old tumble style drinking glasses...? Thanks!

Hi Fanny, here's a thread on making beads from bottles...

http://lampworketc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99330

I never tried wine bottles on a HH, but I did smash up a Rolling Rock bottle and it melted wonderfully on my HH.

I am going to try to pull some stringers tomorrow...possibly trying to make a goddess out of a wine bottle...we'll see.

COEs are not compatible with most lampwork rods. Be ready for the infamous cracks should you attempt to mix them. You can make some pretty transparent beads out of the different wine bottles. I wonder if you could use a cobalt blue from (I think) Skyy Vodka, and then encase with a clear from any of the other liquor bottles. That would be pretty. Then pull stringers with the cobalt and place dots over the clear. Might work!

Ooo, sound pretty.

If you have stain glass scraps that you know are compatable, check out Kate Drew Wilkerson's videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT0BiNlDioU

I don't mix any bottle glass but you can use goldstone with pretty much all of them. I've never had a problem with using goldstone.

Cool thanks!

Transparent stained glass worked Ok, opaque not so much.

I've used small amounts of frit with bottle glass with no problems.

I found the glass quite a trial to melt on the HH, particularly the brown beer bottles. I did manage to make some interesting wonky disc beads for someone who wanted a memento bracelet.

I'll keep that in mind!

What about different kinds of glass...special colors, brands, etc. What do you like?

I think we all got so excited about the wine bottles we missed the first part of the question.

The shards you see being referenced are thin pieces of glass that come from blowing a large bubble (hollow bead) and then allowing it to break (usually into a coffee can or some such item to contain the pieces). You use them similar to frit though they adhere better with some preheating. I place mine on a candle warmer first so that are less prone to breaking when putting them on the bead. You warm your bead, pick up a shard with your tweezers, touch it to your bead and then warm and marver it around.

Several different vendors here on LE sell shards.

I haven't gotten adventureous enough to attempt making my own yet.

Laura

Thanks!

Now I have had better luck with opaque stained glass. The transparent usually gets so dark that most of the colors look black. But the opaque, especially colors with lighter colors swirled in look great.

I like stained glass, I have a friend that does a lot of stained glass work and she saved all of her scraps for years, and one day I was over there and she was showing me her work space and in the corner there was a cardboard box with TONS of stained glass, and I asked her what she was saving it for and she said she didn't really know, it was just to pretty to throw away. I took it home and she still brings me more every month for me to make beads for her. I fuse with it too, not very fancy or big cause my kiln is itty bitty, but I havn't had compatability cracks yet, I'm sure they are there, but since I'm the only one using them and I'm not planning to sell any of them, I'm not to worried about it.

I actually started with fusing before lampworking. I used BE in fusing so now I'm mainly BE for my "soft" lampworking. I like it better the Moretti and 104 friends. But I love the silvered glasses so I'm still a 104 babe too.

BE has some wonderful swirled sheet glass that is fun to cut in strips and use to make beads.

Sandree (Sandy Seaman) has scrap paks of BE fusing glass for sale in the Garage Sale and on her Etsy. (she is also Sandree on etsy). BE is 90 COE so it does not play with any of the 104's. Bad, bad compatibility ... I was sloppy with my workspace one day and mixed the two. Ugggh.

Laura