Handmade Jewelry - Handmade Glass Beads

Your Ad Here

Try how to make a handmade jewelry

The method and technology of handmade glass bead making is considered among the oldest creativity of humans. Egyptian faience beads, a glass-like beads that comes from the form of clay bead with a self-forming vitreous coating, perhaps the earliest glass-like beads from ancient Egyptians. In some cultures, glass objects were reserved for royalty. Owning a glass objects is closely related in owning other luxurious objects—if you can afford of buying it, it is yours.

What is glass beads anyway? Glass beads are the type of beads made from glass. They are sometimes called Lamp work beads. This type of beads can be poured into molds, can be cut and polished into faux gemstones, and can be stretched and pulled into any shape you desired. These beads can be as simple or as decorative depending on the like of the artist. Different kinds of glass are often used, as well as switching colors to create the desired look.

When creating glass beads, you have to melt narrow rod of glass using the flame of your torch. The molten glass is wound around a mandrel, this is a thin length of stainless steel. The space where the mandrel is set becomes the hole of the bead. Holding and turning the mandrel in different positions allows the gravity to help forming the bead, but there are tools that are needed for pushing and pulling glass beads to form different kinds of shapes.

Working with lamp to create glass beads is not easy, an amount of practice and patience are needed. You have to consider that you are working with glass and torch, you must learn different amount and level of heat that are needed for glass to flow, for a bead that is already in shape before molten again and loses shape, and when to add some elements for decorations and different glass colors that can interact when combined.

Uneven temperature of the glass in making glass beads often causes a bead to crack. Glass shrinks when it is cools. From the flame, beads are being pulled out for cooling, leaving it in an open air that keeps the outside of the bead rapidly cooled, but its inside is still hot. This can cause for uneven temperature of a bead. Using the process called kiln annealing, where the temperature of both outside and inside of the bead can be closely regulated, the bead is placed in a high temperature to make sure that all glass is evenly heated, after several hours, bead can now be put on a room temperature for cooling. But, it is important to make sure that the glass beads you buy are all kiln annealed. For some cases like tiny glass beads, beads are being cooled within the layers of insulation. This is different form annealing process but proven to be effective because it helps small amount of glass cool at the same rate.