Picking Bead Glass

Series Summary

From earrings and bracelets to single-stranded and elaborate multi-stranded necklaces, creating bead jewelry is fun, easy to learn and can even be done at home. All it takes is the desire to create, the willingness to learn and, finally, the practice of your newly acquired craft.

In this free video series, learn the materials you need to make your glass beads. Regardless of your handcrafted jewelry project, making your own glass beads will add to uniqueness to your pattern. Our expert, , shares with you everything you need to know. Learn how to pick glass for beads. Also, learn how to fume your glass with metal. So, if you are looking for a new hobby, learn how to make glass beads today!

Video Transcript

"Alright, now, one of the most important materials to make glass beads with is of course the glass. Glass comes in two basic types, hard glass, and soft glass. I'm not going to cover hard glass so much right now, because I don't work with that kind. Hard glass is also known as Pyrex, and it's the kind of glass that people use to make pipes, as well as harder instruments. The kind of glass I use is called soft glass, and it comes in different diameters. It ranges anywhere from two millimeters in diameter, to ten to fourteen millimeters in diameter. This particular rod is ten millimeters in diameter. While this particular stringer is only two millimeters in diameter. There are various differences in working between opaque glass, and transparent glass. As you're heating up an opaque rod, you want to make sure that you heat it very slowly from the back of the torch in, because it heats up more slowly. Transparent glass on the other hand, heats a lot more quickly, and the heat flows through much more quickly, much less chance of thermal shocking with transparent glass. Let's see, you also want to know, that the kind of glass I'm using right now is called, Mulready glass, which comes from Italy. Other kinds of soft glass come from Germany, and Japan."