Melting Cubic Zirconia to a Glass Bead

Video Transcript

"Alright. What we're going to do now is we have our base bead coated in frith and encased with dots applied with the petals pulled in to make flowers. What we're going to do to add a special touch to this is take a cubic zirconia, a two millimeter cubic zirconia from my graphite paddle down here and we're going to drop it into the center of one of the four-petaled flowers that I plunged. This is always a little bit tricky. There are some very interesting ways to use cubic zirconia. Now, most often I've seen them used -- oops, that one dropped in upside down. Let's try that again. Most often I've seen them used as the center of flowers, but I've also seen them used as belly buttons on goddesses, which I thought was a pretty interesting little touch. So what I'm going to do is drop that cubic zirconia right into the middle of that plunge. I'm going to heat it up just a little bit and I'm going to take a clear rod of glass. Remember, you want to keep your base bead warm. Now, you can't spin your bead, or else the cubic zirconia is going to fall out. What you're going to do is you're going to take a clear rod of glass and you are going to trap that cubic zirconia into the middle of that flower by applying a dot directly on top of it. Then, what you're going to do is melt very slowly and that clear glass over that cubic zirconia is really going to magnify that effect."