Step by step instructions

Materials & Tools

Deco Scarab pendant from Earthenwood Studio
Black Nymo thread, size O
7 AB red glass rounds, 11 mm
8 AB topaz glass rounds, 7 mm
8 topaz glass rounds, 6 mm
Gold seed beads, 11/0
Matte frosted AB brown seed beads, 8/0
Silver lined rootbeer seed beads, 6/0
2 jump rings, 7 mm
6″ copper wire, 20 g
4 copper bicones, 6 mm
2 textured copper rounds, 4 mm
4″ copper chain and lobster claw clasp

Beading needles, size 12
Scissors
Glue
Flat nose and round nose pliers
Wire cutters
File
Tape measure

As regards FTC disclosure guidelines: I have received the Deco Scarab pendant free of charge from Earthenwood Studio in order to write an honest review and/or create a project free of charge for you. I have not been paid for my endorsement as it pertains to the products received.

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However, there’s no reason why I can’t explain how to make this spiral, because it might be just perfect for something you’ve got planned

Step by step instructions

Beads needed:
Size 6/0, 8/0, 11/0, and 15/0 seed beads

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Instructions for CopprClay pendants

General instructions for working with CopprClay

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The focal flower on the top of the piece is styled after a hibiscus, modified slightly (but only slightly!) from the excellent instructions given by Kerrie Slade in the April 2009 issue of Bead&Button Magazine.

For my general instructions on bead embroidery, please check Bead Embroidery Techniques.

Step by step instructions for RuthAnn’s Garden:

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I found this wonderful vintage rolled-brim felt hat with a built-in scarf in an old musty antique shop a couple of years ago, and it just occurred to me that I’ve never shared the instructions with you for its transformation!

I loved the style and the color, and knew immediately that the structure of the hat would stand up to a lot of altering! Sifting through my collection of vintage buttons and jewelry showed me just what direction to go with this hat. The name, Dreaming of Spring came to me before the hat was completed. I filled the brim, but still something was missing. The final piece was still sitting on my work table: a small vintage bee pin. Obviously, the bee was to be the focal point, the one who was “dreaming of spring”!

Now as cold weather approaches, I can wear this hat with the promise that spring will one day return to New England.

Materials and tools:
Vintage hat
Buttons, beads, seed beads, and vintage jewelry
Black nymo thread, size O
Beading needles
Fabric glue

Step by Step Instructions

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The exact bead counts will depend upon whether you decide to use Delica beads or the rounder Czech seed beads.  Both are size 11/0s, but the difference in shape means that you’ll be able to fit 16 base row beads (and therefore 16 full sized petals) if you use Delicas.  If you chose to use Czech see beads, you’ll only be able to fit 14 around the circumference of the 8mm bead center.

Materials & Tools

8mm crystal beads
Delica or Czech seed beads
Nymo thread, size O
Beading needle

Step-by-step instructions

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I made this multi-strand necklace for my friend Sherry. She wanted something that celebrated the fourth day of Creation, and she wanted me to make it for her! I was thrilled and flattered. Sherry is just about the perfect person to work for on a commission such as this: She knows the general style, weight, colors, and images that she wants, but she never crosses the line into micro-managing.

Her necklace became a three-strand affair, but still ended up relatively lightweight. I used a bead embroidered centerpiece, chosing a lovely fused glass bead made by my friend Jeanne Kent (New Terra Artifacts). The piece also features several beads that I bought when we visited Venice and Murrano last year…I hoard these, so you can guess that Sherry is very special to me!

Instructions for construction

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Back in the beginning of September, Mike and I went away for a long weekend with our friends Beth and Dan.  Both couples were celebrating our 25th wedding anniversaries, so we thought it might be a hoot to take a joint vacation.  The only thing was, Beth and Dan’s daughter was getting married the very next weekend!  So to assuage our guilt over not being around to help that weekend, we found a pretty rock on the beach (in Maine), and I wire wrapped it for Beth to wear to the wedding!

See, we were working on the details after all!

I used a variation on this wonderful technique called the Hippy Twist.  I didn’t twist quite as often as the tutorial shows, and I put more kinks and bends in my wires.  Beth was happy with it and that’s all that matters

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Yesterday I told you that Wendy Talaro has graciously shared her tutorial on fusing glass.  I’m so glad, because even though I’ve tried it a few times, I feel in no way qualified to speak at length on the how tos!  It’s a lovely thing when folks are so willing to share their expertise

Glass Fusing Primer

So What Is Glass Fusing?
Glass fusing is the process of assembling pieces of fusing compatible glass (i.e. glass that has the same rate of expansion/contraction when heated or cooled) and melting those pieces in an electric kiln until they stick together, becoming one single piece out of many. The look of finished pieces could be described as stained glass without the leading.

Don’t let the equipment intimidate you. Just think of a glass fusing kiln as a very expensive oversized electric oven on steroids. That said, let’s move on now to describe the qualities of the glass that you will be using to create your art and to define compatibility.

Glass Types and Manufacturers
Technically any piece of glass is compatible with itself. For instance, you could smash a Coke bottle and fuse all of the pieces into a new form or take an ordinary pane of window glass, cut it up and fuse it together again. Glass is a curious material. Neither crystalline nor liquid, it is a solid at room temperature. By adding heat generated by a kiln, glass can be made to visibly flow.  There are three principles to remember when glass liquifies and becomes viscous: temperature, gravity and surface tension. The hotter the glass is, the less viscous it becomes and the more it visibly obeys gravity and the less surface tension constricts its flow.

Solids expand when heated. (A notable exception is water, which actually expands when it is cooled to the temperature until it forms the solid we know as ice.) Glass also expands but different formulations of glass have different rates of expansion depending upon the manufacturer, batch, color and chemical composition. Glass is composed primarily of silica (the primary component of sand), soda ash, and lime. The quality of glass can be improved by adding lead and potash, the coefficient of expansion lowered by adding boron, and colors are created by the addition of sulfur, cobalt, gold, and other metals.

The term “coefficient of expansion” describes the change in length of heated glass as a function of change in temperature measured in degrees Centigrade. Glasses that share the same rate of expansion are said to have the same coefficient of expansion or COE. The three primary manufacturers of Tested Compatible (i.e. factory tested in labs to verify the coefficient of expansion) fusible art glass are Bullseye, which is based in Seattle, Washington; Uroboros Glass Studios, which is in Portland, Oregon; and Spectrum Glass Company in Woodinville, Washington. Below is a chart that lists several manufacturers of glass and the measured ranges of COE.

Effetre 104
Murano 105
Bullseye 90
Uroboros 90 and 96 COE
Spectrum 96
Bottle Glass 89-92
Pyrex or Borosilicate Glass 32
Float Plate 85-87

Float plate or what is more commonly referred to as window glass has a COE range from 85 to 87. This type of glass receives its name from the manufacturing process. The molten glass is fed to a float bath of more than 120 tons of molten tin and the glass thickness is determined by the rate at which the glass is floated onto the tin, thus producing glass with the characteristic doublesided smoothness associated with modern production methods.

For project success, it is necessary to use glass that has the same COE in the same piece. Mixing glass of different coefficients of expansion results in stress fractures that form as the fused pieces cool. Effetre and Murano are commonly used in lampworking, which is working molten glass in an open flame produced by a torch. Bullseye, Uroboros, and Spectrum are used in fusing and lampworking. Borosilicate glass is frequently used in scientific labware and for elaborate sculptural figurine lampworking with fine details. The low coefficient of expansion of borosilicate glass allows for sculptural flourishes that would be impossible with other glasses.

Bullseye and Uroboros manufacture glass for fusing in primarily two thicknesses, 1/16” and 1/8”. The thinner of the two is favored for jewelry and other small items because of the ability to layer the glass for different color effects and visual textures without adding a lot of bulk or mass to a finished design. It may help conceptually to think of designing in fused glass as a sandwich. Design with consideration for the thickness for the finished piece. Four layers of 1/16” thick glass results in a piece that is 1/4” of an inch thick.

The thicker the piece, the longer it has to anneal in a kiln. Annealing is the process of creating temperature uniformity throughout a fused piece and then cooling it slowly so that stress fractures do not form. Stress fractures can be very sneaky. A piece that has been well-annealed is structurally stable at the molecular level, whereas a piece that has internal stresses may not manifest those stresses immediately, nor will that stress be visible to the naked eye. A piece can look fine day after day only to inevitably crack of its own accord eventually due to the buildup of internal stress that was present from the day the piece emerged from the kiln. Other pieces manifest stress fractures due to glass incompatibility immediately.

Tools and Equipment
Glass fusing is not inexpensive. As a hobby, the materials are costly, particularly when you start to include dichroic glass in your pieces. This is to say nothing about the cost of the kiln itself, kiln furniture, and shelves and adjunct optional tools such as a diamond blade saw or a grinder with multiple grades (coarse, medium, fine, and extra fine) of grinding bits. At a minimum, you will need to invest in the following equipment:

Oil reservoir glass cutter – pencil or pistol grip configuration
6” or 8” running pliers
Breaking / grozing pliers
Non-skid cork backed steel ruler 12”
Cutting mat 8.5” x 12”
10 or 12 square per inch plastic canvas
Safety glasses
Gloves that allow manual dexterity and feeling but still allow you to protect
your fingers
Drafting table brush or dusting brush

The type of glass cutter chosen will be a matter of personal preference and comfort, as will be the choice in running plier size. Eight inch running pliers will provide more leverage for running scores in thicker and larger pieces of glass. Grozing pliers are good for removing small pieces that do not break off readily along the score line. The cork-backed steel ruler allows you to cut straight lines, using the ruler as the cutting guide while you run a glass cutter along the ruler’s length. The cutting mat provides a firm, non-scratching surface for cutting glass pieces and plastic canvas allows the fine splinters of glass to fall through the grid. The drafting table brush or dusting brush is for cleaning off your surfaces of glass small debris. Whatever you do, do not use the side of your hand or your fingers to sweep debris off the cutting surface! You’ll be picking glass splinters out of the side of your hand for hours.

Other supplies that will be desirable to have are as follows:
1) Sharpie or Staedler permanent marking pen (extra fine point)
2) Toothpicks for applying white or cyanoacrylate glue
3) White craft glue for securing cleaned glass during assembly before firing: Elmer’s, Sobo,
Aleene’s. Cyanoacrylate glue is less likely to leave residue after firing, although the fumes
produced during burnout are considerably more toxic than white glue. All glue is to be used
sparingly, just enough to secure the pieces in place as they are assembled and then
transported to the kiln for firing.
4) Fine tweezers for manipulating small pieces of glass
5) Morton grid system for production or precision cutting of glass.
6) 90% or greater isopropyl alcohol or commercial grade acetone (please don’t use fingernail
polish remover) for cleaning glass of cutting oil, marker ink, and fingerprints before final
assembly and firing
7) Plastic bags with zipper enclosures for carrying scrap glass or work in progress. Freezer bags
are highly recommended due to their thickness.
Pad of paper or notebook for sketching and/or recording ideas and design strategies, graphite
pencil or colored pencils, eraser
9) Band-aids and tea tree oil (cuts are almost inevitable)
10) High quality respirator mask with changeable filters (to be used when scraping and sanding
spent kiln wash off kiln shelves). This applies if you have your own kiln and shelves. Do not
skimp on safety equipment.

copyright 2009 Wendy Talaro
Image: Wendy Talaro

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Step by step instructions

Materials & Tools

Large wood or plastic bead to cover
Nymo 0 thread
Delicas and/or Czech seed beads in sizes 15/0, 11/0, 8/0, or even 6/0 as
desired
Beading needle

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