|
Tips & Techniques Watercolor Striations:
***IMPORTANT*** For this technique to be most effective, please make sure that the c.o.e. of the base glass and the frit are the same or extremely close!!!
For most of the white opaque test beads on this website I used a base of plain old Moretti White. Nothing fancy, but remember, the test beads were just to show color. For your own beads I would suggest choosing a base glass with c.o.e. in mind!!
The first thing that I did was to get a nice pea-sized gather on the end of the base glass rod. When your gather is nice and hot, dip it into your frit. You can pour the frit into a tray or onto a marver, but I like to keep it in a metal watchmaker case - avoids the mess!
Melt the frit into the end of the rod, and depending on how swirly you want your bead to be or how dense the frit is, re-heat and re-dip the rod in the frit.
Heat the now colored end of the rod in the flame again and apply it to your mandrel as you normally would - just swirl the color right on. If you need to add more glass, just repeat the heat-dip-melt-apply steps until you're happy.
The same technique can be used for clear & transparent glasses, but unless I want to completely change the color off the base glass I don't add quite as much frit as I would if the base glass were opaque. I als don't completely melt the frit into the base rod before I start to swirl the glass onto the mandrel. Otherwise it seems to blend to much for me. |
