There will be some differences in your perception of the glass bead pictures on this site and the actual glass bead.
I know this isn't news to those of you familiar with buying glass beads via the internet, but bear with me while I explain it for everyone.
The glass bead picture is larger than the actual bead, which means you aren't going to get the same perception of the details and color looking at the actual glass bead as you do in the picture of the glass bead. The perception of large size you get from the picture might lead to size disappointment when you get the bead in person. You don't get the same bead that is shown in the picture, but one very similar.
The glass bead pictures are made on a scanner, which means very intense light was used to make the picture. Light is perhaps the most important factor in how you see glass color.You will probably never see your glass bead in this type of light again.
Glass color is "subtractive,"which means that when you "see" a color in glass what is really happening is that all the other colors except the one you are seeing are being subtracted from the light passing through or bouncing off the glass. This gets you some very different results than you might expect from the traditional paint mixing type of color combinations. The bead is going to change appearance depending on the colors and light in the immediate area, and the bead will also be different in transmitted (passing through) and reflected (bouncing off) light.
I guess if I had to give a quick definition of the difference between the bead and the picture of the bead I would say that the actual bead is much more subtle than the picture might indicate.
So what do we do about this?
If you ever have questions or doubts about anything... please feel free to e-mail me and we can discuss it before you send any money. I can send you scans of different angles, combinations, against different background colors, or whatever you might need to help you make your decisions.
If you are not
happy with anything you get from me ...for any reason at all...just
contact me, send the return back with receipt, and I'll refund your
money or exchange for something else. Check the
Guarantee page for all the details.
About the Glass Beads and Sculpture - How they are made
The glass beads the sculpture are made from soda lime "soft" glass, or from Borosilicate "hard" glass, better known by the brand name "Pyrex", and very similar to your baking dishes. I'm also experimeting a bit with some other glasses such as Bullseye and other glass from a number of stained and art glass manufacturers.
The wound glass
beads are made by winding glass rod or strips that are softened in
a torch flame onto a stainless steel mandrel (rod). The mandrel is dipped
in a bead release, a clay-like mud that hardens up like a brick i the heat
of the torch. Bead release ensures the hot glass doesn't stick to
the stainless steel rod. The bead release lets you break the bead loose
from the rod when you are finished.
The other glass
beads are cut from tubes of glass that started out large and were
stretched out to their current size.
The cane or "furnace beads" are made by hollowing out and decorating a glob of glass stuck to a metal rod. The end of the hollow glob is sealed off with another piece of glass on a metal rod. When this is heated the hot air iside expads it into a bubble, which, when pulled out (like taffy) turns ito a long tube. The tube is cut up on a diamond saw and the resulting pieces can be used as-is or re-worked in a number of ways.
The decorative
work on the glass beads usually involves adding other colors of glass,
metals, or chemicals and moving the hot glass around with metal, graphite
tools, or molds.
.
I see glass beads
and sculpture as an art, not a science. The emphasis here is on passion,
not perfection. You didn't really want something that looks like it was
popped out of a machine by the thousands, did you?
The shapes and sizes of similar glass beads will vary from one glass bead to the next, and the glass beads may not be perfectly symmetrical.
Much like myself.
The decoration on the glass beads will often not extend from the face of the glass bead all the way down the sides to where the hole is, unless you would like me to custom make it that way for you. You will usually be stringing your glass bead with others next to it and this part of the bead will not be seen.
Many are obsessed with having a pucker at each end of the hole through the glass bead. I don't worry too much about this, unless you absolutely want to have puckers. When you string the glass bead you will never see the pucker. I suspect all this fascination with puckers at the bead holes was started by the glass bead artists. Why? because puckers give a nice look to the glass bead when it's on display all by itself.
To be fair and balanced about all this it does take good glass control skills to put those little puckers in there. The puckers may also help fragile bead stringing material to live a little longer by cutting down the friction ever so slightly.
To my mind glass beads intended "for display only" are like having nice cars,clothes, or whatever and never using them. There are some dark shadows of fear in this sort of behavior, and that's no fun. So what if you lose or damage something of "value"? The pleasure and satisfaction your life gained by using your"collectibles" is probably a whole lot more fun than worrying about the bad things that could happen. My wish for you is that your glass beads will be out there every day, adding pleasure to your life.
OK, enough rant and rave, back to to the facts.
I do try to keep the sides of the glass bead as flat and parallel as possible because this affects how one glass bead lays against another, even though I'm very fond of the eccentric look of a string of glass beads with uneven sides.
The mandrel wound glass beads may still have a tiny bit of the hardened bead release left in the hole. I clean the holes with a diamond bit mounted in a Dremel tool but sometimes I might miss a tiny bit.
Glass beads and sculpture will be annealed , this means heated and held at certain temperatures and then cooled very slowly. This must be done because glass behaves in unusual ways.
Glass heats up and cools very slowly. When you work with glass you can melt it in the flame while holding it with your fingers and never feel heat through the glass until you get down to the last inch. This same slow heating and cooling is why you must anneal the glass. The outside skin of a hot piece of glass will cool long before the inside of the piece. As the inside begins to cool it tries to pull away from the outer part that has already cooled. This pulling tension creates a huge amount of stress. Heat stress also works in reverse, if you heat glass too quickly it will shatter as the hot outside pulls away from the cold inside.
There is so much stress in a piece of glass that hasn't been annealed that it will usually crack or shatter before it cools completely after being worked in the flame. Glass that has not been annealed will sometimes crack or shatter later, when it's exposed to slight temperature or atmospheric pressure changes, loud noises, or anything else that would cause the glass to expand, contract, or vibrate.
To anneal a piece of glass you heat it slowly in a kiln. The glass is held it at the temperature where the glass is just starting to turn into a liquid, and the glass is an equal temperature all the way through.
The amount of time you hold the glass at annealing temperatures is determined by how thickthe glass is, and the temperature is determined by what type of glass it is.
You don't want the glass to get so hot that the glass will melt and move or get runny on you...like I do sometimes when I ruin a whole kiln full of work by not paying close enough attention.
After you hold the glass at the "soak" temperature for the required amount of time you begin to gradually cool the glass. The temperature throughout the glass must stay as even as possible.
As you cool down you get to one more critical temperature known as the "strain point," which is the temperature below which the glass will not create any more major stress and strain in itself. You have to hold at the strain point temperature for a certain time depending on the thickness of the glass. You are once again being sure the heat has soaked evenly through the glass at this strain point temperature.
From the strain point you cool the glass down to room temperature.
Annealing something
the size of a glass bead can take about 2-6 hours, depending on the size.
Glass beads are
portable wealth, an expression of the many things we find pleasurable as
humans.
Wherever there have been people, there have been glass beads.
The look and feel of beads comforts and satisfies something deep inside
that I can't quite explain. Maybe it's 3500 years of human experience,
skill, and perception looking back at you from that little piece of glass.
A quick quote from
Barbara Simon, a beadmaker, jeweler and artist
.
Someone asked her
that age-old question that often pops up in negotiations on the price or
value of your art...
"Well, just how long did it take you to make this?"
Her answer?
"My entire life"
The End
Thank You