Free Lampwork Tutorial – Faux Aqua Terra Jasper

It’s hard when I write for another blog to keep up with this one.  I published this tutorial a couple days ago on the AJE blog and thought you might want to see it here!

Waaaay back in the beginning of 2009, I saw a photo of a jasper
called aqua terra!  I loved it.  I had to make it into lampwork beads! 
This is a photo of the first set of Silvered Aqua Terra beads I sold on
etsy in January 2009!

I thought today I’d give you a tutorial of how to make your own, if you’re a lampworker!

Materials Needed:

Rod of Light Ivory (Effetre)
Rod of Light Teal (Effetre)
Sheet of Silver Foil
Marver of your choice
Bead Press of your choice

First, cut your silver foil.  I cut the sheet in eighths.  This gives a nice portion of silver foil for an 18mm size bead.

Next, get your bead press ready.  In this example, I am using a Zoozii’s straight-sided lentil press, the middle 18mm size.

First,
wind your footprint onto your coated mandrel.  Wind it on and hold it
above your press, to make sure you are slightly smaller than the
diameter of the well you are using.

I
usually roll the gather of glass in the well to make sure there’s
enough/not too much glass and to get the general shape of an olive. If
you need to, add or take away glass.

Once you have enough glass, leaving enough room to add a little bit
more, make your initial press.  Don’t do it so hard that you break your
bead release.

You
do not have to press your glass into the lentil shape if you think you
have enough glass – if you aren’t sure you can press the shape.

At
this point, you can take your glass blob back to an olive shape, As you
can see, I have my silver foil all ready and waiting for me!  Next, you
want to slightly heat your glass and roll it in the silver foil, making
sure to go all the way around the glass.

Next,
burnish in the foil.  Burnishing is rubbing the foil into the glass so
it sticks very well.  You can do this with a tile, a marver, or your
torch mounted marver.

Then,
you want to put your blob back in the flame, and you slightly melt off
the silver foil.  This is what it looks like after you burnish and put
the glass back in the flame.

Now,
you want to add some squiggles of light teal.  As much or as little as
you want, keeping in mind you are going to have to press the glass again
and don’t want to have too much.  You can always add more teal, it’s
harder at this point to take it away!

Melt
in the teal and press the bead again in the bead press.  You can see
from the photo below that you will have some chill marks (chill marks
are the marks you get on your bead when you press it, and as the bead
cools very quickly in the press, you get marks from the press).

Flame
polish your bead to get rid of the chill marks.  If you flame polish
too heavily and lose definition on your bead, you may want to heat,
press again, and then flame polish again.

This is the finished bead!  Of course you can do these beads in many shapes, as I show below.

You can visit my SueBeads etsy store to purchase these beads if you’re not a lampworker!