Glass Hoop Earring tutorial

So you would like to make some of these cool hoop earrings? This tutorial explains how I make them. I would imagine that there is lots of ways to make it, and you can go out and buy some fancy cutting tools, etc. I made them, using standard Lampwork tools that I already had in my studio. Please use this tutorial as a guide, and remember to always put safety first! I wear glasses, but should you have perfect vision, please wear safety glasses. Since you are cold working the glass in water, I do not think that there is danger of inhaling glass powder ...

Let's start, OK?

You need to have at least a 5 mm thick (minimum) disk bead. I used a 16 mm ring mandrel to make my disks. If you need help to make a ring/disk on a ring mandrel, please view my ring tutorial, also in this blog. (http://deesignedbeads.blogspot.com/2008/11/rinig-tutiorial.html)

I am going to cut a 1/4 wedge out of the ring. With my first attempt, I just cut a ring in half. It really did not look good. If you look at most hoop earrings with a stud post, you will see that they are about 3/4 of a circle. I drew a circle on paper and crossed it. This allowed me to mark the cutting lines correctly.


Since I use my normal diamond bit that I normally use to clean beads, it will eat about a mm of glass. For this reason I start cutting the ring a bit inside the 1/4 area that I want to remove from the ring. It will also allow me to clean up the ring after I completed it, and ensure that both rings is the same size.

Start by cutting just a small groove in the glass.

Now cut on both sides of the ring. The reason I do this, is to ensure that if the glass breaks while cutting it, there will not be a chipped edge.

One side grooved.

Repeat the same groove cutting on the other side. Remember that you need to cut inside the line ...

Now it is time to cut through the one side. At this stage it is important not to hold the glass in the 1/4 area that you will eventually remove. That area is your 'Weakest Link'. I allow the diamond tip to eat away at the glass, with minimum pressure on the glass. Move the diamond tip in the groove as you cut.

(Normally I do the cutting under water but for the sake of clear pictures, I have captured images in the air.)

The first cut is complete. You can see a slight butt of glass. That will be smoothed out later.

Repeat the same on the other grooved cutting line. Remember not to hold onto the ring in the wedge area that you are trying to remove. When I cut the second area, I take my time. Just allow the diamond tip to eat at the glass. Do not put a lot of pressure on the glass.

Now it is time to clean up the edges. I gently roll the diamond tip over the surface, Visually eyeballing it to see if the edge is straight.

Change the angle at which you clean the surface, make sure that your surface is flat. Repeat the process on the other edge. Measure the ring on your drawn circle, to make sure that you have removed a 1/4 wedge of glass.

All done. But is it really done? That is a tiny surface to glue a post on, and if you bond your ear post to the 5 - 6 mm area, how secure will it be long term? I think we need to do some more work!

Using my 1 mm diamond tip I start to drill a hole in the centre of the ring. Start slowly, allow the diamond tip to slowly open up a little hole.

Continue to drill a little hole inside the glass. I try to drill at least a 2 - 3 mm hole.

All done!

Now the easy part! Normally I make my own posts.

If you do metal work, it is real easy! I cut a small disk from sheet silver (diameter of the glass surface), drill a hole in the centre, the diameter of the post, insert the post rod in the hole, letting it protrude a bit. Solder, pickle, and polish ...

But, I found some earring posts online that is used for pearl ear studs. Just SO much easier! http://shop.rings-things.com/cart/pc/Cup-Pad-Posts-with-Peg-c960.htm is just one of many online suppliers. My posts-with-peg is on it's way to me!

Use a good quality 2 part bonding agent, and cement the post into the drilled hole in your glass ring. I normally use Areldite, but I have been told that TRIOLYSE Glass Fusing Jewelry Metal Craft Glue is a very good bonding agent. And a little birdy have told me that Malcolm from http://www.artcoinc.com/ might stock it.

Allow the bonding cement to cure, and enjoy your new Hoop earrings!

p.s. If you feel that this tutorial (or any of my other tutorials) will benefit you, and you feel so inclined, please feel free to make a small donation.

A Perfect round bead again and again ...

I had posted this tutorial some time last year on Lampwork Etc, and decided that it was time that it was moved to my Blog! This is just a small tutorial how I am able to achieve the same sized round beads again and again ... If you use the standard information to make a round bead, you really need to melt the dinges out of the glass for it to spread on the mandrel enough to make a round bead vs. a doughnut shaped bead. This is where frustration lead me. I normally never use any tools while making a bead, no marver, etc. except for my mashers when I want a round or tube shape.

My tools that I use is just a parallel masher, my trusty surgical scalpel and my torch. AND the bottom part of a brass press!

Step 1:Make a small disk on your mandrel. I normally do about 3 - 4 windings of fairly thin glass.

Step 2:Melt the disk into a small doughnut, allow the glass to melt well onto the mandrel to set a nice footprint.

Step 3:Take your mashers and press lightly, turn the mandrel 180 degrees, and press the same amount, so you end up with a square/rectangular bead. By pressing the same weight, you will spread your glass evenly on the mandrel, to secure an even footprint. Then I normally turn the mandrel about 90 degrees and press again, turn 180 degrees and turn. if the glass is still soft enough, I will continue to press and turn, take the mandrel back into the flame to heat up the gather a bit, and press, turn, press, you get the idea ...

Step 4:Now to make sure that your footprint is wide enough, I place the mandrel over the base plate of a press and measure one of the hollows that I would like my round bead to be. If I need to get the footprint a bit wider, I repeat the press process for a bit, measuring it every now and then. After a few beads, I can eyeball the width quite easily so that I do not really need to measure and press the whole time.

Step 5:Now I need to load more glass onto the footprint bead. Again, rather start with to little, rather than too much glass. (it's much easier to add than remove glass!)

Step 6:Melt it in. You will notice that your footprint is now slightly narrower than it was when you had placed the original footprint down. I loose about 2 mm in width doing this. Eyeball the top and bottom curve of your bead. If it is too narrow, you will have sharp edges on you bead holes. If you have too much of a curve, you will end up with a not round bead, but lovely dimples. I aim to get somewhere between these 2 extremes.

Step 7:Now you have a neat round bead that you will be able to reproduce time and again. Remember that when you add glass for decoration, you might loose your neat roundness, so start with a bit of a not 100% round bead before adding decorations, should you aim for round!

Step 8: Pop bead into the kiln!

Problem solving:Should you have difficulty to obtain neat edges in step 3 and 4, use a sharp knife/blade and cut about 1,5 mm from the edge of the undercut to push the glass to the edge and level to the rest of the footprint. If you do this closer to the edge of the glass footprint, you will end up with an uneven edge again!

Getting those damn dots to behave ...

Dragged Dots

When in chat on Lampwork Etc this morning, I was asked how I get my dots to behave and evenly spaced around the bead. This is just a quickie tutorial that I did on how I get evenly spaced dots. For fun I also show you how to drag dots ...

1. Make your bead - I made a 20 mm hole to hole round bead, but you can choose any shape you like.

2. I start off with getting the correct distance between my dots by normally adding a raised dot the same colour as the base bead. The black would have been difficult to see in the pictures, so I did them in white. Please excuse the reflection of me and my overhead light in a lot of these pictures!

Here is the first raised dot. Do not squash the dot into the bead, and make sure that your bead is not glowing hot when placing the said dot. I will tell you in a minute or so why you need to leave the dot raised ...

3. Place a dot on the exact opposite side of the first dot. I normally eyeball the bead from the one bead hole side while I place the blob of glass on it, praying like mad that I placed it in the centre of the bead. NOW, if I placed that dot skew or in the wrong place, it is easy to flick it off the bead using a blade or other tool, because it is raised ... Once your are happy that it is in the correct place, you can give it some more heat, to prevent it from shocking off while you work on the other placements. Easy, huh?

4. Here I have added all my dots, and made sure that they are all equally spaced. Normally I melt these dots in till there is only a slight bump visible. To prevent dots from migrating and forming little groups of annoying dots, I have found that if I twirl my bead in both directions (i.e. forwards and backwards spin) I have less migration taking place. Some say to heat each dot individually, other schools say heat them all. I found the forward/backward motion really make them little buggers stay in place ...

5. (If I wanted to start adding decoration the the centre of the bead, I will use the empty space between the base coloured dots as my placement area. Just add your dots exactly in the centre of each space ...)
Now it is time to place my other dots. I will come back to these centre dots later on ... I start with the centre petal dot for each dragged flower/Fleur De Lis pattern. Add a drop of glass to dots that is not the same size ...

6. Now it is time for the rest of the dots/leaves. With the Fleur De Lis pattern I have found that you really need to add the dots in a perfect triangle pattern. If the side petals is to far away from the centre dots, you will really battle to catch them when you drag the glass. For most of these dots I have placed only groups of 3, but when you want to add another row, place them exactly below the first group of 2 dots.

7. Melt them all in, and regain a round shape of your bead. Again – use the forward/backward turning of your mandrel to make sure the dots does not migrate around the bead ...

8. Take a thin stringer of your base colour, spot heat the entire area of dots and the area where you want to drag your dots, touch the cool stringer to the black space between the 3 dots, as close as possible to the centre dot’s edge, and lightly drag the glass. Try not to push the stringer into the bead. (That takes a bit of practice to get right.) I do not always get all 3 dots to move, and when this happens, I just heat the area again, and drag it. No glass is gonna put ears on me!

9. Once I have finished decorating the one side, I move to the other side and drag them buggers! We will correct the wonkiness of the bead soon ...

10. Both sides done, so I added more white to the centre dots, to make them a bit bigger, and added dots of a transparent colour.

11. And some more white dots ... OK, I love dots, lol

12. So here is the bead, I am done with my decorations, but oh boy, it is seriously wonky. You can just twill it in the flame until your pattern distorts, or use my approach ...

13. First I just heat up the one side. Remember to turn the mandrel to both sides, otherwise you glass will start to float on the mandrel, and your pattern will become distorted. Once you are happy with the one side, let the bead cool down, and focus heat on the other side.

14. Normally the heat from the sides is enough to shift the glass a bit to create a nice neat round bead, but if you added a lot of decorations to the centre, you might want to focus some heat to the centre too. Admire bead while you continue twirling it around, and when it is stiff enough, pop it into the kiln!

Wavey Ribbon tutorial ...

I have been playing a bit around last week, trying to do something, but I could not transfere the brain picture into the glass at hand. Instead I created something new/not new. Just a few tecniques thrown together, and something nice popped out.

Here follows the tutorial that I had put together tonight while torching with one hand, the other trying to take pictures:


I used 3 rods of glass: Transparent Black, Clear (and clear stringer) and a silver glass stringer.


First I made a disk about 3 windings thick on the mandrel.

Melt the disk down to a fat doughnut.


Add 2 windings of clear in the centre of the doughnut. Just flash it in the flame, so that the new application of glass is 'glued' to each other.


Apply a row of dots with the stringer. Any type of glass could work. Want rainbow? Go for it! Do not melt if flat, but just gently melt the dots a bit down. If you have used a silver glass, reduce it now.


Add 2 windings of clear over the dots. Make sure your clear rod is very soft, and press down over the dots, as you want to cover the dots with the clear.


Hit the glass with your flame, but make sure that you only heat the edge of the glass; if your rod or the centre doughnut gets red hot, drop or raise your mandrel! This will allow the glass to melt and pull the dots into a line - old tecnique no 1!



To help the glass and the lines to pull to the mandrel/bead hole, focus heat first on the one side, and then on the othe side of the bead. Make sure that the other side is cool while you do it, as you only want to shift half of the bead at a time. You may angle the bead/mandrel at a 45 degree angle to aid the glass to flow. This will reduce the base colour that shows on the side, as that will be sucked into the mandrel, and your outer glass will move closer to the bead hole.


This is what the bead should look like:


Heat the whole bead to the base colour, and use your mashers/parrallel press, and press the bead gently, turning it in 180 degree turns. Shape it into a barrel. Heat it regularly, as you will damage the bead release if you try and shift cold glass.


Press it as long as you want you bead to be. Be careful not to press at an angle. Try to maintain the same thickness through out.


Heat the centre of the bead and either allow gravity to shape the flow of the stripes, or use your marver to drag the stripes. Technique no 2 - Gravity bead


Use a clear stringer to shift areas that you had spot heated to create more swirls. Experiment!


When you are satisfied with the look, melt the bead into a neat barrel again. I use my masher to aid me.


Encase the bead with clear.


Make sure that your ends are neat and straight.


Super heat the whole bead, and flatten it, should you wish. Decorate surface as you please.

Sorry, image dissapeard, but this image is not really neccesary, is it?


Pop bead into a kiln. If you do not have a kiln, and use Vermiculite or a fiber blanket, I would not advise you to flatten the bead, as this will increase the chance of the bead to thermal crack.


Disclaimer: This is not a new tecnique. This is just my interpretation of the encased stripy bead and gravity beads. By creating a clear portion of glass between a solid base and the waves I am able to manupulate the ribbons that I have created, without distorting the base too much.


Go well
Diana