How Do You Decorate Glass Beads With Flowers?
Making glass beads by hand has been an art form for thousands of years, though it didn’t become particularly common until the method was firmly established in Italy during the 1400s. It was called lampworking because of the oil lamps that were the intrinsic part of the process. Certain types of glass were found to have lower than average melting points. These types of glass were manufactured in many different colors, which could then be melted with a lamp, combined around a heat resistant metal rod or “mandrel” and cooled to form glass beads. The same process was used with more refined tools later on to create more complex glass decoratives. Nowadays the art is more commonly called flameworking or torchworking because of the high-intensity glassworking torches that are used. After a Lampworker gets the initial piece of glass wound around the mandrel and sized it, she can decorate the bead. Here is a guide on how to decorate a glass bead with a flower pattern. Ignite your glassworking t
