Latticcino for Glass Beads

Intermediate project.
Editor’s note: Kate Drew-Wilkinson is featured on page 38 of the December 2000 LJ; see “Sense of Drama.”

Some of you may have seen my tide pool beads made with Spectrum flat glass remnants. The beads are layered with many kinds of latticcino – essentially, rods of different colors of glass twisted together – and canes that I prepared in advance (all shown above). The beads were inspired by a journey that I took down the coast of California, and I have been developing the sea creatures and seaweed to make them come alive ever since.

Whenever you intend to use canes for the decoration of your beads, be certain you have prepared more than you think you will need. I have little steel dishes full of a variety of colors and shapes of cut latticcino to make my simple bubble flowers and shells.

STEP 1.
Put on your safety glasses and turn on your torch. We are going to pull stringers in 3 different colors to get started. You will soon see that it is imperative to have a large collection of stringers and latticcino ready to use when the muse visits, especially lots of black, white, and clear stringers. (The clear stringers need to be in various thicknesses because you will be using them in a variety of ways.)

Let’s start with black stringers. Lightly flash the tips of your pliers or sturdy tweezers through the flame just enough to warm them and prevent thermal shock. Do not heat them too much, or they will stick to the glass.

STEP 2.
Working out of the flame, grip the end of the glass and pull it lengthwise, stretching the gather of clear glass into a stringer. You will need this stringer to be fairly sturdy, so do not pull it too thin! A width of about 2.5mm is good.

Repeat this process with several different colors. I would suggest perhaps a dark and light blue or #146 and #144 in Spectrum – 2 interesting shades of warm mauve. When you have made your first simple latticcinos and learned to use them as chips, the good choices of colors will become more apparent.

STEP 3.
Warm a piece of white Spectrum glass, at the same time heating one of your clear punties. Bring your white glass into the hotter part of the flame and attach the clear rod to the edge of the white glass. Heat the white glass gradually, and when it starts to bend, fold it, making sure not to trap any air. Squeeze it with your mashers. Now fold it sideways, then use your mashers to squeeze it into a cylinder.

This cylinder is what I call a “wodge” of white glass, about the thickness of a woman’s pinky finger and about 11/4″ long. Allow the wodge to stay fairly cool and run the black stringer down the length of it.

In order to keep control of the stringer, you must avoid melting it too much. Hold the wodge under the flame and keep the end of the stringer at the edge of the flame so that you are only really melting one side of it as you apply it to the wodge.

This allows the stringer to stay fairly firm as it melts, which gives you the control to run it in a straight line down the white. Repeat this until you’ve made even stripes of black that run vertically all the way around the white glass.

STEP 4.
Using a darker shade of one of your other chosen colors (the #146, for instance), repeat the striping in between the black, completely around the white glass.

STEP 5.
Heat the end of another clear punty in the flame, and attach it to the other end of your striped white glass. Heat the mass, rotating the glass, making sure that you put some heat into either end because the cool, clear punties will chill the colored glass slightly at each end. This can result in the pull stretching the middle but not so much at the ends.

STEP 6.
When you feel that the glass is soft enough, take it out of the flame and begin pulling carefully and slowly. (I don’t make the pull very long because I need a width 5-6mm to make shells later. You also need some length that is about 2.5mm wide for smaller sea creatures.)

STEP 7.
If you have some thicker glass at each end, try twisting by dabbing the glass quickly into the flame every 2 or 3 seconds while you rotate the clear punty on that side as fast as possible, making very thin and well twisted glass. With practice, you can do this on each side by alternating the heating of the glass so that in the end you will have a length of striped glass – some of it fairly thick, some thin – with finely twisted latticcino at either end.

STEP 8.
Of course, there are variations to this technique. You can make some thinner stringers in various colors. Make your white wodge again and apply the stripes in layers so that you build a more complicated cane (which I use for fancier sea creatures and seaweed).

STEP 9.
You might want to try making some dichroic stringers, too. Diluting the brightness and intensity of dichroic by casing it in clear or a very light transparent glass and then using it in stringer form on beads is absolutely divine! Not only can it be used in tide pool beads, but for a general mystical effect as well. It reminds me of how we date beads by the use of aventurine. The dichroic in a bead puts a definite time reference into your work.

STEP 10.
Pull some fairly thick clear stringers, about 5mm wide. Cut just a small piece, about 1″ x 3/8″. Using a low flame, heat the end of a clear rod and carefully attach the narrow end of your dichroic glass without letting the flame touch the treated side.

STEP 11.
Heat the clear stringer and cover the treated side of the dichroic with clear glass, being careful not to trap any bubbles. You can either fold the glass (again, taking care not to trap bubbles) and make it into a little wodge, attaching another punty to the other end for pulling or twisting, or you can carefully pull it into a ribbon.

Your latticcino are now ready to be applied to beads!

Check out Kate Drew-Wilkinson’s work at www.personal.riverusers.com/~beads or through eBay at http://www.ebay.com/ (search for KD-W). Her newest video is entitled Making Beads with Stained Glass Remnants. She can be reached via e-mail at beads@theriver.com.

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