Flower Pendant with Opal Tutorial!
Flower Implosion Pendant with Opal
Recently, I had the opportunity to try making a pendant with an opal. I took some pictures along the way and wanted to share!
Here is the final piece, just so you know whats coming.
Anyway, the process starts with dropping an opal down a hollow tube and encasing it. This involves melting the end of the tube at downward angle so the opal is absorbed by the hot glass.
Next, you want to attach the encased opal to a gather of clear glass, which will become the pendant.
After melting the two into a spherical shape you want to flatten the bottom by pressing the mass on a graphite pad (graphite is great for absorbing and releasing heat quickly). After that, I melted some silver in the torch flame and held the rod in front of the fumes coming off of the silver. This process, called silver fuming, allows you to trap the fumes on the surface of the glass by encasing them with clear glass. This is what the clear glass looks like with the silver fumes applied.
Next, you want to apply clear dots on top of the silver fuming, this traps the silver in the pendant. The silver unencased will be burnt off in the later processes.
Next you want to implode the dots by pressing the pendant onto a graphite pad. This will force the dots upwards inside the pendant and give a 3 dimensional look to piece. After that you can twist the piece to give the background some movement. Here's a picture just after twisting the bottom. If you look closely you can see the opal above the silver fuming.
After flattening the bottom again and adding, you want to change the orientation of the pendant so the opal is on top. To do this you must attach a small glass rod to the bottom and flame cut the top rod off. You must then melt the remaining glass onto the top of the pendant. This is right before that step is complete.
The last step is to attach a hook or loop from which the pendant can hang from. At this point all you need to do is flame polish and you're finished!
Here are a few final product pictures.
Thanks so much for reading!
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