Glow Frit

I did some experimenting with a stash of glow frit that I recently came across.

The instructions said to make stringer from the frit, so I did that.

To do this, (make stringer from frit, that is) - start with a rod of clear glass and a heat the end of the clear until you have softened the end, then use it to pick up a chunk of frit on the end rod. Bring that back to the flame and heat it to soften it, and then pick up another chunk of frit and melt it in Keep repeating this, until you have a nice sized gather - big enough to pull into a stringer. Repeat as necessary for more stringers as required.

For this first bead, I started with a clear core, then added the glow frit-stringer, and then encased with CiM Caribbean, and then shaped into a cube.

You can see I burned something - not sure if it was the clear or the frit or the Caribbean - but ick. 

 However, this is it glowing! Nice glow, eh? Really quite dramatic.

Next - I tried a marble. This time, instead of the stringer, I just got a big ball of clear hot, and jammed it down into the frit and picked up a big chunk, and then just worked around it, encasing it, adding dichro, etc.

I trapped a lot of air in there, inadvertently, by doing it that way - but I did get a nice, substantial chunk of frit.

Resulting in this marble - when you turn out the lights! The frit was labelled blue - hence the blue glow.

The glow effect is quite strong, and yes - like every other glow-in-the-dark thing that is not actively radio-active - you have to "charge" it up under a strong light.

But I tell you - two of us in the bathroom - with the lights out - (at the studio)  - squealing like schoolgirls  - totally made one customer's day. ;-)