More Mama Mia! Aurae in Two Forms

Aurae is one of the newest glasses out there and I am still finding ways to use it. For the focal I made some glass shards out of it and then applied to a base bead the broken up pieces of thin glass. If you don't know what or how a shard is made I take a hollow mandrel, think of a straw made out of stainless steel, and then melt around the end over and over again th Aurae glass until I have made a ballon of glass. The hole of the mandrel is not closed over during this process which gives me the ability to blow into the metal tube making the balloon of glass expand to a thin walled balloon of glass. Then after knocking this ball off of the mandrel I then break up this really interesting balloon into pieces. Next time I will take a picture of what this looks like. On the focal you can see some of the pieces that ae laid across the base bead. The shards are left raised and then after getting the look I'm going for the whole bead is waved through a high propane flame (reduction flame) to bring out the shine. This glass is the most beautiful gold glass. It is so rich and shiny!



Then we have the spun glass effect. I've done this with burgundy, deep purple and silver and love the effect of the spun glass. I do believe that this is going to be my new favorite! The spun glass on these beads really shows up the shiny and irridescent properties of this glass. The glass reflects whatever is around it and seems to take on the hue of the glass it is covering and at the same time reflect back onto that glass the gold hues. Very pretty!