Over the past few years I have been asked on many occasions for smaller stud earrings than that of what I already make.
I haven't got around to doing this until the other day when a young girl came into the studio and really loved my jewellery but wanted something smaller to wear at school. I asked, can you give me about half an hour and I will see what I can come up with.
After scratching my head again (ooops that's a bit more on the hair loss lol). I got out the required coloured glass, cutting board and gas torch. I found that a 1/4" square of 3mm dichroic melted into a nice round shape.
And here is the finished pair, quite nice if I say so myself and the customer was over the moon with them. And all for a fiver!
Anyway back to the problem solving.
This weekend I decided to do some more of these small stud earrings, as I had just bought some special small posts for them (that's another story). The first step was to cut quite a few 1/4" square diachroic glass pieces in different colours and set them on the firing tile along with a repair job on some devitrified bracelet cabochons I had made last week. I will have a chat about devitrification at some other point but most glass workers know about it. Set the kiln going and waited for the heating cycle to finish.
This was my view, well at least it warmed the studio up......
As you can see, small cabochons at the front and the large bracelet cabochons at the back. When these had annealed and cooled it was time for gluing the posts on.
I normally glue and then stand dichroic side down until dry but with these they kept falling over. So, after some more head scratching. I came up with a very quick and easy solution (to me anyway). A tray of sand to sit the small dichroic glass stud earring on there head in. Here's another picture to show you what I mean
As you can see, all lined up with the posts glued on and I wont be able to touch them for at least 48 hours because I use E6000 glue. This glue is amazing but don't even think about touching the glued item for this 48 hours period as it wont be stuck. One issue with this method of drying time storage is DON'T knock or budge the tray, because they will fall over and you will have to spent the next hour or so standing them upright again. If any sand grains get stuck on the glue they should come off once dried (I hope).
Anyway, problem solved, dichroic glass stud earring the would stand up to dry, now sits in a bed of sand to dry. Job done.
Once these have dried I will be listing a few of them on my this blog and my facebook page at
and eventually on my website:
