When you are toiling away all day making beautiful torch fired glass beads, sometimes you just don’t want to stop! That is until you find yourself working with the short end of the stick – or well, more likely working with the short end of the glass rod. We have all been there, you are using a color you really love but you have to stop because you are too close to the flame. You’ve used all of your nice long glass rods on all of those beautiful glass beads and now you’re left with short, stubby pieces.
Why not leverage those sad, unusable bits of glass rods and merge them to get some more use from them. All you need is your torch and two hands. You don’t even need to merge the same colors, make a rainbow if you’d like!
Start by warming both rods at the same time in the flame and when they are molten simply butt them together and pull slightly apart. Voila, a slightly longer glass rod! Let the rod cool and keep merging more rods until you are satisfied! I like to merge my favorite rods with colors that I don’t particularly like to use, just because I don’t like to use them in my bead making, it doesn’t mean I can’t use them at all, right!
Try it for yourself and be sure to stop by our Creative Corner for more tips and some great glass bead making projects.
