Snake – Tutorial

How to make little snakes:

Before you start:

First you should ask yourself, what you want to use the snake for, and do you therefor need a small or a larger hole. A larger hole is needed if you want to bead it on more than one threads, or i fit should become a Pandora/Troll-style-bead. A small hole works for  changing pendants, thin necklaces or if you put it on wire that you form by yourself. The second question is: how solid, robust should the snake be.

What you need:

* rod for the base bead if wanted
* rod fort he snake (use ivory if you want to have nice effects with Blue Sky or Silverbrown frit)
* frit blend (your choice)
* thin white stringer for eyes
* thin black stringer for pupil
* mandrel (size depends on the  purpose)
* tools (e.g. knife) for correcting the shape if needed

What we used:

Blue Sky	Silberbraun

Start with a barrel shaped bead – this will make the whole bead a lot fimer/sturdier. (if you don’t like this just skip this step)
Place a big dot onto your basebead (we used ivory) or on a heated the mandrell. This will be the head of your snake. Out on as much glass as you like an shape/flatten it (e.g. with a knife or other tool).
Then start putting glass where the neck of your snake should be and spiral it around the mandrell/base bead. Do not melt it down until you think there is enough glass. You can pile it to add more glass. Just try to have a small footprint! When you are satisfied with the amount of glass melt it carefully down until it looks like a snake 😉 If the „body“ is to thin in places – add glass and melt in again. Be carefull not to make the body to thick or work to hot – then the coils tend to melt together. Make corrections with your tool if needed.

When the form is perfect let the snake cool a little, then heat only its back and roll it in the frittblend you choose (we used silverbrown – makes the nice effect with ivory)and melt it carefully in. Correct the form of your snake again. The next step are the eyes. We put two white dots onto the head of our snake and melted them down a litte. Then added black dots with a black stringer and also melted them down. If you like, you can make a mouth with your tool. Now your snake is ready for cooling slowly down in your oven or vermikulit!
Have fun!!   

(The snakes on the right are made of BlueSky frittblend – the left one on white glass and the right on ivory).

Silverbrown

Have you already tried Silverbown?
With our Silverbrown-Frit you can obtain great effects! Use them on ivory – the effect will be great translucent gradients varying from green to brown.

The result depends on whether cooling down the bead in vermuculite or in the kiln. Go explore!

Not only perfect for snakeskins but also for fish scales …