aluminium foil surface decoration

Started by babyshoes, June 21, 2016, 03:28:23 PM

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babyshoes

I did a quick search but could only find mention of people trying to use aliminium foil under glass, where it bubbles A LOT and goes brown and yucky. Fusers seemed to have a little more success.  My fuglies jar has a few beads with the texture of pumice where I tried to cover over aliminum and it just bubbled through, repeatedly.

I've been using it as surface decoration - you need to put it on a fairly cool bead or else the hot glass sucks it out of your tweezers and you get a blob or torn shape. Once it's on, just press it onto the glass with a metal tool and heat it up again. In the flame it webs a bit to give a nice lacy effect. I haven't tried to cook one excessively, but normal finishing off in the flame doesn't seem to bother it - I usually add dots of fine silver to mine afterwards. The texture on the surface is slightly rough, and the colour is a slightly matte silver. It seems to be very well stuck on - I've lost fine silver dots before, but not the aluminium foil shapes.

The hardest bit of this technique is getting the temperature exactly right before placement - too hot and the foil blobs, tears or bubbles. Too cold and it won't stay where you put it - though this is less of an issue, just put it in position, pat it down with your tool and carefully bring it up under the flame to warm up. As long as your bead is juuuuust warm enough not to crack when you put it back in the flame, it should work.

Here's an example, though the pictures came out a little bright... https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/387410602/lampwork-pendant-silver-butterfly-on

mel

That's pretty. Is it special aluminium foil, or regular sunday-roast foil?
Laughinglass Lampwork Beads

fionaess

Oops.. Looks like one of your dots on the r/h side has popped off,?  :(


If it's got a hole, it's a bead !

babyshoes

Quote from: fionaess on June 21, 2016, 10:18:15 PM
Oops.. Looks like one of your dots on the r/h side has popped off,?  :(

You're right, it has. I hate it when that happens. It's not sharp or anything though, and barely noticeable on the bead itself...

The foil is just basic kitchen foil. Not sure if different types would work differently, but I've used both the supermarket basic stuff as well as some of the giant roll from Costco.