Glass Frits, Glow Powder

Glass frit and enamel powder is wonderful for decorating glass beads. They are very easy to use and they create fantastic effects with very little effort. At BerlinBeads we spread out the frit or powder on a graphite paddle and then simply roll a glowing hot bead through it. The frit or powder sticks to the beads which we then put back in the flame to melt it down a little.

Reichenbach offers frits in two different COEs (104 and 94). Zimmermann offers enamel in COE 88. Even if the COE does not match that of your base bead, our experience is that they can be combined in small quantities. With all of the normal (COE 104) lampworking rods that we offer, we recommend using the 10% rule of thumb. That means we recommend using no more than 10% (per weight) frit and enamel on a beads when the COEs don´t match. Otherwise the bead is likely to break from the built up stresses during cooling. Since the frit or enamel is usually just a very thin layer, this is generally not a problem.

We do our best to provide high quality, accurate pictures of the colours. Nevertheless please allow for inaccuracies. Each computer screen depicts the colours slightly differently. As well, the different production runs from the manufacturer sometimes produce slightly different colours.

Please note that all of the pictures are taken under the same light conditions and with the same camera settings so that the colours can be compared to each other. All of the pictures are a little bit overexposed. That means that the colours appear lighter than they are in reality. We do this so that the darker colours are easier to see.