Flameworked Glass Rosaries

Last year, during the Lafayette Octoberfest festival, we had a customer make a suggestion of making rosaries. She thought the rosary would make a very good item to sell. So, for Christmas one of my presents suggestions was a cross press for glass. My cousin, who had my wish list, bought me the cross press. I was ecstatic but of course now I had to teach myself how to use the cross press and I don't follow directions very well so some of the first crosses I made were pretty interesting looking.

I hadn't used the cross press much until a few weeks ago when I decided to make rosaries for two of my cousin's weddings. Both mom and I did research on rosaries and I decided to make a five decade rosary for Michael and his new wife Kandi and Sarah and her new husband Josh.
For the beads I decided to use their birthstone colors and combine the colors into a small bead and for the large bead I used the birthstone color of the month they were married in.

For Michael and Kandi the birthstones are June (white), April (clear) and the month they were married in was May (green). For Sarah and Josh the birthstones are February (purple) and October (pink) and the month they were married in was July (ruby).
This is Michael's rosary - the cross is Kandi's birthstone
This is Kandi's rosary - the cross is Michael's birthstone

This is Sarah's rosary - the cross is Josh's birthstone

I ran out of time and did not get a chance to take a photograph of Josh's rosary. Just picture the cross a dark transparent purple color.

I am really happy with how the rosaries turned out. Everyone seemed to really like them. I even received a request to make a gift for friends nephews baptism. I again used the birthstone colors of the parents and the nephew's in the beads. I also combined all the colors into making the cross. This time I only made a one decade rosary so that took less time to make than four Five Decade Rosaries.


I also made another One Decade Rosary out of the "jelly fish" beads. I use a base glass color of black and melt silver foil on the bead. I then take silver ivory stringer and place dots on the bead and melt that flat and then take clear glass and melt it over the top of the dots to make the dots pop. I did this for all the small beads and one large bead and the cross. I then used Czech beads and sterling silver beads as accents in the rosary and a sterling silver rosary center.



I currently have a lot of ideas on what type of beads and crosses I want to make. I know for sure I want to try and make pink ribbon beads for breast cancer and I want to create black and gold beads and maybe some beads with the "P" on them for Purdue. I have a whole page of ideas but just not enough time.