Faux Roman Glass (Review)

The Blue Bottle Tree is an utterly irreplaceable source of knowledge about polymer clay. With wire, anything I see I can pretty much figure out how to do – but polymer clay is a mystery to me that I’m still unraveling, so I read as much as I can, and I buy tutorials every now and then as well.

I’ve actually shown you a few things from Ms. Ginger Davis Allman’s Blue Bottle Tree tutorials before – and she’s used my book to wire wrap her own faux beach glass and write a review of the experience – so you can sort of expect me to rave a bit about this tutorial.

When I saw her Faux Glass Tutorial, I sucked air:

This is a tutorial for SEVERAL type of faux glass – including carnival glass and beach glass – but what caught my eye was the amazing roman glass on the cover. For those of you who don’t know, recently some enterprising folks have begun digging up glass from the roman period and chipping it into beads. It is stunning in its aged glory.

Check out the real thing at this eBay auction:

So very stunning. And often, extremely expensive. So this tutorial made me REALLY excited. I jumped at it and, like the other tutorials Ginger has put out, it was worth every penny. I again learned new things I should have known or might have figured out if left with the clay long enough, but she made it just so simple and obvious.

First of all – the faux glass is a LENGTHY process, with a lot of steps. You… may not have noticed this, but I’m not a fan of things that take a long time or are too fiddly. I may never make another batch (unless they show themselves to be more popular than I expect!). But I am SO GLAD I made this batch! The multiple steps are absolutely essential to create the ancient, layered effect of the millenia-old glass beads.

Ginger’s steps are perfect to follow. I am a cook, not a baker, because I CANNOT follow steps – I have to read and re-read and re-read AGAIN… but this tutorial made it simple even for this poor global brain.

The Pardo clay, as promised, WAS a bit difficult to work with, but she gave me all the information I needed to keep from getting frustrated. And I am REALLY, extremely, so very happy with the end result.

I’m not a BIG fan of the way I did the grey gunk – it’s too much. When/if I try it again I’ll do far less.  But I love the distressed look, and the iridescence, and it really does look like glass!

When I was done I was stymied. NOW WHAT?! I had no idea what I wanted to DO with these. I sorted them into sets and then still couldn’t quite figure it out (been doing that a lot, lately). I had a vague idea that they would work well in a steampunk dangle set but I couldn’t really pull the trigger on that one. I ended up putting them away (which is why it’s taken so long to get this review up!).

Recently, they caught my eye again and I just barreled ahead. I picked through my bead stash and found some beads that really picked up the iridescence of the clay, and went to town.

I think I like these little sets! And I KNOW that I LOVE this faux glass tutorial. I think you will, too!