Step 1: Focal Beads

The first step for making our fold-over pendants is to create the "focal beads". Focal beads aren't necessary but they are a simple way to make a very attractive pendant.

Below is the kiln shelf laid out with the glass for 25 of these beads. Each is about the size of a penny or smaller.

I'll only being using a couple of these for this project - but there's no sense leaving empty space on my kiln shelf .

Take special note of the two with red arrows pointing at them - we will be using these focal beads for two of the three pendants I showed you on the first page.

Here's a close up of those two:

When we full-fuse this glass it will change to liquid and, much like a drop of water on your kitchen counter (and thanks to the magic of surface tension), the glass will become near-perfectly round. 

These are small pieces of glass so we aren't too concerned about thermal shocking or annealing. That makes our  firing schedule very simple -as fast as possible up to 1475°F (802°C), hold for 15 minutes, turn off the kiln and allow to cool naturally.  As always, temperatures and in your kiln may vary. 

And the resulting glass looks like this:

And here are the two beads we will be using for this project:

Now we are ready for the next step - making the "pendant strips".