It is hard not to be impressed with the beautiful range of dichroic glass jewelry that is available these days. There is a whole plethora of jewelry with most of it being hand crafted by artists and designers who are used to working with glass. The great thing about dichroic glass jewelry is that each piece is unique and individual, due to the very makeup of this type of medium.
Most dichroic glass jewelry is made from cabochons. These dichroic glass cabochons are made from pieces of raw dichroic glass that can be purchased from various retailers in bulk. The raw glass is cut to shape and then placed in the kiln over and over until the artist is satisfied with the color and pattern of the dichroic glass cabochons. Sometimes the glass is fused up to ten times, and the resultant dichroic glass cabochon is purportedly strong enough that it could withstand being dropped on a hard surface.
Dichroic cabochons appear to be of a different color, depending on the angle that you look at it from. Some light waves will pass through the cabochon while others will be refracted off the glass. This is why the colors vary when you look at a piece of jewelry made from dichroic glass cabochons.
When describing a cabochon made from dichroic glass people usually refer to by both the transmitted and the reflected colors. For example a Green/Blue categorization, when following the standard of transmission/reflection would mean that the dichroic cabochon would be green in transmission and blue in reflection. In other words, light that goes through the glass would appear to be green whereas the light that reflects off the glass would be blue.
If you are interested in creating your own jewelry it is possible to buy dichroic cabochons directly from distributors. These have already been in and out of the kiln and are ready to fashion into jewelry.
If you want to make a dichroic glass pendant for example, all you would need to do would be to either drill a hole in the cabochon, or route a channel around the cabochon and attach sterling silver or gold wiring around it. You can also make dichroic earrings and rings from a dichroic glass cabochon as well as you are usually able to specify the size needed when purchasing these direct.
Naturally, as with normal gems, dichroic cabochons come in different shapes as well. You can find the regular oval shaped cabs as well as triangular and rectangular shaped stones. Some others are irregularly shaped. With such a variety of styles to choose from, there is room for a lot of creativity and individualism when it comes to creating handmade dichroic glass jewelry.
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