Rod Soup - A Recipe

Making beads is not just about the glamorous times when I play with fire for hours on end.
It's also about taking care of my materials and not being wasteful.

Glass rods come in bundles, and one rod in each bundle has a sticker on the end to identify the color.
It's a real sticky sticker that won't peel off.
But I have a system for getting them off so I don't waste that nice little piece of glass.

I happen to love working with short rods of glass.
It's sad, but true, that many flameworkers hate them.

I buy them from them, sometimes they give them to me, we trade... but I always have lots of short rods around and most of them have stickers on their butts.

Just put 'em in a jar of water overnight and let them soak.
Next day dump them out, onto a towel, on your work table.

And just slip, or unwind, the stickers right off the rods.
The adhesive has dissolved and it literally takes a second, or two, to clean each rod.

Pink is freaking expensive, a gal shouldn't waste her pink.

Now you have a pile on nice clean short rods for making frit, buttons, stringers and twisties, or torching back into long rods.

For this process it's also good to have a tasty bagel on hand.

A reward after a tedious task makes sense, right?