Overcoming technical difficulties to make white glass jewelry

Pantone's 2026 color of the year is "Cloud Dancer" - basically, white.  I have a particular problem making white jewelry.  It's not that I dislike white!  It's the fact that I use focused sunlight to melt glass.

I've struggled for years to make white Sundrops, and finally succeeded!  The problem is the exact thing that makes the story behind my jewelry so cool - the glass is melted with sunshine focused using a giant magnifying glass.  

In order to melt, the glass has to reach a certain temperature (around 1,600F for most types of glass).  I focus sunlight on the glass, and - here's the key bit - the pigment in the glass absorbs the light, converting it into heat!  That means that different colors of glass will heat up at different rates, with dark colors heating faster while pale colors heat slower.*  

And white is the palest color - by definition, something that is white is reflecting all colors of light at once.  Reflecting all light makes it hard to heat something white up by absorbing light.  White keeps you cool, right?

After years of trying different pieces of glass off and on, I finally found a white glass that I can melt with my giant magnifying glass!  These drops all came from a piece of glass that  had just a bit of color swirled in.  Some drops still had the yellowish tinge (those actually became the Ivory Collection I released a few months ago), but a small handful came out pure white.

Over the next few days I'll be working to see what jewelry designs I can make with the drops I have, and I'll add them to my online shop next Tuesday, Jan 13th.  Mailing list members will get early access when they land, so join now to get first dibs!

*There is also some variation based on where on the spectrum the glass is - pale blue (like Water) and pale green (like Coca-Cola) melt fairly quickly even though they are pale.  However, pale pinks heat up so slowly it's hard to make nice consistent teardrops, and often refuse to melt at all.