I have to admit that most of my beads are shaped using gravity, my flat marver and my little ‘patty down’ tool.  What’s a ‘patty down’ tool?  I don’t know, some kind of dental spatula that has made itself totally indispensable to me – so much so I have three of them on my bench.

I recently watched glass bead artist Muriel Duval using an Osibin lentil marver and thought that this looked like it might be a very useful addition to my glass shaping arsenal.  I finally treated myself to one – here is what it looks like -

I want to try making some buttons and think this should work like a charm – I tried it for the first time yesterday.  Lets just say I need to work on those buttons, but I did make what I think is the most perfectly shaped bead I ever have!  I didn’t really know what I was doing but used the bowl of the depression to create a nice round bead and as a bonus the edges of these depressions let you work the glass to make beautifully shaped ends to the bead as well.

I’m looking forward to seeing what else this tool can do for me