I have been stretching my earlobes since high school. Early on I was doing it all wrong, but I found the bodymods and stretched communities on LiveJournal before getting to 6ga/4mm, which is the first "big" stretch (8ga to 6ga is going from 3mm to 4mm). I miss having such great resources so readily available, but that's another post for a different day. Today I want to talk about dichroic glass plugs, which are one of the best things I found through those communities.
Dichro plugs (as we called them on LJ) were probably most peoples' favorite, aside from labradorite (a very flashy stone). With lots of bold color and lots of sparkles, what is there not to love?
When I first got into it, Industrial Strength made glass plugs and they were very popular in the community. They eventually quit and sold off their glass equipment around 2009 or so, and they've been doing the body jewelry thing ever since; the only thing they're doing for stretched lobes now are basic metal eyelets. It's a loss I will mourn forever because their dichro was my favorite. They had some great colors I've not seen from anyone else, like their silver blue and spring green.
They had 3 styles of dichro: regular dichro (at the front of the glass), crystal dichro (at the back of the glass), and opal dichro (at the back of the glass over a white base). I've found some dead stock at various piercing studios in the past year, but the stock is damn near obliterated at this point. As I've stretched up, I have kept the pairs I had and really would like to learn to work with resin so I can set them in eyelets in my current size. Below are some photos:
Much of what I've gotten over the years has been the last pairs in the clearance stock, so imperfections are unsurprising.
During that time, there was an Etsy seller named Bill, whose shop was called FrozenFire. Everybody ordered from him, and after a few years of being constantly overloaded with orders, he decided to close his shop. This is another loss I will always mourn because the man was incredibly talented as a glass maker in general, not just with dichro. You could get dichro in any style and on any color (or even no color, which meant you could change the look with various colors of nail polish behind it). He also had galaxy-style foils, and my favorite that I got from him was rainbow galaxies on a purple background. I still have some of his stuff too, also hoping to set in resin. Photos, including the pinwheels he did, which were the best I've ever seen anybody make, period:
FrozenFire plugs had round backs so my ugly hand was required, lol.
Dichro isn't dead, 2 companies that were doing it back then still are. Glasswear Studios is one and Gorilla Glass is the other. I am so glad they've continued making it, but GWS stopped doing dichro on white (which I loved), and Gorilla Glass mainly does what they call deluxe dichro. There is also Nirvana Glass, which started as an Etsy shop and is now a small operation in Thailand. They have the best selection and the widest variety of options of anybody, much like FrozenFire did. I'd love to buy a bunch of pairs in my current size from them, but unfortunately the larger sizes are pretty pricey and I can't afford to. Some pictures from the 3 of those brands are below:
From left to right is Glasswear Studios, Gorilla Glass, and Nirvana Glass.
I was inspired to write this post because the trends in the industry have changed a lot since I first got into it. I really don't like where it's at right now, everything is based in appropriation of Indigenous styles (which I cannot stand white people doing!) using metals like silver and gold, and glass production has really slowed down. Prices for it have exponentially multiplied over the years as well, so it's not even affordable like it once was, either. The whole thing makes me sad, and I know I am living in the past with my preferences, but I will always love color and sparkles and I really hope it becomes more widespread (and affordable) again. At least stone is still as popular as it ever was, so I still have that to indulge in.
GenAI is trash. ChatGPT is trash. Copilot is trash. Every other GenAI product is trash. You suck and you should feel bad about it and the fact that you are stealing from me. You should apologize to the world and then self-destruct for the good of humanity.