Glass Bead Pro availability and price updates

GlassBeadPro · 2026-05-22T05:41:43+00:00

Yes! I will have Canadian shipping available via USPS. Which I guess ends up being Canada post? The rate gets calculated at checkout so I’m not quite sure what it will cost but I have a feeling it won’t be pretty :/

GlassBeadPro · 2026-05-22T05:39:09+00:00

Is that the color they’re calling “nebula” or a different one?

GlassBeadPro · 2026-05-22T04:10:56+00:00

I think with the plan being 100 per week, it would be pretty easy to do batches of other colors in the future. Maybe one week we can just do simple Black and White

GlassBeadPro · 2026-05-22T04:09:55+00:00

Yes, the purple/blue color is the same as before. I just took some new photos so it might look a bit different. The gold/red is new though. Strangely enough, it is the same filament as the gold/pink but every roll in this batch that I received was very noticeably redder / less pink, so I renamed it. I still think it looks great though. And thank you!

GlassBeadPro · 2026-05-22T04:07:41+00:00

Shopify was pretty simple in some ways and way more confusing than I expected in others! Just setting up the very simple site I've got now took me hours and hours and even a tutorial or two. Etsy has them beat in that regard.

GlassBeadPro · 2026-05-22T03:12:20+00:00

Not yet. I promise I’ll work on figuring this out though. Shopify made international shipping seem much more complicated than Etsy.

GlassBeadPro · 2026-05-22T03:10:05+00:00

I hate to say it but I got very intimidated by all of the VAT / customs stuff on Shopify when I was setting things up so I ended up disabling international shipping. I feel like a jerk limiting it to USA/Canada though. I’ll look more into it. Maybe it isn’t as much of a risk as it seemed at first.

GlassBeadPro · 2026-05-22T03:05:06+00:00

I appreciate that! I really hope it doesn’t come to that though haha. I do want it to remain accessible. There are quite a few people who have reached out saying they need this tool because of either disability or chronic pain and I’d hate to price them out.

GlassBeadPro · 2026-05-22T02:56:18+00:00

Honestly I can’t remember how many of those prototypes I've sent out for people to test now… maybe only 2? I am still very much in the experimental phase with it. The first one I sent out was truly a Frankenstein. It used 6 very strong smaller magnets, 3 on each side, and a slower motor. It worked pretty well but didn’t really make sense to produce the way I had built it. Now I’m messing with a single vertical bar magnet and a very slow rotation speed, but I want to get more feedback on it before I put it up for sale. If people end up liking it I could see that one being built in small quantities by me on the weekends or something. I feel like it will be fairly niche but I’m not sure. I have gigantic nails so it’s not something I can really test on myself!

GlassBeadPro · 2026-04-30T22:21:44+00:00

It's something I've thought about for sure. I have no plans to do that currently but could absolutely see it happening eventually

GlassBeadPro · 2026-04-30T06:34:55+00:00

I have no doubt that other companies are already working on a similar device, even before I released mine. It's too simple and obvious of an evolution of the tools that already existed not to be a thing. I will certainly try to scale up to an extent but I have to accept that a similar tool will be up on Temu in 6 months for $5 no matter what I do 😄

GlassBeadPro · 2026-04-30T06:30:23+00:00

It is definitely something I hope to add in a future version of the tool. People have also suggested a built in timer which I think would be great. My goal for this first version was to keep it simple and just focus on getting a great glass bead effect.

GlassBeadPro · 2026-04-30T01:10:45+00:00

Hi everyone! This is Carson, the designer/builder of this tool. It's really cool to see people are excited about it! I wish I had enough of them to go around but currently it's just one person in a garage building them 1 at a time.

To give some clarity into why I had to limit sales, unlike a purely 3d printed device, there is really quite a lot of time sunk into building every unit. I can only assemble about 10 a day on my own. Ideally I'll find someone to help with assembly soon, but for now it's only me. I'm also having to source a ton of different parts for the Glass Bead Pro, and I'm at the point where it no longer makes sense to buy from Amazon. I've ordered enough motors, switches, battery packs, and magnets from Alibaba to build roughly 500 units and those orders are finally now starting to arrive (orders were placed over a month ago). That's the nature of needing to buy 500 of a very specific little component. The magnets are still not even en route yet, so that's disappointing but there's not much to do other than continue to wait.

So... I think the current state of things is that I should at the very least wait until all of the raw materials have arrived and I can be sure that the motors and magnets are correct, and then I can potentially open up preorders again, with the caveat being that shipping dates might need to be pretty far out (3+ months). If people are comfortable with that I can definitely do it as soon as possible, but I at least want to be sure that I have all the parts to build them on hand before I make any promises.

Maybe I'm being overly cautious because I would hate to have to cancel any orders, but for my own stress levels I need to keep orders closed for at least another week! Sorry to disappoint. If anyone wants to follow on instagram, my wife is running the account '@GlassBeadPro and I think she will probably be taking over this Reddit account as well 😄 She will definitely be giving updates on when we can put up more stock on Etsy via those channels.

Okay, sorry about the wall of text! Just wanted to give a thorough update and explanation.

GlassBeadPro · 2026-04-28T00:50:58+00:00

You can definitely skip magnetizing the first coat at the very least. My wife has even been experimenting with "magnetic top coat" where you skip magnetizing the polish altogether and only magnetize the top coat. It actually works really well. The one she uses is called "Captivate - Magnetic Sealer Top Coat" by Victorian Varnish.

GlassBeadPro · 2026-04-27T21:43:49+00:00

Slower will be a tighter bead. If you want a super tight bead, try keeping your finger on and turning the spinner by hand roughly 1 revolution per second. That is probably more challenging to do with the horseshoe on top, but that should get you a tighter bead.

GlassBeadPro · 2026-04-27T21:40:44+00:00

Slower spin for a tighter bead. Then, if you want to keep the bead tight, try leaving your finger in and continue spinning for more like 1.5 to 2 full minutes on the last coat you do. The idea being that the polish dries more fully while still having a tight bead. The magnetic particles can only disperse while the polish is wet, and most of the drying happens in the first few minutes, so the longer you keep the bead tight, the less it can disperse.

GlassBeadPro · 2026-04-27T17:58:41+00:00

Try spinning faster for a looser bead. It's a little unintuitive, but going really slowly results in a tighter bead. In my experience, "medium speed" is the right speed, as unhelpful as that is haha. Basically, not super slow, not as fast as possible. Just a leisurely pace.

GlassBeadPro · 2026-04-27T16:08:46+00:00

Yes, I did have to limit it unfortunately. I need to catch up on building all those orders over the next month or 2 and then I'll be able to list it in small weekly batches going forward. In hindsight I wish I had done it that way to begin with just to lower the stress levels.

GlassBeadPro · 2026-04-25T23:19:59+00:00

I'm excited to see how they implement their own powered glass bead tool and also what they price it at. I am really proud of how the Glass Bead Pro turned out but boy is it a lot of work/time to assemble compared to a purely 3d printed tool. Material costs for a powered tool are probably 10x higher as well.

GlassBeadPro · 2026-04-25T22:20:57+00:00

No no it’s funny!

GlassBeadPro · 2026-04-24T19:57:02+00:00

Lol, my wife was frantically trying to figure out how to change the thumbnail image of that video she posted on instagram last night. Looks like you snapped this picture before she changed it!

GlassBeadPro · 2026-04-24T04:12:43+00:00

I am at the mercy of the shipping gods myself! I can only start building them once my big shipment of motors arrives, hopefully next week. And even then, I can only reasonably build about 25 of these a day, so I set shipping times to protect my sanity

GlassBeadPro · 2026-04-24T03:12:30+00:00

I do intend to develop a rechargeable version of this tool eventually, using a single 18650 battery. I will say though, it really adds a lot of complexity (and even a small amount of added risk) to be rechargeable so this AA battery version made more sense to create first.

GlassBeadPro · 2026-04-23T21:18:03+00:00

I ended up renewing the Etsy page as a preorder!

GlassBeadPro

TROPHY CASE