Use Luminar 6 Mold Mix to create a mold around a regular lightbulb, fill with scrap compatible glass and fuse to create a hemispherical paperweight.
Clean the light bulb. Cut a small hole in a small cardboard box, and insert the lightbulb, metal end first, so it fits snugly and doesn’t wobble around. Mix a small amount of the Luminar 6 up, and thin with about 35% water. Gently stir until throughly mixed, no lumps!. This may take awhile. Let it sit if it is not mixing that well. Add a few drops of food colouring to tint it. With a synthetic brush, paint on a thin, even coat over the glass of the lightbulb. Let dry 1 hour. Then apply a thick coat of the Luminar 6 mixture, tinted with another food colouring colour, to about 1/4" to 3/8" thick, over the entire glass surface of the lightbulb. Let dry overnight if not longer, or prop up in a kiln and slowly fire up to 500 degrees F for 15 minutes. Apply another thick layer, tint another colour, and air or kiln dry.
Score the glass neck of the light bulb, and break the metal part off. Empty the metal shards from the interior of the mold. Cut up some COE 90 scraps. Make the glass pieces about ½" x ½" in size, and fill the mold to the top. Use COE 90 glass as it matches the COE of the lightbulb glass which is still inside the mold. You can use mostly clear with a bit of colour for the best effect.
Full-Fuse to 1475 degrees F at 350 per hour, then drop AFAP to 960 for 1 hour and 30 minutes to anneal. Gently remove the mold from the glass inside once cool. The top curved part should be very smooth. The base may require a little bit of coldworking to clean up the edges, which may have sharp spots on them.
If the mold mix was not applied perfectly, there will be protrusions on the surface of the paperweight, and the mold mix may be stuck to the glass. If that case, you can saw up the paperweight into half circle slices, grind off any crud on the outer edges, and re-fuse. If care is taken removing the paperweight from the glass, you should be able to re-use the mold to make another paperweight. Fill in any divots with a thinned mixture of and smooth with your finger. Now you can fill the mold with System 96 glass and make more paperweights.
Luminar 6 is an expensive mixture, at about $75 per quart. It can be used to make open faced molds of unusual shaped objects, or whatever you can dream up.