Homemade enamel applicator

On my recent course with Astrid Reidal, I was fortunate enough to watch Astrid demonstrate how she makes her enamel beads. She does some fantastic work including some of her latest examples on her Flicker stream.

She used an enamel applicator like this one

I looked into buying one but they are not cheap and Astrid had to squash the hole smaller on hers to restrict the flow of enamel so I though I might have a go at making my own.

I visited my local cake decorating shop and bought a metal icing nozzle. For my first attempt I made a coil of wire and tried to use it to apply the enamel to the bead. It wasn't very successful as when I placed the nozzle on the glass it rose up out of the wire ring. I then just tried using a pair of tweezers to hold the nozzle. This did work but the hole on the nozzle was a little large and I have trouble controlling the flow of enamel.

This was my first bead attempt.

I finally came up with this

I glued to nozzle to the wire using superglue and squashed the hole to make it smaller and. Unfortunately I didn't think about the direction in which I squashed it and it was the wrong way. I re-squashed it and it seems to work fine now.

I'm not sure what the hole size is in terms of nozzle numbers as I have now found out that there are really fine ones but can't find out the mm size.

I would like to show you the next beads I made using it but they are a work in progress and something I wan't to keep to myself for the time being.