Powder glass beads are made from finely ground glass, the main source being broken and unusable bottles and a great variety of other scrap glasses. Special glasses such as old cobalt medicine bottles, cold cream jars, and many other types of glasses from plates, ashtrays, window panes - to name only a few - are occasionally bought new, just for the purpose. Pulverized or merely fragmented, and made into beads, these glasses yield particularly bright colours and shiny surfaces. Modern ceramic colourants, finely ground broken beads, or shards of different coloured glasses from various sources can be added to create a great variety of styles, designs and decorative patterns in many different colours. In addition, glass bead fragments of varying sizes, which have traditionally been used for the manufacture as well as for the decoration of specific types of beads, can now be found in interesting new combinations, and during the past few years in particular, bead makers have taken this tradition yet another step forward by using entire, i.e. whole small beads for making their colourful bead creations.