The refraction node is what gives you the glass effect. Notice the ball I used lets you see the cloud background behind it, yet you get more bending of the light at the edges of the ball, just like you would with a real glass ball. If you were to add transparancy, it would tend to ruin the effect. But you have to make sure you have ray tracing checked when you do your render, otherwise no light passes through your glass. About Loretta, she's just an old character I play with from time to time. I just brought her out to demo the anisotropic node. She gets lots of different make-up variations depending on what I want to do with her.