so many colors, so little time

 Being fairly compulsive in nature, I decided after the first couple of days of posting that I would only post once per day.  Rules are meant to be broken, and on a day when I get more glass this one is.  I will be so busy making beads and forming impressions that I have to get them down or burst.  To the left is a color that I was only moderately interested in in the paddle form but one that I will definitely be using lots more of in different forms and with different colors, CiM desert pink.  This reminds me a lot of Vetrofond seashell swirl and acts a lot alike as well.  Plain bead on the left cracked a couple of times on the mandrel as I wasn't heating it enough and I would remember it and go back to it and fix it.  It doesn't appear to strike and unstrike if the color changes in this process are any indication.  Encased bead next doesn't change a lot in intensity under clear, which was a bit of a surprise.  I deliberately left the encasement partial so I could check this.  Next up is the bead rolled in silver foil and melted in.  Some folks might find the color change off-putting, but I think the tortoiseshell thing appealing.  Having seen this I went on to make the fourth bead on the mandrel, the foiled and encased.  This was a little disappointing, because I got exactly what I put into it, a tortoiseshell looking bead encased (badly) in clear.  Who knew?  The next one is the one that got me excited.  On the left is DH triton and on the right is DH aurae.  Both were melted in, reduced and half encased in clear, so I can see the plain and encased versions in one bead.  Yeah, it's a cheat, so sue me.  Both the triton and aurae look good on the desert pink, with the golden brown fuming I was expecting.  What surprised me was that encased, there was no fuming and both colors looked pretty good.  The black and pink bead was made using desert pink and CiM hades, using fairly equal amounts of each.  Ordinarily I would say that hades is pushing in, because it certainly seems to be taking over the bead, but when comparing it with the similar bead made with Vetrofond dark ivory, I see that the pink is a bit of a shrinking violet - drumroll please.  Really, the pink just sort of disappeared.  On the ivory bead, only patches of altered color show where the desert pink dots used to be.  I like this color combination, since not many pinks play nice with ivory.  I want to test copper green (with or without red, or both) and dark silver plum, since I think this pink might have a silver base and I think they might work well together, but I ran out of time tonight.  Tomorrow is another day.

This one is the much anticipated TE-362.  It was not listed on the Double Helix website, so I didn't know what to expect other than the blurb and picture on the Frantz Art Glass site, which is the same as I would get from DH, but moving on from that I can seldom get the same effects out of my HH torch.  I was again pleasantly surprised by how well this worked for me.  Not as dramatic as what was pictured, but I wasn't expecting it to be.  There are all kinds of subtle color variations on the plain, reduced bead, and encased (and cracked - I was looking again) the color shifts slightly more blue and creamy.  Over CiM hades It looks a little lavender pink, and on its own as a very fine stringer on hades, this is more pronounced.  Quite a lot out of an unassuming tan rod.  Incidentally, there is something a little strange about these rods.  The surface is rough and the raised bumps are little beads of silver visible in the glass.  Cool.  You can almost see them in this picture.  Now I have to pull a whole lot of stringer so I can see what this glass does on other colors.