midnight cobalt

This is another one of those colors that only came out in limited amounts, Vetrofond midnight cobalt.  It is DARK.  I didn't even bother making a self spacer, because it is so dark there's no way it would be distinguishable from a black bead and I wouldn't want to string it into something by mistake and have it show up in bright sunlight.  It melts slowly ans remains pretty stiff.  It doesn't shock easily.

1 is a spacer over clear and 2 is over white.  3 is over white with silver foil melted in, then reduced.  I had noticed this effect with standard cobalt and wanted to see if it did the same thing.  It does.

4 is a test to see if applying silver foil, melting it in and reducing it brought out the blue.  I was surprised to find out it did, just barely.  5 is the same as 3, encased in clear.  I was sorry to see that the effect wasn't really preserved, but there is some lightening of the blue.  6 is over ivory with ivory dots.  The blue is so dark it's hard to see if there was any interaction between the 2.  I don't think there was, based on the crispness of the edges of the ivory dots.  7 is with copper green and nothing changed on either side.  8 is with turquoise and nothing happened here either, but I got a nice thin dot on top.  This is an idea--use the color to place over white on a cobalt blue bead so the dots on top of the white look as intense as the base bead color.

I like the way 9 turned out.  It is dots of TE-331 with clear dots on top of half of them.  I didn't make any special effort to strike the TE-331, and wouldn't you know it, it is my best color reaction to date.  I wonder if I can do this again?

Would I get more of this glass if it were available?  I don't know.  The glass I have will last a long time, since it is really only visible in very thin layers.  It would be good for fine stringer work or in murrini but that's about all I can see using it for.  I can't make murrini so pulled cane and over other colors is about it.