All right, it was a poor fit. Too small, too big, and of a shape no human foot would never conform to. A customer asked me to try making a pair of pink high heeled shoe earrings for charity and I had to give it a try. CiM Gelly's sty is just exactly the right color. It screams pink and more importantly, is nice and stiff so it holds its shape while I dither around with the torch trying to figure out how to make a convincing shape. It was meant to be a classy, high heeled pump with a beaded decoration on top, but neither one of these things happened. And I forgot that Gelly's sty devitrifies. I'm running low on gas again so I couldn't heat it enough to get rid of this, and I'm not sure the heel would have taken it if I did.
The heel gave me the most fits. From this angle it looks pretty good, but what you can't see is that it had to be pretty wide to stand up to the heat without wilting. The heel area in general is a bit wide, though. I'm going to try starting with a smaller bead to anchor it and work from there, which should allow me to make the instep area a bit narrower as well. This picture is good. It hides the immense wideness of the wrong areas.
The top decoration didn't really work out, because I added it before I was done shaping the glass and it all melted together. I was pleased with the fact that there was an open area between the heel and the toe. I shall keep this and work on getting the rest to be more foot shaped. Another thing I was thinking of was not continuing the hole all the way through the tip of the toe. It would be really cool if I could hang the earrings from the heel, the way you'd carry a pair of shoes with 2 fingers. I need to have the mandrel reach the toe because I am not at all confident of my ability to keep the shape of a scoop shaped bit of hot glass in the flame. I can see the toe swinging all over the place.
I'm not at all unhappy with the way this turned out as a first attempt. Most of the stuff I eventually wind up with takes many tries to get it the way I like it and I've done worse. Previously, I've made some snowmen, fish, a frog and a penguin or two. This is an entirely new shape and much more technically challenging. Even if I never wind up with earrings I'm glad I tried it. I'll amend this post if I ever get it right.
This is the original by Vincent Van Gogh. I think the mood came out pretty well.
This set reminded me of a seaside landscape and the blog post it appeared in is linked to CiM olive.
Effetre nile green opalino wasn't available for a while, and having worked the others, I was anxious to give this a whirl. It is a nice, spring green that I think works best by itself. It remains stiff when worked, more toward the transparents than the opaques. I found myself constantly resisting the urge to work lower in the flame or turn up the gas, since this color is ridiculously sensitive to torch chemistry and if the flame is too reducing, the beads will go an ugly, greyish olive with "smoke" spots on them. If they had beed surface flaws, I might have tried etching to remove the discoloration, but the glass was stained all the way through so I threw out a couple beads where I wasn't able to resist temptation.
Plain, these are a nice, jade green that becomes more ethereal when encased in clear. Note the lack of a clear dividing line where one glass starts and the other stops. Following Pat Frantz's advice, all the encased beads were made on a core of clear to prevent cracking, which the opalino colors are supposed to be prone to do when encased.
CiM tuxedo reflects quite a bit into the opalio, and the opalino dots on top of it are invisible. I ran out of gas just as I made the middle bead with intense black, but I believe the tiny opalino dots on top of the intense black ones would have been a waste of time. I was pleased that Gelly's sty didn't do anything weird with the opalino, since I may do something in a muted floral with these two.
Another CiM color that almost slipped by me. They have so many, I'd go broke trying to own them all, but I'd love to try. This one is really a unique shade of pink. It is slightly translucent, but this is part of its charm. Effetre rose opalino is similar, but it is a pain to work with and Gelly's sty doesn't need to be struck. I think the best thing about it is that it plays so well with other colors. The material from Creation is Messy says that it goes light under encasement and likes to be worked hot. There are reports that it can be shocky (oh, no) and devitrifies. I was forewarned on the shockiness and as far as the devitrification goes, I'll just have to see.
Plain reveals a pretty, rose petal shade of pink. Encased, it looks pretty much the same to me. Perhaps a tiny bit more translucent. Maybe a good thing. If I want an ethereal pink, this is the color for me.
I didn't even bother testing this one with silver or copper, since I knew it would go all yellow with silver and I have yellow opalino and CiM ghee for that. With copper I just wasn't interested. I suspect the shockiness advised against comes after cooling without kilning so we'll just see how the plain encased bead does before I add copper to the mix. With DH aurae, pictured here, it goes golden and highlights the gold dots of the aurae. Nice. I love what it did under encasement. I only wish my clear didn't scum up.
Yellow seems to bleed a little but there is no ugly reaction. Strangely, copper green appears bleached out. there is nothing ugly happening here and I would feel confident using the 2 together, but I would wish for more contrast. The intense black stays crisp and the Gelly's sty separates into that neat mouth thing, but it is almost invisible due to its lack of saturation. Trying to get plum silver to go metallic without devitrifying was a task beyond me, but there is a hint of a shimmer, trust me.
