My Favorite Oops

 This is my favorite bead yet that didn't come out the way it was supposed to.  I got the shape wrong, so I can't sell it.  The ends are a bit off and the taper on the long bicone is irregular.  What a shame.  I'm just going to hate making this into a nice piece of jewelry for myself.

 The body of the bead is apple blush, covered with a twistie made from opal yellow, psyche and Terra2, CiM adamantium ends and silvered ivory and psyche stringer decoration.  The Terra2 didn't strike very well but I got a really cool mother of pearl effect and the opal yellow struck to a pinkish blush, which goes swimmingly with the small bits of apple blush visible under the stringer.  The psyche reduced better in some places than others, but I was at the end of the cylinder. 

 I can't quite put my finger on what this bead reminds me of.  Something Japanese and/or Mucha.  I have a set of Mucha prints that depicts the four hours of the day, morning, midday, evening and night that this reminds me very strongly of, but others have said that it reminds them of Japanese art or desert branches.

With any luck the couple beads I made to match will turn out ok and I can make this into a bracelet or necklace.

Fall (color) Diet Pictures

 I haven't posted many pictures since the weekend, but I have been working.  I really like the way the glass is acting on the new diet.  I confess to a certain amount of premeditation with the way these turned out in that I knew that many of the colors I picked were going to do neat things when I combined them with metals and silver glass. 

The bead on the left is made on CiM lapis with a twistie of copper green, CiM bordello, DH Aurae, and DH terra2, with some silvered ivory thrown in for good measure.  Believe it or not, the weird greenish stripe bordered with black is the bordello.  This, I was not expecting.  I can only speculate that the greenish color is it reacting to the silver glasses next to it and the black stripes are it reacting to the copper green with the silvered glasses.  If anyone else has any suggestions of what it could be, please leave a comment because I like it but I'm stumped.

 The long bead on the right is a base of Effetre dark red special, 1/2 rolled in silver foil and melted, rolled in a DH reducing frit blend on the other half, wrapped with the same twistie as above and silvered ivory stringer, and swirled in a couple places.

 This is where the battery on my camera died, so I had to settle for a group picture of the remaining beads.  You'll see more of the copper green stringer, plus one made with just DH terra2 and aurae, and another made with EFF dark red, light pumpkin and trans topaz on a base of clear.  I used silver foil, DH reducing frit, and silvered ivory stringer pretty liberally on all of these.  The only one that has anything different is the center bicone, which has another stringer made with a very tight twistie of CiM adamantium and silvered ivory.

I hope you've enjoyed this sneak preview into the beads I will be listing over the next week or two.

I'm going back to work tomorrow so I don't know when I'll be torching next, but when I have new beads I will post them.

Effetre chocolatta

OK, when I blogged CiM adamantium, I said it was a milk chocolate color.  I didn't know what I was talking about.  This is the chocolate brown.  I could put these in a bowl with candy and be doing the Heimlich maneuver in no time.  The glass melts like chocolate, too.  Perhaps that is why I forgot I had made a bunch of beads and made them again.  I was having too much fun.

With metal it's not impressing me, but who cares.  For the purpose of thoroughness, left to right are plain, with silver foil, same encased, and copper leaf.

With DH aurae and triton, I'm not too happy, but psyche looks promising in a raspberry truffle kind of way.

Plum silver looks kinda nice, like spots of dark chocolate, but copper green is unfortunate, since I could have gone for the whole chocolate and mint thing.  EDP separates the chocolatta, which is a shame. 

Ivory separates the chocolatta, as well, but I'm getting used to it bleeding or separating or forming a line.  Same sort of thing with intense black and CiM tuxedo.


I love this color and will be gobbling it up, so to speak, so I'm sure I'll buy it again.  Only the frustration of trying to use this laptop is keeping me from further raptures.

CiM adamantium

One of the newer Creation is Messy colors, adamantium, was begging to be tested.  It is a shimmery greyish brown rod that turns into the perfect Hersheys Kiss chocolate when made into a plain bead.  With the emphasis on turquoise this year and the prediliction for pairing it with brown, this seems like the perfect glass to use.  It plays very nice, being smooth and workable and generally a joy to melt.  It isn't soupy but not so stiff that it pulls the bead release off on a moderately cold wind.  Bead 1 is plain and it is easy to see why I think it is a nice milk chocolate color.

Now things start getting interesting.  I stupidly made these beads roughly the same size and shape, and I am not used to working with copper leaf.  These facts being stated, the rest of this paragraph is an educated guess.  Bead 2 is with silver foil, melted in.  I am pretty sure of this one, since tiny beads of silver dot the surface.  I really like the surface texture of this bead.  3 is with silver foil, melted in, reduced, and encased in clear.  I think.  The green works under the clear and seems to rise above it.  4 is with a new toy, copper leaf.  The directions I got said to encase it and I wanted to see what would happen if I didn't.  The chocolate brown goes greenish and strange metallic  spots appear on the surface, with a rough texture almost like devitrification or metallic special effects.  Copper foil is weird because the moment a hot bead is marvered onto it, it goes all ashy and won't melt in, sort of like palladium leaf.  I am happy to say that with the addition of more heat, it does eventually melt in.  5 is with the copper leaf according to the directions.  Neat set of bubbles under the surface and nice patina under the encasement.  I am still happy I broke the rules just because.

Now we get into the silver glasses.  I wisely made these different shapes.  6 is with DH aurae, reduced and 7 is with aurae, reduced, encased and doing that purple thing I love.  I'll do this again.  8 is with DH triton and I like the multicolor reduction thing going on.  9 is with triton, reduced and encased, and while I over-reduced the triton on the left side and under-reduced it in patches on the right, it still has intriguing possibilities.  I like the way the triton pops out, almost into the encasement.

10 is with CiM tuxedo, and the same separation thing is going on.  I think this is the standard reaction.  11 is with copper green and there is no reaction.  Considering how I will use this combination someday, this is a good thing.  With 12, I decided to kill 2 birds with one stone and test EDP and plum silver simultaneously.  What was I thinking?  In order to get plum silver to do its thing I have to devitrify the EDP.  There is a hint of a plum silver thing going on but I didn't want to push it.  13 is with ivory and, happily, there is no reaction.  14 is with intense black and the same separation thing happens.  And the black takes over the bead.  C'est la vie.

Will I buy this color again?  Definitely.  It fills a niche that no other color so far has, which is to reproduce chocolate in glass.