Messy Color Update

For anyone just joining me as I wander across a field of glass, I've been honored by having some of my work mentioned on the Creation is Messy website.  I've also been trying out new techniques while I work out colors.  This is such a bead.  October is breast cancer awareness month in the US, but women are diagnosed every day and a friend has asked me to make some pink high heeled shoe earrings to help spread awareness.  Creation is Messy has pictured my bead on their page for Gelly's sty, which I think is the absolute best glass to use for this purpose.  It is nice and stiff and screamingly pink.

I am frequently frustrated by my inability to get the beads I see in my mind's eye to come out on the mandrel.  This set was one of my rare successes.  It took quite a few tries to get it just right, but I am very happy with how they turned out.  They are mentioned on the Lapis page.

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.

Hopefully this has been an enjoyable excursion to Creation is Messy.

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.

First Beads for Fall

 I made these Saturday, before I officially decided to change my color diet. In fact, these beads helped me to see that it really was time for a change.  Apparently, I'm not the only one because 3 of the 4 sets I made up are on their way to their new homes.

Of the batch, the beads on the left are my favorites.  They were made with CiM lapis with psyche and sis.  I love the way the ivory fades into the lapis.  I don't think I noticed this in my initial testing, but for this set it really works.  Besides, the blue violet is such a lovely color.

 On the right is a set made the same way with CiM olive.  This one reminded me of an aerial view of grass-covered sand and streams.  These are the most fall-like colors so far, but green is a lucky color that works in any season.

I called this set water flowers because of the colors and patterning, primarily.  The lentil is copper green with sis like the spacers, but I added a blend of 456 rubino oro and CiM cranberry pink dark frit.  I love the way the pink frit reacts with the copper green, separating it into a halo and an area that looks almost like it was thinly encased in aqua transparent.  I was also surprised to see that the pink picked up some of the silver from the stringer it contacted and moved it to its far edge.  I don't know who could have predicted that.

I'm not an orange person.  I tend toward cooler colors and shy away from ones that make a bold impression like these beads do.  I have to say I like this one.  I like the way the streaks of blue, purple, yellow and pink show up against the plain coral.  The glass I used is Vetrofond petrified wood and it's not on the diet, but that is primarily because the glass is so pretty on its own that I can't see adding anything else to it.

Naturally, the beads I made yesterday were useless.  I did make one that looks good, and another that was probably the prettiest bead I've ever made.  The good looking one is a base of light pumpkin with silver foil, sis, and psyche, decorated with bordello bumps.  I'm going to play with that combination more.  The really pretty one was too pretty.  I wrapped a core of lapis with trails of psyche and bordello, rolled it in silver foil, melted it in and reduced it, encased it in clear and decorated it with half a triton swirl flower.  Unfortunately it looked so good after I reduced the triton that I didn't want to mess up the reduction by heating it too much and it cracked from thermal shock.  The two halves are still together and it looks like the crack only goes partly through the encasement layer, but I can't use it.  I hope to come up with a solution to this problem.

CiM olive

I wanted another green in my palette for St. Patrick's day, and one that I have little of is olive.  For it I chose CiM olive, which Cim commando is no longer as close to in hue.  That being said, it is kinda close to Vetrofond's new wasabi, but different enough in at least the appearance of the rods that I won't have trouble telling them apart in my stash.  The rods are all shimmery and melt darker, which wasn't a surprise.  What was a surprise was hitting an air bubble and having the end pop off the rod.  It fell onto the worktable, didn't burn anything, including me and I banged the rod back in the flame without missing a beat.  The rest worked fine.

1 is plain.  Some streakiness here. 
2 is encased with vetro clear.  Did I smoke it?  I didn't think so....
3 is with silver foil.  I was disappointed that it didn't do more.
4 is with silver foil, melted in, reduced and encased.  I thought reducing it might do something but no dice.
5 is with poorly silvered ivory stringer.
6 is with Double Helix triton, melted in and reduced.
7 is with triton, melted in, reduced and encased.
8 is with ivory.  No reactions.  Rats.
9 is with copper green red.  I wanted some contrast, but the similarity in color value makes it hard to see detail.
10 is with CiM tuxedo.  Nothing happened with the black dots on the olive, but the olive separated on the black.
11 is as a rotten floral on black, encased in clear.  I need to work on this style of bead.  I should start larger to make it easier to get definition, with colors that I know will work well.
12 is with plum silver scrolls.
13 is with EDP.  I wanted to see what it would do to a gold pink, and the answer is nothing.

13 test beads.  It's a good thing I'm not superstitious.  It's a nice olive and will work well for leaves and such.  Will I be upset if I can't get any more?  Not really.