After a Short Break

 It's been a couple weeks since I posted last, primarily because after I had surgery, I got sick.  Isn't that always the way?  I did make a few beads to test out the new annealer, and have done more since. 

 I finally got Devardi coppery black to lustre, by making the bead, turning the torch up to rocket and striking it then.  I also discovered that if I anneal the beads afterward, the lustre disappears in the kiln.  I may try setting the annealing temperature lower, say 925.  I may not, because this glass uses so much gas to bring up the coating, I don't want to take a chance.  I also discovered that when other colors are added on top, if they are left raised the coppery black doesn't have enough contact with the flame to lustre, and if the coppery black is left raised on top of tuxedo, for instance, it doesn't lustre either.  A bit of a pain to use.

 I wanted to see what Clio did in the kiln, since I read somewhere that it finishes developing color in it.  The two beads on the bottom are Clio, on the left, just Clio, after I attempted to strike and reduce it, and on the right, the same thing with a layer of clear on top.  I like the effect under clear, with the milky reduction modifying the color.  I was hoping for a more ruby color, but I suppose I should be glad I could get anything other than yellow with the hothead.

 I ordered in some more Effetre pink 256.  This bead is the old on the sides and the new in the middle.  I was fairly disappointed that the pink isn't more vivid.  Oh well, try again another time.

So, how's the annealer working?  I made the encased beads pictured here with the express idea of testing this out.  I've had problems with the old kiln cracking encased beads, especially when the beads had a thick encasement layer or were squashed into lentils.  I love the way these turned out.  I still can't do florals to save my life, but I thought the lentil came out very well.

Not the best bead I've ever made, but it served its purpose, which was to see how well a nice long soak held the bead together.  I encased a core of tuxedo with clear, in this case Vetrofond, which I've had more problems with cracking than Effetre or CiM, then added decorations of green and some bizarre poke flowers, which Joe was very kind about but he's color blind, then encased in another thick layer of clear and shaped the whole thing.  It stayed intact and didn't give me any trouble at all.  In cleaning this one the few other encased beads I made, I noticed the absence of a phenomenon I noticed with my cracked beads before.  I could tell if a bead was going to crack by feeling a concentrated vibraton along a line along the hole while cleaning it, even if it didn't crack right away.  It felt almost like an electric shock.  Now I know why it was happening, because none of the beads I made this time did it.

 I was testing out how CiM Tamarind worked on these beads, layering them fairly thickly with a twistie of CiM Canyon de Chelly, DH Clio and Terra2 and a bit of silvered ivory, then swirling it and encasing in clear.  I got some ruby out of the Clio here, and I generally like this combination for a twistie.  I can't really figure out where all the color came from, but that's OK.

This is the backside of the same bead, again showing the strange interaction of color.

This is the same twistie on a base of tamarind with the silvered ivory and squashed in a badly overfilled lentil press.  It's a pity.  I have to try this again without overfilling the press, because I think it looks pretty neat.

This bead ticks me off.  I used a base of white, I think CiM peace, covered it completely with every bit of stringer and twistie I found on the bench, spun it and added ends of tamarind.  I love the way the twisties looked and the colors I got, and am fairly happy with the shape of the bicone.

What I'm not happy about is the dimple I left on one of the ends.  I don't know how it got past me.  It totally wrecks the shape and I should have been able to see it.

Yep, there it is, right on top; it looks like someone scooped a chunk out of the bead and ruins what would have been a decent bead.  The worst part is that since I was just using up bits of twistie loitering around on the table, there's no way of redoing it.  Oh well.  It sure looks hand made.

Inspiration in Red

OK, I wasn't exactly inspired when I made these beads, but rather was trying to make a similar bead to the one in my last beady post that turned out even and with red ends.  As is frequently the case, at least with me, the inspiration comes afterward.

I partially achieved my objective, and even more, since I believe that some copper green stringer worked its way into the project and I like the result.  I also am going to attribute the inspiration of these beads to another artist working around the turn of the century.  The way the reactive stringer and twistie fumes and reacts with the apple blush and the lines formed within and around the silvered ivory remind me of some really cool book illustrations I have.

Arthur Rackham was a British illustrator whose best known work was done from 1900 or so through the First World War.  This is what Wikipedia has to say about him.

I have The Romance of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table written around 1917 (I do not have the first edition but the one I have still has the cool art work), a framed print of Tatiana Sleeping from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and a couple of smaller prints from Das Rheingold.  The picture above is from Wagner's Ring and the one below is from A Midsummer Night's Dream.  These sort of show what I'm talking about.

Hopefully the paintings and illustrations I'm showing give a bit of insight into some of my creative process.  If nothing else, have a couple pieces of eye candy.  It's totally non-fattening.

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.

Scratch One

These are the last 2 beads I'll be making out of this twistie. I like the color that the Aion2 turns when you reduce the heck out of it and cook it, and the copper green flower (?) makes it look like the twistie is ending or something, but for the amount of effort involved, I'm not sure it's worth the bother.

No one would ever be able to tell, but underneath both these beads is CiM slytherin unique (dark) and a wrap of silver foil, melted in and reduced, like everything else. I wrapped the twistie so heavily around that the bead that the bead is encased.

The Terra 2 entirely failed to strike but there's some weird milky stuff going on under the clear the twistie was wrapped around. Could be the Terra giving it a go. the flowers were not really all that recognizeable because I melted them in too much. Not much else to say except that slytherin doesn't mind some very thick encasement and it gets along swimmingly with silver glass.  To see what other artists have to say about a fantastic color and see my blog hit the big time click here for Creation is Messy.

This one I consider a fail not because of the Terra 2, which struck nicely in spots, but because of my miserable technique. I was concentrating too much on not doing bad things to the color of the twistie, which was already suspect and didn't pay attention to the ends of the bead, and then in a hurry to finish the bumps so I didn't melt them in as much as I should have. Not much to say except sloppy and yet another learning experience in the category of not sacrificing the basics for the extras.

I made a few beads today and I think they actually might have come out pretty well, or at least better than these did. They go with my green aventurine plaques that I posted last time. Can't wait to see what I find in the morning.

Creative Yearnings

After the drama over the weekend, I really have been having a rough time coming up with the desire to torch, let alone ideas of what to do when I get there. While Joe was trying, and failing, to teach me how to smith, he told me never to light the fire until you know what you want to do with it. Otherwise it's a waste of coal and time. After quite a bit of hemming and hawing and some heavy duty searching for inspiration, I decided I was going to try working with colors I haven't had much luck with to see if my luck had changed.

These four beads represent all of today's efforts. None will be used for anything other than experimentation, so into the annealing bubble I use for demos they went so I could see what they would look like today. The bead on top is my first effort, a twistie of clear, DH Aion2, and Terra 2. It looks almost like the Terra struck in the picture, because it's darker than the creamy Aion2, but I wasted so much gas trying to get the stupid flower right it unstruck again. Note to self: Do all the bead elements except the striking first and then strike the Terra. The Aion2 did develop a lovely mother of pearl sheen showing pink, lavender, blue and green that does not show up at all in the picture. The flower on the other side of the bead almost didn't get posted but, hey, who cares if I can't make flowers yet. I'm learning. Underneath it is a plain clear bead I encased with my stringer to see if I could strike it at all. It struck, but the Aion2 didn't come out. Figures.

The third bead down I will consider a success. It is TE331, which had come out as clear light aqua every other time I've touched it.  I know the beads above look like I got something out of it, but this is the sort of base state according to the info I got from Double Helix.  The red is the thermal striking. This struck! Now if I can clean up the color a bit I might be able to use it in a bead. The last bead is my favorite of the bunch. I decided to go with a base of CiM poi, since I know that likes silver glass and I don't think CiM ghee does at all. I made my base, wrapped and melted in my stringer and made my flowers, which I don't think came out badly. Then I struck the Terra. Lo and behold, it worked. I got some really cool color development out of the section around the copper green flower in the first picture, I think because that section got hotter before being cooled down and struck. The opal yellow one is neat, but I like the echo of the copper green in the base. I don't know if this is a good idea or not, but I'm going to try this with silver foil and slytherin next, and see what happens.

there's good news and there's bad news

The success I had on the blog yesterday left me anxious to try the bead again with modifications, namely making a DH reducing frit blend, substituting Triton for the reducing glass and Terra 2 for the striking glass, and replacing the sis with plain ivory. I managed all three and even got better striking on the Terra 2 and the silver foil/frit underneath to show a little (the frit blend on top of foil pits a bit, by the way). What I forgot is that sometimes encasing yellow glass causes the bead to crack.
The bead was successfully made and annealed and removed from the mandrel. There were no thermal issues. I was holding it in my hand preparing to clean it and I felt and heard a pop. I was then holding 2 pieces of bead, cracked not along the hole but diagonally across it. I then remembered that yellow glass and opalino are both notorious for being difficult to encase. Ah. Back to the drawing board.

I did have one small success. Giddy with the good luck I had the day before striking Terra light, I decided to make a bead out of Terra 2 and see if it would strike. And it did! It's the one on the right. The one next to it is the end of the rod I made the twistie from, as a way of doing something interesting with the glass and leaving a clean end for next time.

CiM tamarind unique

CiM tamarind unique 1 looked sort of shimmery in the rod form but more of a mud color in the bead.  Aside from the shaping issues in the first bead, this plain bead developed a neat blush, for lack of a better word, with striking.  The second bead is with silver foil melted in, which went sort of greenish yellow as is so plainly not shown in the picture.  This effect was entirely lost in the third bead, which is melted in silver foil and encased - fairly well, for me - in clear.  I like the way tamarind separated in the next bead, combined with CiM hades.  The black spread a little but I'm beginning to expect this with this color.  With ivory, no reaction and the colors behaved like good children and kept to their own side of the seat.  The copper green bead next up looks more turquoise than copper but this is consistent and creamy, so if it is a reaction I would expect it not to be so uniform.  Maybe it's a function of how I heated the green.  The last bead is TE-362 stringer on tamarind, which looks pretty indistinguishable, melted in and given my best effort at striking without reducing to oblivion.  Sort of a swirly irridescent quality without any definite lines of demarcation.  Different without being distinctive.

My general impression of this color is of a more or less bland base for other things to happen on and around.  I like the effect of the silver foil melted into the bead and left unencased, but unless I can get it to photograph well on its own it just doesn't show up well here.  It plays nice with ivory, may change the appearance of copper colors, and separates with hades.

Online venting and wish list

 My frustrations today have been mounting.  I had a small health crisis this morning with an esophageal disorder I obtained 15 years ago as a result of not following the instructions on a prescription medication.  That having been sorted out I spent the morning trying to get in touch with the various medical providers and gatekeepers in my life.  I discovered much to my chagrin that I deleted the photo I've been using to log into people's sites and had to find a way to fix this.  I finally decided to just let what will be be and do beads.  My crockpot arrangement is working beautifully for the smallish beads I've been doing but I wish I could coax more out of my silver colors.  Per Double Helix the secret to using Caliope, Terra2, and Terra lite is to heat it to heck and cool, then reheat and I am not able to do this with my puny little hothead. 

 My apartment has rules against propane tanks for grills so they will not tolerate someone using a dual fuel torch on their premises, I'm fairly certain.  Moving is not an option, since I still haven't found a lot of the stuff I lost last time I moved.  I could possibly set up a studio in Joe's shop if I could clear out a corner and run electricity to it.  Did I mention it is unheated and we live in central NY?  and it's winter.  So this is my blog to vent my frustrations at the world in general.  Above is a Nortel mega minor that would allow me to fine tune the results from the glasses I would like to use, and to use boro glass, which I know won't work on a HH.  To the right is an oxygen concentrator that is not strictly necessary since tanked O2 is available wherever welding supplies are sold.  Below is the kiln I would like to get and which represents the only short term possibility on my wish list.  All I have to do is stop buying every darn glass that comes out and save up a couple bucks.

Please ignore this spate of negativity.  Today has been a rough day.  More bead pix tomorrow and my favorite show is on tonight.

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.