'Tis Better to Light a Candle than Curse the Darkness

 Yesterday was beautiful, sunny and just the right temperature.  It was, in short, the perfect day to take pictures of the beads I've got piling up for listing.  By the time I got home from the day job, it was too late to do anything more ambitious than make dinner and catch up on my down time.  I did not take advantage of the fading light to photograph anything.

 Today dawned hazy and, indeed, while I was slogging off to the bank and grocery store, errands that needed to be done if I wanted the cats to let me back in, there were even a few brief moments of hazy sun.  This was not destined to last and as I put the last can of cat food away, the sun went behind a cloud for good.

 I was forced to decide whether to list these with pictures taken with artificial light, not showing their best, or wait until the sun reappeared and hope I was at home when it did.  This deep transparent purple vessel actually doesn't look too bad.  It looks a bit better in sunlight, of course, because it is transparent and artificial light doesn't show this well but if I have to use these pictures I could.

 This vessel, made with CiM Sangre, is not going up until I can get a decent picture.  The one on my hand isn't bad but it's nowhere near as red as it is in real life.

 This one isn't as good.  I had to use a lot of editing stuff, and it looks it.  The others I took aren't even this good...

So is it better to light a candle or curse the dark?  Not sure.  I'll light a candle anyway but still curse.

Effetre light violet transparent

Lately, I've been going through my stash of beads and photos and publishing some of the ones that got away. This is such a one, although I don't know why it did, because it's purple! The color is Effetre light violet transparent, which is a premium color, but I don't know why because it is machine pulled. Regardless, it is a nice shade that is sufficiently different from their amethyst color to merit a separate purchase. It melts very slowly, resists thermal shock and remains very stiff when working.

Plain, it appears very dark indeed, which makes me wonder if there was ever a medium or dark violet and what color it looked. With silver foil melted in and left alone, only tiny beads of silver on the surface indicate that anything was done to the bead. It is when the silver is reduced and encased in clear that something magical happens. I really love this effect.

With silver-rich Double Helix aurae, the plain bead looks ok but nothing to write home about. Encase it with clear (I wonder what would happen if I used another color?) and it shows off beautiful blues and greens.

I wanted to see what would happen to the intensity of this color when layered with other colors, and here's my answer. The violet recedes a little and lives up to its name. It is a lovely shade and I must say I am rather pleased the way this floral turned out. The base glass is Vetro lemongrass odd, which I love as a background for purple flowers. On ivory, nothing ugly happens, but I think that the ivory separated and darkened a bit more than I can usually get it to. Over white the violet remains rather dark, but the layer was a bit thick.

EDP scrolls bleed a lot over the violet, but that is to be expected considering the extreme difference in viscosity between the glasses. I don't know what I was trying to do by putting dots of light violet over a clear base bead, but what I did was make a bead that looks very much like it was made of only a very pale violet glass. The violet dots on top of the copper green are disappearing, but the copper didn't do anything ugly.


Would I buy this again? Oh, yes. It's purple.