Now That's Cool

These are pretty simple, but I love the effect I get when I layer the new CiM opals, Rainforest and Atlantis, with copper green.  These are copper green and Rainforest.  There is a little reduction of the copper green and it scums up and boils like crazy, worse if I've marvered it, like I have.  I still am really digging these.  I made them on 1/8" mandrels for stringing on some braided cotton cord.  Now the hard part (for me), deciding what to do with them.

CiM Rainforest

 Creation is Messy came out with 4 new colors and I got 3 of them.  I tried out Atlantis last week and this week's Rainforest, a dark teal opal.  The rods reminded me of CiM Mermaid and Effetre grass green opalino.  I imagine it is also similar to petroleum green, but don't have any.

 It isn't hard to see why it reminded me of Mermaid.  I thought it would be basically an opal version of that, but a look at the rods, specifically the rod ends, shows that they are both teal but that's all they have in common.

 Effetre grass green opalino seemed closer, but the rainforest retains more of its translucency when annealed.  Note how the opalino on the rainforest shows up much clearer than the rainforest on the opalino.

 The plain spacer is so small it didn't really lighten up any, and this is a dark color.  Wrapped in silver, reduced and encased, you can still see the mandrel under the light glare and my fingerprint.  I didn't get much reaction from the reduction and there is a reason for that.

 It's really hard to reduce things on this glass.  Both these beads are made with DH Triton.  Note how it only reduced on the edges.  I had a fresh tank of gas and had it turned up all the way to do these, and only reduced the edges of the Triton, and that only without encasement.  As soon as I put another glass on top, away the metallic bit went.

This one would be easier to describe if I hadn't put one of the beads on the mandrel backward.  From the space between the beads is CiM Tuxedo, copper green, EDP, opal yellow, ivory, and CiM Peace.  Black is barely visible on top of Rainforest and Rainforest is invisible on black.  I love what's happening with the copper green.  Must do a bead like this.  Nothing ugly with EDP, but not doing much either.  Opal yellow looks neat with it, but I don't care for what I can see with the ivory.  Peace looks pretty ethereal with it, and I wonder what would have happened if I did layers and encased it.

I want to try this out with copper green and peace (perhaps not in the same bead, but hmmm...) and I think this will be good to use on its own.  Like Atlantis it is a very rich, juicy color, but what I'm hoping for is this shade in an opaque....

Spring Willow Revisited

 Here are a few of the beads with Effetre Spring Willow.  The blush looks a lot better now than it did going into the annealer.  Kiln striking?  Don't know, but I like it.   I threw in a few spacers of Effetre Sedona to highlight the colors, and I do like the combination.  Both glasses are very variable and I think they work well together.

 My leaf....  Quite a bit of drooping going on in the annealer, and that bubble on the right side wasn't there going in.  Rats.  I'll just say it adds to the organic feel of the bead.

On the back in the protected, unstruck part beneath the mandrel, is the color the rods and beads start out.  Now it is easy to see why I thought this might act like Effetre copper green.  When I feel better I'm going to play with this some more.

Patience is a Virtue

Patience may be a virtue, but I'm not at all virtuous some days.  I'm listening to the annealer relays click and wishing it would get on with it.  I made some more beads with the spring willow I blogged about yesterday and I can't wait to see what happened.  Like all cases of infatuation, there is that initial glow and the inevitable disillusionment.

Today's disillusionment came when I changed the tank on my MAPP gas.  The flame is hotter and voila, not only is spring willow soupy but it boils.  Badly.  Ever so much worse than ivory.  I've never seen huge bubbles form within the rod as I'm heating it.  Must see what it does with intense black and Hades.  Usually when I get an air bubble in a bead I heat it more to get it thin, let it cool a little and pop it with my probe.  These puppies just keep reforming.  It also seems to scum up quite a bit the way turquoise does.  Don't know what will come out of the Chillipepper....

The first bead sagged so much while I was trying to get a bubble out that I finally decided to go with it and let it sag all the way, pressed it in my leaf masher and drew it out to a point.  It didn't seem to strike as beautifully today either.  Probably needs to be done at a lower temperature.  Assuming the beads anneal at some point I'll throw in some pictures.

The apartment is about 90 degrees with the heat wave we've been having and the torch and kiln on.  Dinner tonight may very well be leftovers.  I don't know, though.  I don't get home until 11 tomorrow and have to be at work at 5:30 on Saturday so I'm not loving the idea of cooking tomorrow night.

Until I have pictures of the beads I made today, here are some that feel right for the weather.

Effetre Spring Willow

 I ordered this color with intense reservations, remembering my experience with Effetre mint green, which for me was just a variation of their copper green that didn't do anything special for me.  The picture on Frantz' web site looked very similar.  A little more yellow perhaps, with some streakiness.  As soon as I started heating it I knew this was not the case.  It went transparent the way the ivory shaded odd lots from Vetrofond did.

 The top bead is perhaps the worst lentil I've ever made.  Ignore the shaping and it is with silver melted in and reduced and encased in Effetre super clear.  This glass stays very soupy, and droops in the kiln a bit if it isn't set well going in.  It also strikes to the most delicate pink, which looks phenomenal with the pale green.  Melted in silver doesn't improve it, but that's OK, I like it just the way it is!

 Because it melted like Vetrofond biscotti, I tried it out with DH Triton.  I didn't get much reduction (my fault, not the glass) but the fuming is gorgeous.  Have a close up.  It's almost like another glass.

I didn't actually test this on ivory and I wish I had, but here it is with other colors.  It looks good with CiM tuxedo on the left on both beads.  The top bead has a core of spring willow and the bottom one is with other colored base glass.  Next up on the top bead is copper green, which gets lost.  Copper green is the middle right band on the bottom bead, and other than the spreading, nothing dramatic, so spring willow isn't an ivory.  Opal yellow is on the right end on the top bead and middle left on the bottom.  It so gets lost under the spring willow, both as stringer and as a base.  Peace was the last test color and it holds up a bit better than the opal yellow but bleeds a lot.

I like this glass and I'm thinking 1/4 lb. isn't going to last too long.  I want to do some plain beads just with spring willow to explore that blushing thing, and you can bet I'm going to see what it does with Psyche and a larger bead with Triton, probably doing a set for myself.

Onto other stuff

Sefko, I'm sorry I missed you.  Have a safe trip and enjoy your family.  When you're ready, so's your necklace.

What has this to do with what else I've been working on?  Absolutely nothing.  I'm sick of trying to figure out why what is supposed to be Effetre dark periwinkle is having compatiblility issues with everything I put it on, all of a sudden.  It is probably something different, but I have no idea what, as I only use COE 104.  CiM grumpy bear and Effetre light periwinkle split too and I'm sick of fooling around with it.  As far as I'm concerned, I somehow managed to get a weird stringer and the rest has already been thrown out.

 This is a cool thing I've been able to get Effetre dark silver plum shards to do.  I wrapped a bead of Effetre Sedona with shards of silver plum and super heated them.  I got lace.  Cool.  The silver plum stayed plum, which is cool, but I couldn't get Sedona to do its tricks.  Still cool.  The slip is showing on these beads, because I couldn't bear to waste glass making a whole bead out of Sedona.  Now I'm going to have to see if it does it on other colors.  I had some CiM cirrus on the bench and tried it there but it didn't lace and it went metallic.  EDP would be a waste of time, since EDP and Sedona act very similar.  Maybe a green or blue.

Green and Periwinkle

 On Friday I posted an unforseen reaction I found when trying out one of my favorite color combinations.  I had hoped that the problem was with CiM peacock green, which I love but can work around.  Apparently, it is with the combination of this blue green and Effetre periwinkle.

 This was the first bead, made on a base of peacock green with cracks surrounding the periwinkle lines.

 Since peacock green is relatively demanding with regards to annealing, I hoped that switching the glass and being careful with the annealing would yield better results.  The result on Effetre nile green opalino belies this.  I was extra slow annealing in my Chilli Pepper just to be on the safe side.  There are still cracks all around the Effetre dark periwinkle  scrolls.  If I didn't melt the periwinkle in, nothing bad happened, but apparently there is some stress from the glass itself so I don't expect the bumpy one I did will hold up long.  I've used this periwinkle on other beads with other bases so it's just the blue greens that are a problem.

I made a small, spacer sized, bead with peacock green and CiM grumpy bear melted in to see if it would react the same way.  I am thrilled to say it did not.  Note the separation in the middle of the periwinkle lines is opposite what's happening with the Effetre periwinkle.  It looks like the bead might be cracked, but what is happening is light reflecting on the bottom of the sunken in scrolls.

I think for kicks I'm going to do a bead of grumpy bear with Effetre dark periwinkle decoration and see what happens.  This is driving me nuts.