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.

Starry Night

 I finally managed to make the beads that have been haunting me for days.  I listed them last night on Etsy and am thrilled with the way they turned out.  They presented a few challenges for me, but not because they used a limited palette.  I wound up using a core of clear, then a layer of CiM lapis.  On top of that I added trails of CiM bordello and DH triton.  I melted in a layer of silver foil, reduced them, and encased this in a layer of Vetrofond clear, then added a rooster tail of black metallic.  I don't know if black metallic is on the diet but it is black so I'm counting it.

 The first challenge involved my test bead cracking.  I knew I was onto something and was frustrated by finding a small crack in the encasement layer.  I'm convinced that this was the result of not heating the bead through after adding the triton tail to the top and reducing it.  With my setup, if I heat a DH reducing color back up to glowing it spoils the reduction and I have to do it again, so I used metallic black instead.  It's not the same effect and the triton was gorgeous, but I can't have it if the bead isn't stable.

 The second challenge was one of my own making.  I decided to make the beads on a core of clear on the off chance that there was a slight compatibility issue.  Comparitively speaking, these beads take a long time for me to make, and I didn't want to waste all that time and fuel on beads I wouldn't be able to use, so just to be on the safe side I made them on a core of clear.  Then I ran into the issue of size.  I knew I wanted them as a set, which implies that they match.  Well, that means I had to use just the same amount of glass and decoration.  OK, I can do this.  Surprisingly, I didn't have to waste any beads since they did come out within a millimeter.

The last challenge is going to be letting them go.  I want to offer my best beads, and I believe these can be included in this group.  I can make another set for myself and may sometime, but they won't be these beads.

I'm not the only one who feels like this and I will be satisfied having made them in the first place.

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 Thai orchid

CiM Thai orchid has been criticized for being a lot like other colors in this line.  It is, a lot.  Pictured below is a strand by strand comparison between CiM lapis and Thai orchid.  Next to each other, no problem telling them apart, but in a blind taste test, both would taste like glass.  Of course, so would all the other colors I've tried, but the point is the shades are very similar.

 The biggest difference between the two that I can see is how the lapis reacts more with silver foil than the Thai orchid does.  Next up is that I wanted to see what DH aurae did so the Thai orchid row features that.

Thai orchid doesn't do that brownish thing with silver foil, which I am glad of, and the encased beads look very nice.  There is something going on in the aurae unencased bead on the purple but the glass is so dark I can't tell precisely what it is.  I love the way the encased aurae turned out.

Finally, from left to right are with copper green, tuxedo, intense black, ivory, silvered ivory stringer, EDP, and plum silver dark.  I like the way the Thai orchid makes the EDP pop.  Looking at it now, I'll have to do a head to head bead to see if I can tell the difference between plum silver light and Thai orchid.

A very pretty shade of purple, and one I will buy again, because it's purple.

CiM lapis

Ah, a color I can really sink my teeth into, CiM lapis.  It is a whole lot more violet than the Effetre shade by the same name but is a beauty nonetheless.  The rods are wildly different in size, and I usually pick the smallest to do my test beads with, which results in very small beads in this case.  By itself, lapis is a very dark, streaky blue violet.

With silver, it looks a bit like the night sky, excpet for a brownish interaction (clouds?)  I will either continue to try to use silver without doing this or only use this color when I can live with this effect.  It is a pity, since it is the only mar to a beautiful color.

With DH triton, I did get one weird effect.  The glass in contact with the triton scrolls went almost as metallic as the triton itself.  This showed up rather well, even with my budget-friendly camera.  I usually don't like the lime green reduction under encasement triton can get, but here I do very much.

There is no reaction with copper green and I rather like the combination.  Very springy if the snow ever melts.  Tuxedo is doing its separation thing, and I like this as well.  It reminds me of a bearded face looking at me.  With intense black, this effect is, well, intensified.  I wonder if intense black and tux are related?  With ivory there is nothing to remark upon except that my stringer work has not improved.  The silvered ivory stringer was more done for laughs than anything else, and nothing happened.  I do like the way the EDP seemed to soak up some of the purple from the blue to appear more purple than it does by itself.  Finally, the last bead is with plum silver dark dots, melted in and reheated gently to see if lapis would develop the metallic sheen that some folks commented on.  For me, it didn't, but once again my cylinder is dropping pressure.

Will I buy this again?  Oh, yes.  It happens to be my favorite shade of purple, called by whatever name.