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.

Now that's bizarre!

 This is a reaction I never would have thought to test for.  The glasses involved are CiM's beautiful peacock green and Effetre dark periwinkle.  The bead worked normally and went into the annealer just off red hot.  As the annealing cycle wore on, I began hearing the dread clink at around 600 degrees F.  I allowed the beads to cool, then removed them to discover this.  I did make a solid peacock green bead this size that did fine, so I can only assume that there is a slight incompatibility between the green and the periwinkle.  Check out the neat separation thing going on on the surface of the periwinkle.

 Kind of bizarre the way the  periwinkle sort of formed a clear bubble around itself that is reflecting itself onto the peacock green.  It seems to be sinkin in too.

 Tiny hairline cracks formed all around where the periwinkle was applied.

The cracks around the periwinkle really show up well in this picture, even though it's out of focus.  I couldn't get the camera to focus properly in this shot, but it shows the ruin better than any of the others.  What a bummer.  I would have liked this color combination.  I did something similar with Effetre nile green opalino that is holding up so far, so that will have to be the green and violet blue I was looking for in this piece.  Anyone have a similar experience?

Happy Earth Day!

slow-cooked beads

Well, the kiln isn't going to work, and there's no way I can make it do so.  It heats up way too fast and cools down too fast as well.  So how can I slow down the cooling process enough to stabilize larger beads?  I'm not talking about beads that use an entire rod or more, just larger than the 1/2 inch or so I've been doing.  I particularly want to do beads on silver core liners and 3/16 mandrels and there's 3/4 inch if the bead is to be as thick as the mandrel or more.  I decided that the annealing bubble I was using was ok but soaking up too much heat from the beads.  I have a crockpot I hardly ever use and the high heat setting is about 350 degrees.  This isn't the 500 - 900 degrees a kiln would give me but it will slow down cooling a bit.

 This worked out fairly well, with one failure pictured below.  The bead above is  my experiment with fine silver wire.  Not much but I'm learning and will try more later.  I like this bead made on a silver core.  It's just dark ivory with sis but the core does add to the bead.  I wish I had done the sedona and sis bead below on a core now, too, but how would I know the  sedona would develop such a neat color cast.  Joe asked me why the ends were all rough, like porcelain, and after stifling the urge to throttle him I explained that some glasses devitrify and lose their glaze.  I like the way the edge is, and that is the part that will show, anyway.

 I thought the Effetre sandstone was very much like ivory, and it is.  Below is a bead 1/2 sandstone and 1/2 vetro ivory with dots of one on the other.  Pretty darn similar.

 To testify to the efficacy of the crockpot arrangement, here is a bead made with CiM peacock green and Effetre dark silver plum that's over 1/2  thick and didn't crack.  I didn't squash it either, but I didn't want to push my luck.  The deformed bead below wrapped with silver wire was my first effort, with the torch running out of fuel just as I finished wrapping the wire.  I relit it and cracked the bead, but it stayed together long enough to reheat and melt together somewhat before I ran out of gas again.

There is just no excuse for this one, other than I think I was looking at it too long.  Too bad, it would have been nice.  I wonder if the core can be salvaged?

more test photos

I didn"t like most of my test photos, and while I haven't had my stuff photographed well yet it has been photographed by me, better than it was before.  For instance this necklace was a green and blue blur last time I photographed it, and with the macro setting on the camera and the colors clarified, it almost looks like it does in real life.  It even has the color interaction I like pretty well depicted.  The glasses used are again peackock green and cobalt. 

The bracelet is one I've been wearing to work for months and finally decided to take a decent picture of.  The coral is Effetre coral streaky sherbet, there is some opalino carnelian, and the trans orange is Vetrofond arancio perfecto.  I used dark red stringer on all.  I like the color variation of the dark red when it is mixed with the coral, but the bead with the red bumps looks like it's oozing drops of blood.  I don't know whether to say neat or gross.

This necklace I didn't dare show in my earlier picture since it was blurry and the colors were miserable.  The spacers are plum silver dark, the sky is copper green red and the ground is moss agate.  If these colors don't look right to you, it's the bead.

These didn't show up very well in an earlier post.  I sorta have the camera and software working for me now and I like the pictures a lot better.  The beads are the same.  Now they went and changed the format for this blog.  Figures.  Just when I start to be able to figure out where stuff is going to come up it changes.

beads, beads, beads, and some rambling

My latest kick--making big hole beads to mount on bottle openers to sell at an event in March. OK, I haven't booked the merchant space yet, although I did request time off from the day job. Of course, I haven't got Joe to make the bottle openers to mount these on, or even seen if my design for the openers will work. I'd say some extensive field testing is in order. After that the rest will fall into line. Build it and they will come....The light bulb bead is one that I saw online on dragonjools blog and just had to make one of my own. It's not a big hole bead, but it will work as a pin for work.

Some awesome (and some awful) beads have arisen out of this. I won't say I'm borrowing others' ideas. I'm being inspired by them. I have learned a few key lessons. CIM peacock green is prone to crack down the middle, especially if mixed with another glass and pressed too thin. On a related note, Krazy Glue may hold a cracked bead together to photograph, but it won't hold it together to use. I need a good press, preferably a TP masher with interchangeable graphite discs. While I'm at it, how about a Red Rider BB gun. OK, skip the gun, just the press, please, Santa? How about more toys?...I mean tools? I don't know, since I saw a guy in a tutorial making a really decent bead with nothing to shape it with but a kitchen knife.

Another lesson I've learned is that I suck at making pulled cane. Twisties and stringer I'm OK with, but rose cane and complex stringer I'm pathetic at. I look at the ribbon cane and rose beads that otyhers are making and I eat my heart out. Yeah, they've been doing it for years and I've been doing it since October, but really, four months. I should be an expert by now. I'm not a girlie girl anyway and the hearts and flowers have never been a part of my life that I can recall, oh OK there was the '80s, but aside from that, the beads are pretty. Maybe making a butch rose bead, like with guy colors, like black and white and metallics and stuff. Better file this idea. It may seem like a good one in a few months, or it may not.

Something else that seemed like a good idea at the time was silver glass. I just have to face the conclusion that while I can get the DH Triton to go neat colors and metallic, that is the best I'll be able to do with the HH torch. Aion2 just went amber opalescent. Not a hint of blue, green or pink, but I did manage a thin greasy grey line on the yellow bead on the right in the left picture. It looks like a glob of snot from a bad sinus infection.

some beads

This necklace looks so much better in real life, both because it is in focus and you can see the wave pattern on the focal and because the frosted glass just doesn't hold the light the way it does in real life. The blue is Effetre cobalt and the green is CIM peacock green, etched. There was a color interaction you can't see in this photo on the focal. In the center of the stringer a silvery line formed when I melted the cobalt in. I think it looks a little like white caps.

Here is a necklace I made from powder pink with light ivory and goldstone stringer. This glass was really fun to strike, and I don't think it went very well on the small beads. The color of the focal was a surprise but more what I was expecting all along. The teapot earrings are Effetre white, cobalt stringer and commercial pewter bead caps.