Latest Madness

I'm sure many people become obsessed with an idea and have to flog it until it's done.  I'm just going to talk about it a lot.  Enamel.  It's a new world.  I can't wait to get other colors and will soon.  I'll play with it and write about it and I'll wish I'd never heard of it and move on.  Above is a set of purple beads I covered with oxford light enamel.  I can't get enough of the spatterware effect.

Below is a set I made using CiM African Grey and Psyche.  I love the colors it makes!  I wish CiM would do African Grey again just for me!

 I got a hold of some green aventurine frit and naturally the first thing I had to do was mix a bit with blue just because.  I love the streaky underwater kind of thing.  The bottom beads are a base of CiM Stoneground and Roman bronze pixie dust.  They're pretty, but if I wanted that look I'd get copper glass pearls.  Not doing it for me.

Now these are cool.  The same frit blend as the streaky beads above but just melted into copper green.  Does copper green ring and separate on everything.  Pretty sure it does!  I still like these and if they don't sell I'll just make them into beads for me.  Bonus!

Back in Business

I'm delighted to announce that I've finally been able to make some new beads!

Here they are

 Waterlilies frit on CiM Stoneground with silver foil above.  Below, a base of CiM Tuxedo, rolled in light Oxford Thompson Enamel, then decorated with scrolls of more Tux.  I hadn't used enamel before but I'm loving it!

 Above is Effetre dark ivory (the curdled batch) with scrolls of Double Helix Psyche.  Below, a base of dark ivory with Tuxedo and Effetre 14K, light topaz and medium topaz.

 I made a couple cupcake beads and some Caribbean type beads with CiM Freemen, Effetre blue aventurine and Devardi green aventurine.

I just had to share - making beads again is wonderful!

I'm on the Page!

For a bit of beady goodness on the blog hop, click here.

One of the things I love to do is try out new colors and techniques.  Creation is Messy has been wonderful enough to keep coming up with new colors to keep glass addicts like myself checking our mail boxes and I hope to be able to say something coherent soon about their newest colors.

For now I'd like to share that they've included some of my blog posts on their product pages.  This is so flattering and I can't believe they're so wonderful.  Here are some of the posts and the links to their website so you can see what other folks are doing with their amazing glass.  One point I'd like to make is that I do not prewarm my rods unless I know they're going to be trouble (the Effetre hand-pulleds spring to mind) and CiM colors seem to be super-annealed or something because they simply do not cause trouble.  Just saying.  Really fun to work with.

If you go to the CiM website and look up African Gray (which is sadly sold out) you'll see my beads here.

This was such a surprise.  I was expecting CiM Canyon de Chelly, which is a truly stupendous color but due to a slight error caused by myself not reading my own labels, I got African grey instead.  I so love what the DH Psyche did, but with no more glass available I'm not pushing it.

I got listed as a tester on this one, which I get a little kick out of because every time I sit down to torch it's a bit of a test.  http://www.creationismessy.com/color.aspx?id=38

I need to take better pictures.  Or something http://www.creationismessy.com/color.aspx?id=22

OK, I'm stuck on watermelons, but Cranberry is really the only glass to use for them.http://www.creationismessy.com/color.aspx?id=25

Hope you enjoy your stroll through glassy goodness.  I bet you have to check it all out.  I always do...

A Different Way to Spend a Day

I had planned to spend today photographing and listing pieces on Etsy, but the sun did not cooperate so I browsed Etsy and created this treasury list.

I also made quite a few beads, a few of which I hope turned out.  There are always so many that aren't what I thought they were going to be.

One of the things that kinda freaked me out glasswise was my last batch of CiM Stoneground.  It is a wonderful color that I had been having pretty predictable results with.  CiM is known for the consistency of their colors and when they have one that doesn't perform within parameters, they label it as a unique.  Their standards must be pretty high, because some of their uniques are practically indistinguishable from their standard colors.

The last batch of Stoneground I got was not a unique but for me it's not at all like the last two I bought.  It comes out lighter and strikes differently.  I don't know if it is because of the silver content and the extreme variability it adds to glass (which is why a lot of us like it) but for whatever reason it strikes pink and purple like Canyon de Chelly instead of the golden brown I'm used to.  Here are some pictures to illustrate

 Here are rods of both and a bead I made with the new.  The top rod is the new batch and the bottom 2 are the old.  The worked end shows some of the difference.  Notice how the struck end is pinker on top.  Pay no attention to the way I work a rod down until the 1" masking tape I have at the end catches fire and burns my fingers.  The color of the unworked rods isn't too different, but I can see a bit of pinkness in the shimmer on the top rod that is absent in the bottom.  The bead didn't come out as golden as I'd hoped for this animal print bead, but under all that amber and topaz it isn't ugly.

The vessel on the left is the last one I made with the old batch.  I got a little pinkishness on the flared part where I suppose it received the most heat, but this is pretty much what I was getting all along.  The other vessels and beads were all made with the new batch.  I thought the blue lizard would show up very nicely against the golden vessel, and he still would have looked nice if I hadn't given him a snout like Jimmy Durante.  I'm calling him my Rodney Dangerbead.  The strange vessel with the blue aventurine and silvered ivory was an effort to see if working it longer helped.  It made it worse, and to make matters worse, I somehow deflated the back of the vessel and cracked it near the rim trying to fix it.  I just popped it into the annealer and resolved to do better next time.  I like the other blue lizard even though his bead is still pinkish. 

I'm getting used to the new batch and if I look at it as a different color, I like it just fine.  I love striking glass and glass that does weird stuff.  Now I just have to learn this one's tricks.

After a (not so short) break...

 Yeah, it's been a very long time.  I haven't been entirely away from my torch but I haven't been at it as much as I'd like.  The above set is the result of a couple weeks of doing a couple beads here and there.  The base glass for this is Creation is Messy's Canyon de Chelly, one of my absolute favorite glasses to use.  Not only does it play nice in the flame, but it does some pretty cool stuff with other colors and techniques.  It is a striking color that changes color depending on whether it's just heated and cooled or heated, cooled, and reheated.  And then there's the size of the base bead, which makes a difference.  It's easier to get it to do the neat stripey thing on a large bead than a small one.  Shaping the bead with metal seems to give better effects, so the rapid cooling and partial reheating is key, and sometimes after the color strikes it unstrikes again, but unpredictably.  It doesn't seem to change color in the annealer, which I really dig.  What you see going into the annealer is what you're going to get.

The earrings on the right were my first stab and combining CDC with Double Helix Psyche.  I don't know how evident it is in the picture but there is a reaction on the CDC where the silver laden Psyche touches it that doesn't occur with DH Triton or silvered ivory.  I call that neat.  The central beads contain only CDC and Psyche.  The border on the dark Psyche is the reaction from the CDC.  It has to be melted in and superheated.  Notice in the top photo and the vessel that it doesn't always do this.

With this bracelet I was going for balance and similarity between the glass and the dyed freshwater pearls  I used in the earrings, since the pearls were too small for the bracelet.  The glass I used on the spacers is Vetrofond plum.  It does this neat metallic thing similar to Effetre silver plum when treated the same way, that is allowed to air cool until the glow is gone and reheated gently in the top of my hot head flame, but stays more purple, so call it light silver plum.  Note the beads three beads in from the clasp.  The base glass is yellower because it didn't strike at all, being CiM Stoneground.  I couldn't remember whether I used Stoneground or CDC on the earrings and the lack of reaction on these beads reminded me.  Hey, this bracelet is for my own use and with the weight on the clasp it stays right side up so no one will see them anyway.

 I had so much fun making this vessel I'm keeping the pictures big and showing both sides, so there.  I used a 3/16 mandrel and built the end on the end of the mandrel again so it was a pain to clean, but with a solid color vessel and not planning to sell this I went for the stability of having two base beads to build from.  This meant I had two ends to keep warm but for every flower a tear.  I didn't melt the Psyche in all the way but I was loving the way the CDC was striking and I wanted to leave it the way it was.  I also hate the way the camera washes out the reduction effect of the Psyche, but trust me, it really is there.  The handles and rim are made from an actual rod of Effetre Lace Agate I have been hoarding.  On the smaller beads I used silvered ivory, but it wouldn't do for functional handles, since I can't really pull stringers that thick.

I have missed working glass.  There have been compensations, like losing 50 pounds through diet and time at the gymn.  I hope to continue losing about 20 pounds to get back to my "feel good" weight, but the signs of diabetes that scared me, the blood clot that sidelined me and the limitations that my excess weight caused on my mobility are gone.  I recently acheived a time on a mile "jogging" (more of a fast walk, really) that I haven't achieved since I was 15.  Now I have to try to incorporate the things that I really like doing with the things that I need to stay healthy.  I'll never achieve perfection, but all I ask for is a fighting go.  I may even post a new profile picture if I can find someone who knows how to work my camera.

CiM canyon de chelly

It's been a long while since I've posted, primarily because of a bout with the flu and no gas for the torch. It's true: I bought out the home improvement center I work at. I've had a word with the guy who does the ordering and informed him of my expected consumption and he will try to keep me supplied.

I made a lot of beads with this color, primarily because it is billed as highly reactive and that is what I am currently going for. I have to say it changes character dramatically depending on what is done to it. 1 is plain for reference. With 2 through 5, I added a layer of metal to it. 2 is with silver foil, 3 is with silver foil, reduced and encased, 4 is with copper leaf, melted in very thoroughly, and 5 is the same encased. I have recently added copper leaf to my repertoire to see what it does with the colors and haven't formed an opinion yet as to whether I will continue. So far it's a toss-up.

With silver glass, canyon de chelly looks better under encasement. The aurae on the left isn't doing much but I like the triton on the right. The canyon is sort of grey underneath the encasement of both colors.

Ivory didn't do much and the silvered ivory stringer adds a nice textural organic type of thing. Who knew that the EDP would separate the canyon de chelly? Plum silver dark is disappointing.

There is a barely perceptable grey line with the turquoise and copper red green. I'm back to my teardrop shaped stringcutters again, I see.

With CiM tuxedo, the tux spreads and separates the canyon de chelly, like it does with almost everything else. It also bleeds a bit. Intense black isn't doing much of either.

Will I buy this again? Yes, because it is a good background color to have on hand. I have to try a head to head with CiM stoneground, which it reminds me of.

Post amended 5/20/11

I've been playing with CiM Canyon de Chelly a lot, and have come to the conclusion it is a color I can't live without. When I posted this, I was working very small and hadn't had any luck striking it. I've since learned that beads should be about 1cm or larger to strike properly and that it is capable of fascinating colors when it strikes. I got greens, of course, greys, purple even. It reacts with silver and silvered glass, notably Double Helix Psyche. If I want a really astounding neutral, this is my go to.

longer beads

 I've been working on some longer beads to go in the party tools I picked up.  It's quite a challenge keeping these things hot.  I am positively terrified of going to rewarm them and blowing them up.  Don't laugh.  This has happened.  I keep the exploded bead on my workbench as a reminder, as well as the chunk that landed on the seat cushion while I happened to be working from the seat.  This is the longest one I've made to date, and I didn't measure it because I couldn't find any measuring device.  They are all hiding and will in due course be found.  I had to pick a striking color because I like a challenge, in this case CiM stoneground.  The decoration is sis.

 This one is very pretty, but for this design I need more width.  I think I will wait until I have the masher to do something flatter.  The base is cobalt and the decoration is spirals of DH triton and aurae, feathered, reduced, and encased haphazardly in clear.  It is a pretty bead, but not one that works in this design.

My favorite of the lot, and one that, unfortunately, came up too short.  The base is Vetrofond extra light olive and the decoration is a twistie made from opal yellow and psyche.  I love the way the reduction on the psyche is so variable.  It really is a kind of rainbow effect.  This was a tough bead to make because the E.L.O. is really soft when hot and started to droop badly when I was applying the stringer.  As a result the center is not wonky, thanks to the marvering, but not as developed in color as I might have hoped for.  What do I want?  I very nearly had glass dripping on the table.  Some of the stringer is buried deep within this bead. 

In addition to continuing to work on my size perception (is there a way to mark the mandrel?) I have to work on getting the ends to look pretty.  Hmmm.

Effetre yellow opal

Today is Mardi Gras, which we all know means beads!  So, I am allowing myself 2 posts.  This color has been haunting me since I want to explore its unique place in the color spectrum.  The rods are an unassuming beigey yellow, and the beads work up to, surprisingly enough, about the same color.  But what a color.  I've been working with all kinds of colors, be they beige, pink, yellow, purple, green, or whatever.  This one thrills me.  Not because it does anything spectacular, but because it is.  I got CiM stoneground because it was supposed to be close to it, but it really isn't.  I may wind up using stoneground more, because it does neat things with silver that yellow opal doesn't.  What this color does is fill a unique place in my spectrum.  Frankly, the price will keep me down to using a moderate amount of it, but this is the yellow I've been searching for.  OK,enouth raving, here are the beads.
1 is plain and unencased.
2 is encased with effetre clear.  There is a pink tinge to the encased beads which I think is a characteristic of effetre super clear.  I'll roll with it for now.
3 is with silver foil, melted down and encased in effetre clear.
4 is with silver foil, melted in.  I was surprised that it didn't maintain more of a silver character.
5 is with DH aurae, melted in somewhat and reduced.  This is gold.
6 is with aurae, melted in, reduced, and encased with super clear.  Not quite the purplish reaction I was expecting.
7 is with SIS.
8 is with ivory.
9 is with CiM hades.  The black doesn't spread as much as I thought it would.  Is OY a spreader?
10 is with effetre dark turquoise 236.  Yep, it is.
11 is with copper green red.  I like that the copper green red remained in its red phase for this one.  I don't know how I would have dealt with green, which is why I din't go with the plain version of copper green.  There is a faint grey line on the turquoise, so I think it would have done a pale imitation of this, snce it tried to on the copper green red, but I don't know.   I don't know if I'll find out, since I like this combination.
Finally, 12 is with plum silver dark.  Just because.  The plum silver was tough to set, but this was not unexpected because my torch seems to be running hot and the "easy" colors are getting tougher.

Will I buy this color agan?  Yes, because I like it.

don't sneeze and torch

This cold socks.  I'm sneezing all over the place and don't feel like doing anything.  Forget torching today.  If I can stay awake long enough I'm likely to blow the old HH out when I sneeze. Out of an entire day off yesterday, the beads at the left represent my best efforts.  The purple in both is plum silver light--as opposed to dark.  I was hoping to scare a little extra sheen out of it but still no luck.  I wonder if the fact that it is machine pulled has any bearing on the lack of pearly lustre?  I have some machine pulled plum silver dark and some hand pulled.  Must do a test with the stuff I know works. As far as the decoration goes, the top bead is DH psyche, my best effort at reducing it to date, and the bottom one is DH aurae under clear dots, neat effect, I think.

 My stringer control was all over the place on these beads and the only saving grace I can see is that I managed to strike the pink opalino without cooking it and I like the effect of the aurae on the pink.  The top bead here is mosaic blue (would you believe) and the caliope prototype from DH, encased in clear.  I was hoping for some more of the fuming the mosaic blue did with the triton, and the ghost of a fume effect is visible at 8 o'clock on the dark bead, but nothing happening for me and I am generally disgusted with this bead.  I thought I would do a plain old floral on Effetre alexandrite pastel and once again my lighting is doing nothing for the bead.  I must take this to work with me when I'm up to leaving the house to see what it really looks like.  Must buy a decent lamp.

What to say about these beads?  Not what I was hoping for by a long shot.  The black is CiM hades with aurae dots encased in clear.  The beige is Cim stoneground with aurae dots encased in clear, and the monster is mosaic blue with triton ditto.  The black and beige beads could have come up more pink from the aurae and I would have been pleased indeed.  I do like the zig-zag effect on the beige bead, though.  The blue bead is an inch across and didn't crack, which is about all I can say about it.  The crock pot works.  One's mental and physical health have a definite effect on the work produced.  This cold is a drag.  Not enough to be interesting, just enough to take the joy out of life.  I'll probably be laying off the beads for a few days so I'll be organizing the material I have and drawing posts from that.  I ought to have enough for a week.

Frustrations in photography

The difficulty of posting photos of my stuff is beginning to perplex me.  I keep saying (to myself still, thank God) why doesn't this look like the beads?  The answers to this are as complex as why the glass does what it does.  Add to this very little skill in actual photography or composition and I am frustrated as heck.  Colors look different against each other.  Dragonjools posted about this with a link to a site with magenta, orange and turquoise.  Colors look different with different light sources.  Witness the flower necklace pictures.  Colors look different with different cameras and monitors.  Where is the bead in this?

Above is a some fairly pretty beads using a base of 220 periwinkle and my miserable rose cane on the left and 256 dark pink opaque on the right.  We shot these on about 20 different backgrounds and this is the only one that showed what the colors even looked like.  I remember during school pictures the photographers sent home instructions on what colors to avoid when sending the kids to school on picture day.  Now I know why.  Surprisingly, the beads on the right, which I am calling pebble beads, look best on a sand colored background.  My friend Carol, who was taking the pictures, wished we had some sand to take the pictures on because they reminded her of pebbles too.  I suggested the cat box but that was turned down for obvious reasons.  We settled on the underside of a lid from her crock collection.Two of these are ivory with silver melted in and the middle one is CiM stoneground  with silver melted in and ivory dots topped with EDP.  I don't know whether I liked the way the ivory turned all black or not because all the spots did the same thing.  The EDP looks nice, though.

 I have another hundred photos of these beads against various backgrounds.  The top bead is Effetre 213 grasshopper and copper red green stringer, the middle one is copper green with a complex stringer of turquoise, cobalt and grass green opaque, and the bottom one is copper green with a copper green red stringer.  These changed color the least, but were the most difficult to photograph at the time.

Copper green red.  Beautiful if badly named color.  It probably is copper green changed in some way to produce the reddish tones, but the copper green turns turquoise and the red turns magenta.  The necklace beads are self copper green red and black spacers and the earrings are vetro black feathered with copper green red stringer.  The amount of color adjusting this photo took was stupefying.  Usually I just white adjust and save.  On this one I had to white adjust, normalize, hue and saturation adjust, color balance in all three levels, then white adjust and normalize again.  To get it to look like what the bead looked like in the first place.  The beads on the white candle were just white balanced.  Go fig.

Playing with pictures

 Today I went over to my friend Carol's house and we played with her excellent digital camera.  To be more truthful, she played with the camera, and the lighting--note to self, get a task with Reveal incandescent bulb, the fluorescents sock for photography-- and I watched and handed her beads from time to time.  Even without the macro lens, which is actually a macro telephoto (there's an oxymoron), and tripod she was able to take pictures that put my meager efforts to shame.  The animal print beads pictured here are OK in my pictures, but here they show exactly which glasses I was using, for instance ivory vs. dk ivory and that the brown batch of strawberry sweet I got hold of really is reddish.

I should really see what the silver based gold tones do on ivory, btw.  I really like the leopard print and tiger stripe beads I made by encasing a light color like ivory with transparent amber glass.  It adds a whole lot of depth to the bead.  I don't wear animal print clothing or decorate with this style, but it has design possibilities, especially with the earth tones I seem to be wearing more of.  Also, I like leather cord as a stringing material because it doesn't require a lot of skill to string and is easily replaceable if it gets ratty.  For this bracelet it's nearly mandatory.

This necklace is one that one of my friends found very amusing.  It is of powder pink, struck inclompletely in the smaller beads.  I had thought that powder pink was more of an earth tone, based on the compact flourescents that I use exclusively since I am a klutz and am always knocking over lamps and popping bulbs.  With the incandescent lamp the pink tones come out and the necklace actually looks much better.  I've posted this one before, but never with this degree of clarity.  The decoration is ivory and goldstone stringer. 

 This bead rocks.  It is Effetre dark ivory with aurae stringer, melted in slightly, struck and reduced.  The aurae fumed the ivory yellow, which really does a lot for this bead.  I am going to do more of this in the future.  This I like.

This is a set of party tools that I couldn't resist today.  I had to put them together just to see what they looked like, with some beads that I had lying around that were roughly the right size when combined.  I think the posts the beads are mounted on are interchangeable in some way but haven't tried fooling around with them yet.  It might be easier to make beads to fit them.  The bottle opener and stoppers are mixed silver glasses over dark opaque glass, encased in clear, and the spread knife is a center bead of partially silvered CiM stoneground flanked by two of my favorites, a core of CiM tuxedo, silver foil melted in, a thin layer of Effetre kelp and a thicker layer of clear.  They have a kind of dark green iridescent quality that I find very appealing.

I posted this necklace before, but it remains one of my favorite color combinations so I'll shamelessly post it again.  The green is Vetrofond oddly odd lemongrass, the purple is CiM poi with small dots of Effetre dark amethyst, and the clear is Effetre super clear.  Yes, I've mixed three manufacturers in each bead.  Nothing has cracked.  Yet.  I didn't know whether I liked the dark background or the white one better so I'm posting both.  Notice the quality photography on this one.  The camera matters.

Finally, because it seemed like a good idea at the time, this is the purple flower necklace, backlit and tweaked so some of the details are visible.  No, this picture doesn't have a purpose that I know of, since I am highly unlikely to use this as a suncatcher, but a really thickly encased set of beads with backlighting was too intriguing to resist and with digital photography we weren't worrying about wasting film.