Creative Yearnings

After the drama over the weekend, I really have been having a rough time coming up with the desire to torch, let alone ideas of what to do when I get there. While Joe was trying, and failing, to teach me how to smith, he told me never to light the fire until you know what you want to do with it. Otherwise it's a waste of coal and time. After quite a bit of hemming and hawing and some heavy duty searching for inspiration, I decided I was going to try working with colors I haven't had much luck with to see if my luck had changed.

These four beads represent all of today's efforts. None will be used for anything other than experimentation, so into the annealing bubble I use for demos they went so I could see what they would look like today. The bead on top is my first effort, a twistie of clear, DH Aion2, and Terra 2. It looks almost like the Terra struck in the picture, because it's darker than the creamy Aion2, but I wasted so much gas trying to get the stupid flower right it unstruck again. Note to self: Do all the bead elements except the striking first and then strike the Terra. The Aion2 did develop a lovely mother of pearl sheen showing pink, lavender, blue and green that does not show up at all in the picture. The flower on the other side of the bead almost didn't get posted but, hey, who cares if I can't make flowers yet. I'm learning. Underneath it is a plain clear bead I encased with my stringer to see if I could strike it at all. It struck, but the Aion2 didn't come out. Figures.

The third bead down I will consider a success. It is TE331, which had come out as clear light aqua every other time I've touched it.  I know the beads above look like I got something out of it, but this is the sort of base state according to the info I got from Double Helix.  The red is the thermal striking. This struck! Now if I can clean up the color a bit I might be able to use it in a bead. The last bead is my favorite of the bunch. I decided to go with a base of CiM poi, since I know that likes silver glass and I don't think CiM ghee does at all. I made my base, wrapped and melted in my stringer and made my flowers, which I don't think came out badly. Then I struck the Terra. Lo and behold, it worked. I got some really cool color development out of the section around the copper green flower in the first picture, I think because that section got hotter before being cooled down and struck. The opal yellow one is neat, but I like the echo of the copper green in the base. I don't know if this is a good idea or not, but I'm going to try this with silver foil and slytherin next, and see what happens.

Effetre coral Martian strata

This is one of Effetre's numerous corals that they came up with a while back, Martian strata. Strata is the right word, since it is arguably the streakiest of the lot. It heats nicely and looks pretty decent on its own, but I like it best with silver and silver glass. And CiM tuxedo. The plain bead on the left is pretty indicative of how it turns out if you don't fool with it, but I wouldn't be me if I didn't fool with it.

With silver foil melted in, it does the usual thing, with the purple and blue thing under encasement that I really like. I tried to reduce the bead under encasement uniformly, and obviously wasn't very successful. I wonder whether the purple is incompletely reduced or the yellow is? Or which is over-reduced? OK, now this is annoying me. The beige isn't bad, but it wasn't what I was hoping for and I want to know what I did so I don't do it again. Next time.

With silver glass it looks pretty good on its own, and I'm glad I gave DH psyche a try as well as the triton. I love the color sheens I got on reduction. Under encasement, the triton is doing its green thing. I wish I could reduce it just to turquoise or lavender. With practice comes skill.

The coral and turquoise is a better combination than the copper green. Both have that grey line, but again, no where near like is achieved with turquoise and ivory. With CiM tuxedo, the coral is separating like crazy. I love it.

That effect isn't as pronounced in the next bead with Martian strata over intense black over Martian strata. The top dots are separating a little but here's my color that holds its own on intense black. Everything spreads on ivory, perhaps because it is so soft. Plum silver isn't looking very plum, nor is it very metallic. It was a nice try. Note I had no luck at all striking the TE-331 stringer with clear dots. I couldn't hope lightening would strike twice, could I?

A nice color. I would buy it again as an alternative to the more expensive rosewood, which it resembles a lot. It is a little darker and murkier and thus, to me, not as attractive, but in a setting where this doesn't matter this is a better color. If I run out, would I buy more? I don't know, since there are an awful lot of corals around.

te-331

 Could I be getting better at striking silver colors on my hh?  It must be this glass.  Double Helix' te-331 looks so cool in the ad photo but I never get anything that looks like it.  And this doesn't. But it's closer than I usually get.  There is actually color there.  The bead will probably crack.  Both these beads are on Vetrofond black, which I'm finding does wierd things with application of silver glasses.  It gets a gunmetal type thing going on in the area the silver glass doesn't touch.  Naturally, this isn't visible on the photos I took and it does disappear when encased, but it could be neat on its own.  The top bead is unencased and all I got is a faint blue turquoise line, and that gunmetal thing.  The bottom is encased with Effetre clear, and it was tough to get it to strike again after I encased it, since what happened was that it went all greenish and only just started to go lavender and blue.

These are my efforts to do other things with this color, and I'll confess to taking quick and dirty pictures to get them before they cracked.  My best striking efforts to date, the 4th bead from the left, is already cracked and ready to go.  The first is unstruck, glass wound off and done.  The second I didn't allow to cool enough before attempting to strike it.  The third is overstruck and poop-colored.  I encased it in clear, hoping to shield it from reduction.  I saw the color change and opacity develop and, rather than starting all over again and heating it to clear, finished it off.  The 4th is encased in clear again, and I had such high hopes, but they were dashed.  The 5th is a self bead that wasn't quite right and the 6th is also a self bead and I tried to do it right but didn't get very far.

These are with a core of CiM tuxedo, a layer of te-331, and in the case of the bead on the right, a layer of clear.  In all these beads, the blue/green predominates, which is a sign that the ruby tones aren't being given the chance to develop by slow heating.  Still, these aren't ugly so I should count myself lucky.  TE-331 does tend to blend into clear, I'm noticing, at least when it doesn't crack.

midnight cobalt

This is another one of those colors that only came out in limited amounts, Vetrofond midnight cobalt.  It is DARK.  I didn't even bother making a self spacer, because it is so dark there's no way it would be distinguishable from a black bead and I wouldn't want to string it into something by mistake and have it show up in bright sunlight.  It melts slowly ans remains pretty stiff.  It doesn't shock easily.

1 is a spacer over clear and 2 is over white.  3 is over white with silver foil melted in, then reduced.  I had noticed this effect with standard cobalt and wanted to see if it did the same thing.  It does.

4 is a test to see if applying silver foil, melting it in and reducing it brought out the blue.  I was surprised to find out it did, just barely.  5 is the same as 3, encased in clear.  I was sorry to see that the effect wasn't really preserved, but there is some lightening of the blue.  6 is over ivory with ivory dots.  The blue is so dark it's hard to see if there was any interaction between the 2.  I don't think there was, based on the crispness of the edges of the ivory dots.  7 is with copper green and nothing changed on either side.  8 is with turquoise and nothing happened here either, but I got a nice thin dot on top.  This is an idea--use the color to place over white on a cobalt blue bead so the dots on top of the white look as intense as the base bead color.

I like the way 9 turned out.  It is dots of TE-331 with clear dots on top of half of them.  I didn't make any special effort to strike the TE-331, and wouldn't you know it, it is my best color reaction to date.  I wonder if I can do this again?

Would I get more of this glass if it were available?  I don't know.  The glass I have will last a long time, since it is really only visible in very thin layers.  It would be good for fine stringer work or in murrini but that's about all I can see using it for.  I can't make murrini so pulled cane and over other colors is about it.