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!

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.

Spacer Madness

 It's been too hot to do a lot of torching this week.  Normally, I do a little bit every day and try to get listings up as they are ready.  This has not been such a week.  I decided to follow the lead of many other lampworkers and give it a rest, to cut down on energy usage and increase my own comfort.  A side benefit of this plan has been that I have had the time to go through my to-do list and actually do some of it.  Many items I have been meaning to list have been listed, including some of the countless spacers that seem to multiply as I look at them.

 Above is a set of black and white that I made with various blacks and Effetre white pastel.  The only bead I can absolutely state was made with a specific black was the white one near the center, which was made with intense black stringer.  The black stands out so well it can only be that.  Everything else might be Vetrofond black or CiM tuxedo, or even CiM hades.  I know I didn't use Effetre black, because I have never bought any.

The blue and white ones at the right were made with Effetre 060 cobalt and Effetre white.  I love blue and white and seem to have made quite a few of these.

Here are two cylinders made with Effetre lapis cobalt and one of the trans cobalt, all with white stringer.  I was wondering if I should stick to just cylinders or throw in a few bicones and rounds as well.  I'm still thinking and may modify this listing.

I wanted a blue less likely to be mistaken for black with these and went with Effetre pastel light cobalt with these.  I like the way they are still very blue but are a softer contrast.

Here are some made with CiM hades on Vetrofond dark ivory pastel.  I love the way the hades curdles and webs over the ivory.

I've played with ivory and turquoise a lot, but not silvered ivory.  I love the way the silvering takes the reaction between the two past its usual grey line and out the other side.  I'm going to try this on some of the greens as well.  I was thinking of CiM sherwood and Effetre copper green and Nile green.

These came out so awesome.  I love the way the Vetro dark ivory curdles when you melt DH Triton into it, and you get a halo reaction also that is also fab.  It reminded me of ancient writing on stone, hence the name, petroglyphs.

This is one of the new Vetrofond colors, biscotti, with scrolls of Triton which were melted in and reduced.  The Triton fumes the biscotti to a huge degree and there is another neat reaction line around the Triton.  The combined effect gave me the impression that the designs had been burned into the beads so I had a little fun with the name, smoldering runes.

The weather is supposed to break soon, so I'll be back at the torch in no time.  I might just make more spacers....

CiM butter pecan

A while back I reviewed CiM ginger and made a comparison bead with butter pecan, which was pretty identical with the rods I chose. There is quite a bit of variability in both these colors, and the rod color has a lot to do with the color the finished beads turn out. Butter pecan is a good pink to choose for human sculptural forms (think caucasian goddesses and angels) with the warning that it does get pretty drippy. Not quite as soft as ivory but close, and it stays hot for a long time. In the packet of glass I received, there was a lot of variation in rod size, the one I chose to do tests being about 4mm and the largest 7mm.

Plain butter pecan is creamy with an ever so slight streakiness that disappears if the bead is worked at all. With silver foil there is some yellow fuming, but not as much of a surface reaction as I was expecting. I don't really care for the pearly effect reducing the silver and encasing it has here.

What I do dig is the combination of copper leaf and butter pecan. I will be making some sort of beads with this. The iridescent blue of reduced triton looks nice against the neutral background, but I don't really care for the dark chrome of triton without the dots of clear.

Butter pecan is supposed to be a less reactive alternative to ivory and I wanted to do a test bead to see how close they were. I don't think they are very close, but particularly with a test I did on nile green opalino, the test bead may not indicate what really happens when other colors are involved.

I tested butter pecan with tuxedo in the middle and intense black on the right to see which, if either, would web and what would happen. Tuxedo and butter pecan are about the same degree of softness when melted, so each pretty much kept to itself. Intense black stayed crisp on the butter pecan, but webbed the dots of butter pecan on top like crazy.

Plum silver does pretty well on butter pecan, developing a nice lustre and not having too bad an edge reaction. Copper green does form a slight grey line, but not as bad as on some other colors. EDP bleeds like crazy when placed on top of butter pecan, and the way the butter pecan forms a clear dot in the middle is wild.

I'm glad I have this color in my palette and will be buying more when I run out. I am thinking of some seaside themed beads and I think this color will be one of the main ones I will be using.

Effetre nile green opalino

Effetre nile green opalino wasn't available for a while, and having worked the others, I was anxious to give this a whirl. It is a nice, spring green that I think works best by itself. It remains stiff when worked, more toward the transparents than the opaques. I found myself constantly resisting the urge to work lower in the flame or turn up the gas, since this color is ridiculously sensitive to torch chemistry and if the flame is too reducing, the beads will go an ugly, greyish olive with "smoke" spots on them. If they had beed surface flaws, I might have tried etching to remove the discoloration, but the glass was stained all the way through so I threw out a couple beads where I wasn't able to resist temptation.

Plain, these are a nice, jade green that becomes more ethereal when encased in clear. Note the lack of a clear dividing line where one glass starts and the other stops. Following Pat Frantz's advice, all the encased beads were made on a core of clear to prevent cracking, which the opalino colors are supposed to be prone to do when encased.

Application of metal is a way to shift the hue of this green toward yellow or blue. Adding either does affect the surface, which must be taken into account, but the silver definitely shifts the glass strongly toward the yellow end and copper sends it equally decisively toward the blue. Both have tiny bubbles on them, with the copper being more noticeable.

Double Helix aurae doesn't do well on this glass and I doubt I will do this again. It is interesting the way the unencased bead has separation of the aurae.

I wanted to compare the effects of ivory and CiM butter pecan on a real bead and found they were similar. Both separated a bit, with the ivory on the left separating more strongly, and both are about the same shade. I thought the green glass would react with the ivory to produce a grey line, which it didn't, so I will have to compare them again on a color which I know does.

CiM tuxedo reflects quite a bit into the opalio, and the opalino dots on top of it are invisible. I ran out of gas just as I made the middle bead with intense black, but I believe the tiny opalino dots on top of the intense black ones would have been a waste of time. I was pleased that Gelly's sty didn't do anything weird with the opalino, since I may do something in a muted floral with these two.


I would probably buy this glass again. It is a color that does not really appear in the other manufacturer's lines and will make nice beads as long as I don't forget what it can and can't do.

CiM smurfy

Creation is Messy smurfy is amazingly well behaved. Up until now I've only used Effetre 236 dark turquoise and never saw any reason to do otherwise. Now I doubt I will use it again. Smurfy is not an exact match for the color; the Effetre 236 is a tad darker. Smurfy is a bit streakier, especially if the bead is simply wound and finished, as I usually do. There is no boiling and this glass is so much easier to work. I did have an issue with the flame on my HotHead reducing the first bead I made, but this was due to a problem with how the torch was attached to the new tank. I was very glad I was using a turquoise, since the minute it went brick red I knew I had a problem and was able to correct the reduction issue and go back to torching.

Plain, smurfy is a nice, medium turquoise with some streaks, which aren't a problem for me, and absolutely no pitting. With silver on its own there is some yellow fuming, which may work in a specific application that I can't imagine at the moment. The same bead reduced was neat to look at, but the minute I encased it, there was nothing to indicate that silver was ever there. With copper, there is a neat blue-black film and some less-neat bubbles under encasement. Without encasement the copper leaf looks like burned rice paper.

Considering what happened to the silver, I didn't think I'd like the Double Helix aurae, but I'm glad I tried it. Under encasement, there is an attractive, subtle rainbow that goes well with the turquoise. Without encasement, the gold makes a nice contrast.

None of the color reactions surprised me. From left to right are light (?) yellow pastel, ivory, EDP, red roof tile (which didn't do the dark orange to yellow fade I was hoping for), intense black, and plum silver.

I will be buying this glass when my current supply runs out, because even if it costs a few pennies more, it is so much easier to use I will save it in aggravation.

Odds and Ends

I only made a few beads each of the two new transparents from Effetre, mostly because I seem to enjoy working with the pastels and specials more. On the left is green rosette, a very dark emerald green that stands up well in thin layers. The self bead first on the wire is almost black, and it is only near the hole that you can see it isn't. Over clear, green rosette looks about as dark as the next color down, dark teal is. I think dark teal is quite a bit more blue, but would have to dig too far to find out. Over white, the green rosette is applied very thinly indeed and really is staying dark. The line going around the bead is not a crack, it's where i overlapped incompletely when winding on the color. Over ivory, I believe there is just a hint of a grey line, but nothing too glaring.

The black olive is a neat color, but I don't know how many beads I'll be making with it, since I don't have much of a call for brown at the moment. Maybe as part of an animal print? I'll see. In order, a plain bead, one made on a clear core with dots of black olive on the left half and a band of black olive on the right, a white bead treated the same way, and one on ivory.

These are my first experiment using dichroic coated glass. Please, no one laugh. The top bead, I forgot that the dichroic coating goes on the inside unless it's being encased again and I know I don't have enough skill at all to keep from frying the coating while encasing the bead. I got the order right on the bottom bead, and apart from a minor error trying to get used to using a paddle to shape a bead (note to self: don't try to learn two things at once) I'm pretty happy with this bead.

Effetre light violet transparent

Lately, I've been going through my stash of beads and photos and publishing some of the ones that got away. This is such a one, although I don't know why it did, because it's purple! The color is Effetre light violet transparent, which is a premium color, but I don't know why because it is machine pulled. Regardless, it is a nice shade that is sufficiently different from their amethyst color to merit a separate purchase. It melts very slowly, resists thermal shock and remains very stiff when working.

Plain, it appears very dark indeed, which makes me wonder if there was ever a medium or dark violet and what color it looked. With silver foil melted in and left alone, only tiny beads of silver on the surface indicate that anything was done to the bead. It is when the silver is reduced and encased in clear that something magical happens. I really love this effect.

With silver-rich Double Helix aurae, the plain bead looks ok but nothing to write home about. Encase it with clear (I wonder what would happen if I used another color?) and it shows off beautiful blues and greens.

I wanted to see what would happen to the intensity of this color when layered with other colors, and here's my answer. The violet recedes a little and lives up to its name. It is a lovely shade and I must say I am rather pleased the way this floral turned out. The base glass is Vetro lemongrass odd, which I love as a background for purple flowers. On ivory, nothing ugly happens, but I think that the ivory separated and darkened a bit more than I can usually get it to. Over white the violet remains rather dark, but the layer was a bit thick.

EDP scrolls bleed a lot over the violet, but that is to be expected considering the extreme difference in viscosity between the glasses. I don't know what I was trying to do by putting dots of light violet over a clear base bead, but what I did was make a bead that looks very much like it was made of only a very pale violet glass. The violet dots on top of the copper green are disappearing, but the copper didn't do anything ugly.


Would I buy this again? Oh, yes. It's purple.

CiM Gelly's sty

Another CiM color that almost slipped by me. They have so many, I'd go broke trying to own them all, but I'd love to try. This one is really a unique shade of pink. It is slightly translucent, but this is part of its charm. Effetre rose opalino is similar, but it is a pain to work with and Gelly's sty doesn't need to be struck. I think the best thing about it is that it plays so well with other colors. The material from Creation is Messy says that it goes light under encasement and likes to be worked hot. There are reports that it can be shocky (oh, no) and devitrifies. I was forewarned on the shockiness and as far as the devitrification goes, I'll just have to see.

Plain reveals a pretty, rose petal shade of pink. Encased, it looks pretty much the same to me. Perhaps a tiny bit more translucent. Maybe a good thing. If I want an ethereal pink, this is the color for me.

I didn't even bother testing this one with silver or copper, since I knew it would go all yellow with silver and I have yellow opalino and CiM ghee for that. With copper I just wasn't interested. I suspect the shockiness advised against comes after cooling without kilning so we'll just see how the plain encased bead does before I add copper to the mix. With DH aurae, pictured here, it goes golden and highlights the gold dots of the aurae. Nice. I love what it did under encasement. I only wish my clear didn't scum up.

The translucent quality of Gelly's sty is really highlighted by its use with CiM tuxedo. The tux seems to be slightly absorbed by the pink, but that is light transmission, because the edges of the black on pink are nice and crisp. The pink on black looks slightly lavender. I have to try encasing a tux bead with Gelly's sty now. EDP bled a little but works well on this pink. No burning! I really like that there is no reaction with ivory. I was sure there would be. The dots of pink on top disappear on both the ivory and the white next to it. Gelly's sty is fairly stiff for an opaque, so that explains the ivory and white bleeding.

Yellow seems to bleed a little but there is no ugly reaction. Strangely, copper green appears bleached out. there is nothing ugly happening here and I would feel confident using the 2 together, but I would wish for more contrast. The intense black stays crisp and the Gelly's sty separates into that neat mouth thing, but it is almost invisible due to its lack of saturation. Trying to get plum silver to go metallic without devitrifying was a task beyond me, but there is a hint of a shimmer, trust me.

I will definitely be buying more of this color. It is a pleasure to work with and an unique addition to my palette.

Effetre very cherry

It seems I bought a whole lot of Effetre at once. This is a very deep red, if a cherry it's an overripe Bing. It comes out as a semitransparent, very deep red. The rods I got were about 9mm, and thus I was a little nervous about heating them, but I shouldn't have worried. While not melting as slowly as a transparent, they are certainly stiffer than the 436 dark red special, and not at all shocky. In terms of hue, I am strongly reminded of CiM bordello.

Since this is a semitransparent color, I wanted to see what it would look like self and encased. The left bead is a self spacer, the second is over clear and the 3rd over white. All look dark red and the self one is a very deep, very rich red.

With silver this color really looks cool. A hint of this can be seen on the left bead, with some bluish effects, but it really shines (literally) in the rainbow irridescence of the middle bead, which is silver foil melted in, reduced and encased in clear. Copper leaf encased in clear is not impressive.

With a nod to Pat Frantz and Dragonjools in their blogs, I couldn't wait to see what it did with DH aurae. There is no visible reaction in the 2 beads on the left, which are aurae reduced and psyche, which would not reduce for me. Under encasement aurae looks very cool blue and green and triton the same, only darker. In fact, I can't really tell what the base color is in my poor lighting.

I wanted to see what would happen over ivory and discovered two things. The first is that it doesn't react as a gold pink would by producing an ugly black spot and the second is that very cherry is a striking color. Yes, there are dots of very cherry on top of the ivory dots in the bead on the left. It doesn't do anything ugly with copper green, but I don't care for the way it looks brown over the green.



I have nothing against this color and would buy it again, but its depth of color makes it hard to find a use for. One thing to note is that it is very much easier to work than 076 striking red.