CiM Atlantis

 I finally got a chance to replenish some of my glass, and CiM's yummy Atlantis was a new color.  It's a bit of a cross between Mermaid and Ming, and a bit of an opal, though it isn't really evident if it's not layered over anything.  Like all the CiM colors I've tried so far it has been easy to work, without boiling, oozing or being all shocky.

 These odd beads are, from left to right, self spacer, encased with Effetre clear 006, over clear a little too thickly to see how translucent it is, with reduced silver foil badly encased in clear as my tank ran out, and the same bead badly reduced but properly encased.  The glass gets a little lighter on the ends, as visible on the plain bead.  I'm not sure whether working it longer or hotter makes it lighter or darker.  I think the lightening is like the devitrification you see on EDP, but it isn't devitrification because it remains glossy.  Cool fade effect, though.  I would like to blow some shards of this to get a nice thin layer of encasement on clear to get a better translucency.  I acutally like the enencased portions of the bead I reduced with silver foil better, but I'm not sure what kind of bead I'd use it in.  I'll probably like this better for it's clear color.

 CiM Peace separates when applied on top of Atlantis, and Atlantis spreads pretty dramatically on top of Peace.  The separation of the white was still there but not as dramatic when I did this with Effetre white, probably because Peace is very slightly translucent.  On the top row is a bead with a thin shard of silvered ivory melted all the way in but too small to see anything.  The next is Atlantis with EDP dots.  Nice edge and little reaction.  The black spots on the EDP are where I overheated it and burned it.  Not the glass' fault.  On the right is with DH 331 test batch, a sort of Terra light, and I failed to get much color.  Not a surprise considering my skill with striking DH glasses, really.

 I wasn't impressed with what happened when I combined Atlantis with ivory.  On the left I superheated things a bit to get the maximum reaction, and got it.  The effect I got with the barely melted shard of silvered ivory was much more pleasant.

 Opal yellow lightened a lot when I used it with Atlantis, and I like the absence of a reaction.  If I wanted an ivory look I'd use the opal yellow.  Some separation here as well, but tis cool.  I'm digging the bead with CiM Tux and Atlantis.  The blue is still visible but only just on top of the black, which is very neat.

 This one didn't reduce well, or reproduce either for that matter, but it's with DH Triton, on the left unencased and encased on the right.  The reduction effect is actually visible on the bead, but I would have liked more drama.  It is my fault, not the glass.

This one surprised me.  Who knew copper green would do this?  It's like the copper green was trying to sink into the Atlantis but getting stuck on the edges.  And the dark rim in the middle of the copper green waves and dots is just weird.  I wonder if it's some sort of reduction on the copper green and if soaking the bead in lime scale remover would help?  It's as if there's another color running down the middle of each copper green spot.  Not when the Atlantis is on top, though.  That just spreads out all over the place.  I wish I'd studied more in chemistry.  This is so neat and I have no idea why it does what it does.

I love this color.  It's so pretty on its own I may not combine it with anything else but I'm glad I paired it with stuff ahead of time so I don't use up a whole lot on something that's not going to work the way I think it should.  Maybe I should get a little more now.  I tried to order some CiM Appletini and it was already sold out, and this is sure to go that way soon if they don't make more.  I hope they make more of both.

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.

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....

Finally

I was so thrilled with how these turned out I couldn't wait to post them. I couldn't even wait to clean them, so please forgive the mandrels and bead release. They are both heavily encased and decorated in or on the encasement, and they are both on the diet! I can stick to the diet and still produce beads that I can use for a project, as long as it's the right project.

On the left is a base of CiM tuxedo, encased with CiM clear, decorated with a twistie of copper green and CiM Slytherin and a flower or two of CiM poi stringer encased with ink blue. On the right is a base of CiM poi, encased with CiM clear and decorated with dots of the copper green and slytherin stringer. I really dig the way the poi shifts by encasement with the ink blue, and also the way the copper green and Slytherin react with each other. I think the combination works with the plaques better than either color alone would have. Who knew?

For a double shot of my beads on the Creation is Messy site, and to find out more about poi, click here for CiM.

I couldn't just make 2 beads, so I dipped the clear in the DH reducing frit blend I had made and made a fritty bead with this. The glasses were Aion2, CE 352 (when it comes into production it will be Calliope), Aurae, Triton, and Psyche. The Psyche didn't reduce, but everything else did and looks fascinating under the clear. Now I'll have to make more of these, which will mean making more frit, so I can do something with them.

Confession time. This is off the diet, but I couldn't resist using some CiM Sherwood to make the beads on the right. On the left is plain, middle with a wrap of a Triton shard, and on the right is encased with CiM clear and dotted with poi. I love the way the Sherwood is still a bit streaky under encasement.

Ever notice the way your state of mind affects everything you do? Yesterday was a good day and everything went right. The beads turned out the way I pictured they would (when does that happen) I finished in time, and the weather even cooperated today with just the right amount of sun so I could take some decent pictures. I'm going to quit while I am ahead. I have a doctor's appointment today and am hoping to get back to the day job so I can buy more glass again.

One more thing from yesterday: I found a studio near me, about an hour away in Booneville. I didn't get a chance to look into much about it and, frankly, don't have the money until I go back to work to do anything about it, but at the same time, the prospect of taking my first class or two and using a proper torch is scary and intoxicating. Here's the link to their website, and they also have a Facebook page which is how I found them.CNY Glass Studio

CiM sangre

CiM sangre is a glass that has given me fits since I bought 2 rods of it soon after I started lampworking. I complained that Effetre 076 transparent red was difficult to strike and Molly Heynis at Heritage Glass recommended sangre as an alternative. In addition, it was supposed to be resistant to burning and going orange and doing all the ugly things other transparent reds tend to do. I still find it fairly tricky to strike and it has gone orange on me on more than one occasion. My photography setup, if one can call it that, has a lot to do with my dissatisfaction with the color in general, since it requires outdoor sun to do it justice and I simply don't have that in abundance. These were taken in the middle of the parking lot of my apartment building.

On the right are a handful of beads that I made with the color to put it through its paces. On the wire are plain, sangre encasing clear, sangre encased with clear, silver foil just melted in, which isn't pretty, silver foil reduced and encased with clear, which, frankly, I was expecting more out of, and my sangre/aurae test bead. Below it in the same picture are the "real" bead, made with a base of sangre, dots of aurae covered with clear, and a triton shard thrown in for good measure, and two beads I experimented with by wrapping a clear core with sangre and aurae twistie, encasing it in more clear and mashing them.
Here are two more views of my more serious bead, not helped at all by my camera, I'm afraid. Again, these are dots of aurae topped by bumps of clear, running together in the second side, and a wrap of a triton shard. I almost think I like the effect of the second side better, even though it wasn't what I was intending.

Now all I have to do is find a camera that is capable of making the beads look like they do in real life.

So how does sangre do with being a transparent red that strikes easily, doesn't burn out, and doesn't go orange? It doesn't burn out and it resists going orange. It strikes more easily than Effetre or Vetrofonds efforts in that regard. Transparency? Depends on the size of the bead and how it is worked. If the bead is anything above spacer sized and is going to be actually worked as opposed to wound off and cooled, don't count on it.

I plan on buying more CiM sangre when I run out, since by far, it is the easiest transparent red that I have found to work with.

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 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.

Effetre chocolatta

OK, when I blogged CiM adamantium, I said it was a milk chocolate color.  I didn't know what I was talking about.  This is the chocolate brown.  I could put these in a bowl with candy and be doing the Heimlich maneuver in no time.  The glass melts like chocolate, too.  Perhaps that is why I forgot I had made a bunch of beads and made them again.  I was having too much fun.

With metal it's not impressing me, but who cares.  For the purpose of thoroughness, left to right are plain, with silver foil, same encased, and copper leaf.

With DH aurae and triton, I'm not too happy, but psyche looks promising in a raspberry truffle kind of way.

Plum silver looks kinda nice, like spots of dark chocolate, but copper green is unfortunate, since I could have gone for the whole chocolate and mint thing.  EDP separates the chocolatta, which is a shame. 

Ivory separates the chocolatta, as well, but I'm getting used to it bleeding or separating or forming a line.  Same sort of thing with intense black and CiM tuxedo.


I love this color and will be gobbling it up, so to speak, so I'm sure I'll buy it again.  Only the frustration of trying to use this laptop is keeping me from further raptures.

Effetre light pumpkin

I had to be very careful with labeling these, since I received a large number of oranges all at once and they all look nearly identical in rod form. This is one of the new colors from Effetre, light pumpkin, originally zucca chiaro. It strikes from yellowish to orange tan.

I didn't get much out of adding metal to these beads, either silver foil or copper leaf. I'm not sure how many orange and brown textural beads I'm going to be making.

Double Helix glasses look neat on this color, with a surprisingly dark aurae on the left, then triton, encased psyche looking the best I've achieved yet, and finally psyche on its own.

The EDP does react a bit with the pumpkin but I can live with this. The combination is appealing in a strange way. Intense black stays nice and crisp but there is some separation of the top dots of orange. The grey line forms on the copper green. Sis just plain bleeds all over. Plum silver seems to prevent color development in this just like it did with the red roof tile.

This is a nice, bright, happy pumpkin orange that will come in handy around Haloween.

Effetre apple blush

First I would like to say that I like the name for this color much better than when it came out in a sample pack in December. It was originally Gaillo ocra. My miserable Italian and sense of humor translated it into "yellow chicken" for a reason that I may never know. The color is a bit like a green apple or underripe mango. It melts well and plays very nice.

The plain bead shows the reason behind the name blush. The usual brownish textural thing with melted in silver foil, and I love the shades of lilac that happen when the same thing is reduced and encased. Copper leaf on its own is ugly, and this bead is one of the reasons I am no longer doing this test. Under encasement the copper leaf looks pretty neat.

I like this with Double Helix glass. The one on the left is aurae, and melting it in and reducing it makes a very nice gold tone, with attractive fuming on the edges. Encase it and you get lavender! Psyche didn't turn out well, but I think I was running out of gas. Triton on the right looks nice under encasement, but I still like the aurae better, especially against the green.

Intense black stayed crisp while EDP and ivory bled. Nice contrast with the EDP and lime green.

Would I buy this color again? Probably. I have a lot of greens but there's always room for one more.