023 - Pastel Moretti Mosaic Green - Transparent NOT!

This was labeled "Transparent" - Ha! NOT! It is a nice streaky green - very creamy to work and very soft.

Some interesting possibilities if reduced - note the metallic and reddish effects on some of these. These are:

• top row, centre, straight spacer
• second row from top: left - reduced, right bicone - w silver wire dots.
  
• third row from top: mashed, with black streaks, and flattened bicone - with Hades stringer. Reduced, shows some red.
  
• Far right, cylinder. Heavily reduced - showing metallic and reddish.
  

A really cool glass, but I love this emerald green and I've always been fond of Mosaic green since I once mistook it for black (last batch I had looked like black - this batch looks green opaque) and had a whole bunch of very surprising beads come out of the kiln!

Gaia

Okay - it's going to take a long time and a lot of experimenting to find out all the fabulous and interesting things this Double Helix glass can do.

This is Gaia over a clear base, with pure silver dots added (using fine silver wire), and reduced slightly.

The clear core has fumed to a light yellow, and the green of the Gaia has gone a little cloudy. The fumed clear blends nicely with the green. A nice combo.

This glass is insanely expensive, but a little goes a long way!

Sasha's Silver - Redux

I just wanted to show you the Sasha's Silver in another use - it appears greenish at the base, but has been reduced which developed a metallic green. Notice also that there is enough silver in this glass that in reducing it - it also fumed the clear dichro to a yellowish cast.

ASK 019 Moroccan Swirl

Feh - less interesting than it looks. The rod is slightly translucent, but the beads are fully opaque. Nice streakiness, a very cool grey base, hard to really say that it is ivory - with some nice brownish streaking.

Probably does it for some people, but I find the ASK colours are usually more exciting, this one was a little dull.

Moretti 460 - Ochre

This is the latest batch of 460 - darkens significantly from the rod colour. I rather like it - I like the streaky dark orange - but if you are looking for the colour of the rod - you'll be disappointed.

Darker than the CIM 223-2 - but a nice complement if you where making sets with colour variations.

Vetro 989 - Topaz Odd

Oh ho - this one is lots of fun. A thick amber layer with a skinny core - makes a streaky class with slightly turquoisey ribbons. This one is great fun. I I can see just winding spacers out of this one.

You can see that I did manage to scum up the bead on the far left. It shows worse in the photo than in the actual bead.

A big thumbs up on this one!

CIM 223-2 Unique Pumpkin

The irony of this is, it's not unique - there are 3 variations of this colour. A squash soup colour, it is a transparent to opaque streaky colour - the colour of squash or pumpkin flowers.

A very handsome colour.

V 994 - Odd Lot - Strawberry Sweet???

Another very interesting colour - will appeal to those who think there are not enough browns. This is a reddish cinnamon chocolate colour. Quite streaky and variable. In the coral family I believe - it looks grey when hot. I think this has some great earthtone potential. Tree trunks, cats, chocolates.

Not so strawberry!

CIM 128 - Sangre

I thought for SURE I had overworked the larger bead at the back left - it looked livery and with a brownish overcast when I put it in the kiln - but apparently not.

This is a very handsome red - the spacers are, from left to right

• Pure sangre
• sangre over white, overheated and white blended into the sangre
• sangre over white core, w/o overheating,
  
• sangre over clear

The bicone is a white core, a layer of clear, a thin layer of sangre.

This is a very dark red, shows as opaque if used thick, but can be transparent if diluted enough, i.e. over clear. A really nice red. An excellent addition to the COE 104 palette.

Vetro 967 - Odd Lot - Grey Quartz

Definitely a nice streaky colour - a grayish base with a slightly ambery tranparent streaking. Definitely some interesting possibilities here.

Vetro 991 - Avocado Marble - Odd Lot.

I really like this one - very streaky, lots of drama in this one. All these beads are made with just one rod, just one "colour."

Not as shocky as the others in this batch of odd lots either. This is a real kahlua in cream colour - a Black Russian!

I will definitely be getting more of this!

As for it being "Avocado" - well - lets just say that if my Avocado's look like this, I compost 'em!

Vetro 985 - Moss Agate - Odd Lot

The raw rods look almost black - just a thin layer of amber over a black core.

This was a little bit of a disappointment coming out of the kiln - when hot, the colour variation is much more obvious - in normal lighting - it could pass for black with slight streaks.

Drop off shocky - the spoon is made on a rod of clear, because the gather just kept dropping off the rod.


The second photo has a lot of light so that you can see some variations in the colour. Note a smidge of red and green.

I did reduce this, I'm not sure that it made a huge difference. I think this one needs more experimentation - it may do some interesting reactive things with other glasses.

I'd recommend this for people who enjoy experimenting - no so much if that is not your thing.

CIM 229 - Clockwork Orange

What colour do you think Clockwork would be? Orange of course. Unlike the original Clockwork orange, which was a metaphor for the ultimate in uselessness - I suppose today it would be a cellular grapefruit or a wi-fi lemon - anyway - I can definitely see using this colour.

A real "orange crush" colour in the raw rod - a colour I usually refer to as Agent Orange and is approximately the same colour as the sweet and sour orange sauce that comes with the chicken balls - I thought for sure that I had overstruck the large bead on the left. It has gone cloudy in the core (see next picture for backlit version), but I thought it had gone livery too, and it came out of the kiln very nice. This glass strikes very slowly - so you can do a nice controlled strike to get just the degree of orange you want - see bead on far right.


Striking refresher: Heat glass to clear - let cool to not glowing - re-introduce to flame, watch colour develop.

This glass is also drop off shocky, and the streak in the left bead is actually picked up glass from the gather falling off. I thought I had burned it at the time, but it's just another glass.

A really delicious juicy colour.

I really thought I had overstruck the left bead - but I'm quite pleased. The glass also appears to scum while working - a fine layer of bubbles - but this disappears after cooling and striking.

Overall - recommend. This glass may look like it's a problem when working, but comes out of the kiln very nice!

Vetro 987 - Dark Lichen - Odd lot

This is the first one I tried in a new series of Vetrofond glasses that are really cool. Sometime ago, I was saying it would be nice to see some streaky glasses - and here they are! Woohoo.

As a rod - this looks like a black-lined amber. When working, it looks like coffee and licorice. Or maybe kahlua and black sambuca. The amber part strikes to a cafe o lait, but the black stays black and the overall effect is a streaky marble look. Tres cool.

Soft like an opaque. Drop off shocky - which, when I say that, means it is hard to get a gather large enough to make a bead because the end keeps falling off. (As opposed to exploding shocky). I'd give this a buy recommendation if you like an interesting marble look for a background or as a standalone for sculptural work. I'll be buying more.

Vetro 952 - Dark Violet

Vetro's Dark Violet seem very similar to the Moretti New Dark Violet of a few years ago. Slightly streaky, nice soft plummy colour. It does reduce slightly to a slightly brassy lustre. This can be reduced with a soak in CLR (see front bead in picture to the left. (After being CLR'ed, vs the one's behind) Same beads below, before treating.)

This brassy reduction could be used to good advantage, and is easy enough to get rid of if undesired.

Update on the Parrot Green

This pic is a little truer to the colour. I've also noticed that in bright sunlight, this colour shows a little more yellow. Quite an interesting colour - assuming you are a fan of the yellow-greens - which not everyone is!

Sasha's Silver

Now here is a glass that you can spend a lot of time exploring the possibilities of - and a lot of money on too - this is one of the "exotic" soft glasses, weighing in at $100 USD/pound. Ouch.

However, look at the fun you can have with it - there is only one colour of glass in this picture.

OK - I'm stretching it a little - the two tablet beads have a little decoration that is not Sasha's Silver, (R4-12) and some of the spacers are encased in clear. Oh, and one of the bicones and the tablets have a black base, hidden under the glass, which is to save on glass, as it is so gosh-darned pricey!

Anyway - the point is that all these gorgeous blue, aqua and teal colours are coming from the same glass.

And the muddy taupe too.

In the rod, the glass is a turquoise colour, with layers in cross section - and if you just put it down and do nothing - it appears black. Not very exciting - as you can see from some of the spacers, above.

The fastest and most reliable way I have personally found so far to get the colours to appear, is to cool the glass rapidly, and reheat. The easiest way to do this, is to make a shape that needs to be marvered - such as the bicone. The colour may not show on the first marvering - but it should show shortly after. You will see it as you are working the bead - you don't need to wait for it to come out of the kiln to know if you got it.


Apparently, however, you can overwork it, and you get this rather muddy effort. (feathered pattern is opal yellow.) Some may like this, I might even like this, if I wasn't so enamored of the blue and aqua effect.

So far, I have not been able to "bring the colour back" from this, which is why, for now, I'm referring to it as "overworked."

As reactive glasses go, the colours are very rewarding and fairly easy to achieve. I'm going to be buying more and experimenting with it.

Rating - hmm - a rating system? Mandrels? Torches? Let's give this 4 torches for interest and ease of use, of a maximum 5. (Less one for the price!)