Wednesday, December 22, 2010

In search of Greatness


Meh - I thought I was onto something great - and then it fizzled.

I really liked the look of this when it was hot, but like so many beads - when it came out of the kiln - meh - not so much. Now it just seems busy and overworked. And where the heck did that scum come from? Bleh.

I was so taken with that misty part - that I made a bunch of follow up test beads to confirm the colours and make sure it worked with other colours.

And what did I get? Well - if you put on Murphy's hat and guessed "nothing," you'd be dead right.





Mostly nothing, anyway.

What gave me the misty look in the big bead was black, with a layer of silver foil melted in, then a layer of CiM Cirrus, and encased. There were some stringers of Kronos and Terra Nova, encased, in the mix too, and little goldstone. But it was the Cirrus that looked misty, and that makes sense - that's what it does.

So this test bead is black + silver foiled melted in + Cirrus encased. Might as well be clear.

Same again. There is a nice little strip of colour in the middle, but I think the bead or the rod or something got contaminated with a bit of the Kronos/Terra Nova stringer.


This is just Cirrus, over black.


So where did my mistiness go? Either the Cirrus needs critical mass - i.e. a thin encasement just doesn't show any colour, like a very pale transparent, or a lot of working, heating and cooling, emphasizes it's mistiness.

Or maybe the scraps and trails of string play a bigger part - in that it reflects the colours internally and takes on the colours of the stuff around it.

What ever it was, matching spacers did not happen.

Disappointing. Oh well - try something else.

1 comment:

  1. You didn't say which black you are using, but CiM tuxedo does something very similar when silver is melted in, reduced, and encased in clear. The type of clear doesn't matter but the black did, at least for me.

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