Double Helix Okeanos - Preview

 Double Helix - Okeanos - slated for release in September - but a preview batch went to the Gathering - which is how I got it!

Their brochure describes it as a "Blue Fast Striking Terra pulled by machine."

The rods are a dark, opaque Connecticut blue (bottom right in pic.)

This is a striking glass - so get it hot, let it cook, and reheat it.





My first attempts were somewhat less than thrilling.

This one was deliberately not struck - just to see what I got.

 I struck this one a couple of times, and while it had lovely colour when it went into the kiln, and there is colour there, you need a blinding amount of light to see it.

 

 This is the same bead - grossly over-exposed, but you can see that there IS colour there.

 This one I heated to very hot, it was blue when I made it, as it cooled to not glowing - it looked green. I struck it lightly - it showed blues and purples, and I kilned it - and this is what I got.

 This poor bead never had a chance - this is what the bead looks like when you wing it into the kiln unstruck because the smoke detector has started to scream. No fire - just high humidity, btw.

Enough with the spacers - onto some real beads. This is a clear base, layer of Okeanos, marvered, and firepolished. No particular effort to strike it was made - it just struck by the process of being worked. Much better. Marvering helps to cool it too.

 

You can even see a  hint of purples in it. 

And - now we're talking! This was a base of clear, a layer of Okeanos, and encased in clear.

Frequently, I find that glass that I have trouble striking - I think it's a patience thing - behave much better when I encase them. The heat of the encasing layer does the work for me. 

Again - clear core, Okeanos, encased in clear, dots of Okeanos, and reduced. Lovely blues and aquas under that deep, deep encasing, and the dots have reduced, and fumed the clear for an antiquey look.

 This is a clear core, layer of Okeanos, mased, and struck. It had quite a bit of the brown colour when I kilned it. It's pretty dark.

 And this was a lovely looking planet - blues and greens and brown swirls - but out of the kiln - a little dark for my taste.

 This colour really shines when it is encased - beautiful blues and greens. I'd say, at this point, if I can still see browns on it when it is ready to go into the kiln - I'm not going to be really happy with the end result. It should look lighter than the end result I'm going for. With that in mind - I'll try it some more and see if the hypothesis holds up!