Frit ... Paddle? Tray? from CG Bead Rollers

 Had some fun with this new tool the other night! This is a frit ... tray? Paddle? Trough? It is an enclosed, shallow graphite tool with a rim, that you put the frit in, and then roll your bead in. It has a handle - so you can pick it up and see the bead as it touches down on the frit.

As you may know, I really like to be able to see the when the tool hits the bead, so to speak, so I really enjoyed making some frit beads with this. And if you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know I am NOT a big frit person. Me and frit - not so much. However, this tool is pretty cool and it has the nice benefit that when you pick it up, you can give it a little shimmy and flatten the frit out to a nice, even layer.

Maybe that is why it was working well for me? Generally, my approach to frit is to use the tray as seen below, with the frit piled up in a huge drift.

Hmmm. Something to think about.

I will say this though. Without the curved frit tray to pour the frit back into, and then back into the jar, there is no way I could have gotten the frit neatly out of this new paddle doo-hickey. So there's that to think about. It's good to use, but not so good for clean up. Maybe if one corner at the end was carved down to make a funnel gap to pour back into the jar?

Fun New Murrini Tools

While I was in Tucson - I stopped by the new Glass Artists Bead Show - there's a story there, but that's for a different post - anyway - CG Beads was there - the Bead Roller folks, so I stopped in to look.

Now I'm mostly too free-form for bead shaping roller type tools - and while I think they are fine - most of my presses migrated to the BeadFX studio for anyone to use there. However, when I saw these,

 I was ... oh - it's an optic mold. With a handle ... because ... and the gal running the booth finished my sentence - "optic molds get hot."

We actually repeated that about three times, like a mantra. Because - this is effing brilliant.


 You can see here with a little bit more of an angle that there is a handle on the back. Hold the handle, plunge the glass in, and you are in no danger of trying to hold onto the hot mold - which is cool the first time you use it, and burn-inducing every time thereafter.

If you are still scratching your head on what it is, it's for making murrini. Get a blob (gather) of glass hot - plunge it into the hole, it takes on the shape of the hole, you then add colour around the outside, and stretch out into cane, and slice it up into murrini.

 See, nice, easy flower murrini.

















OK - next cool murrini tool - this murrini holder. Stand your murrini slices in the cavities so that they stay upright, don't fly away, roll away, etc.



Plus nice lentil or cabochon cavity up at the end. 

So now you can use the murrini you just made, without half of them flying away as you try to apply them to the bead.


 Another brilliant tool.

So, two great tools for the murrini enthusiasts, or those that might want to be. ;-)

There is, btw, a nice little description of how to use the cross shape mold (above) on the CG Beads page.

Eye Candy

My latest eye. I'm kinda happy with this one - and it has an odd optical illusion to it - it looks sort of distorted - even though the camera was very close to vertical. The just seems to have nailed an artificial perspective effect.

Kool, eh?

Twisted

There is something so very satisfying about a nice twistie - almost seems a shame to use it.


I just got back from Tucson (and boy, are my arms tired. ba-da-boom.) I did get to the new Tucson Glass Artists bead show, and got a couple of treasures.




Also picked up some new tools which I am anxious to try out. I've been insanely busy lately - but trying to get to the torch a bit more! So many projects - so little time!

Next one.

Going to have to think of a better name for this series than "New Directions."

Anyway - here is the latest. Current name is "Careful where you step."

For scale - here it is nestled in my hand.

Testing for Compatibility

I found this video that illustrates the stringer test for compatibility. You can use the Stringer Test to check for compatibility in a suspect glass, or a glass that you have lost the label off.

I've read about the test oodles of times, but it is so much clearer to just watch it.

Why is Glass Transparent?

Glass is cool. Really freaking cool. There is a whole whack of really cool science in our art.

Welcome to the New Year

2015 - I swear, just yesterday - 2015 was far in the unimaginable future - and yet, here it is.

Take a look into this future and see how much of it you think will happen. I know one part of it that will never happen - my house will never be this clean until they invent personal cleaning robots - and let me tell you - the Roomba doesn't begin to cover it!




If the Corning vision of the future of glass doesn't convince you - then check out these two videos of Mythbusters Jamie and Adam exploring Corning's Brave New Glass. Now there's some futuristic stuff! And yay Adam and Jamie - well done you.

Boneyard

The Boneyard. The crash site of a long lost dragon.

The latest in my series of New Directions.

CiM 420 Fiddlehead

CiM Fiddlehead - which I don't see at this writing on their page of green, but may well be listed by the time you read this.

Without doing a head to head comparison - this looks very much like Effetre's classic Pea Green.

On the mandrel, on the left, you will see that bead has ivory dots, and there has been a nice reaction with the ivory and the Fiddlehead. 

 Pleasantly streaky and green - a nice, useful, opaque green.

Leafy Eye Candy

Just some swirly, leafy eye candy.

Don't forget, you can mix those ends of rods together. Stick one on another like you were starting a twistie or a filigrana, then get it really hot and mush it together. Then use the gather to make a bead or whathaveyou. Just don't expect the same results twice.  ;-)

Turquoise vs Turquoise

There you go - the holy grail of turquoise - one that doesn't develop that grey metallic lustre. It does lighten a little with heating / cooling cycles.

What is the turquoise on the left? ... I *think* it is from an old stash of Laucha - purchased from Glass Daddy, years ago.While I don't see it there now, I do notice that the site has had a full re-vamp and has entered the age of ecommerce.

While there - I do want to you look at image 6 in the gallery.

There - that is how your glass rods are made. Two guys and a really long space. One of them backs up. If he runs too fast - your rods are thinner. That is why some rods are thicker than others and glass is sold by weight.

Remember that next time you are unhappy with the thickness of a rod of glass.

Anyway - I'm glad to see Glass Daddy back up and alive. I hope they do well!

CiM 116 Mahogany

CiM classifies this colour in with their "reds", but this is a brown, if every I saw one. And a lovely, swirly milk chocolate it is too.

But the best part of this glass is how it develops a rainbow of shades when abused with rapid heating and cooling.

 Look at that! Isn't that yummy? Orange and yellow tones pop up - making this a versatile "autumn leaf" colour.

I definitely want to play with this some more. 

Comparison: CiM Chai vs CiM Primrose

On the top - CiM Primrose, and on the bottom CiM Chai.

The Chai is an earthier colour, and you could call both of them "skin tones" but the Primrose is more suitable for cherubs and whimsical children, and the Chai is more "real."

Although I don't think they are particularly equivalent - I like the Chai better.

CiM 765 Chai

Not a new colour, I reviewed it last in 2008. CiM lists it in with their browns, and certainly - some people are getting a much darker colour with it than I am.

While the rod is a little darker than the last time around, the beads came out pretty similar. '

The leaf - which is cooled rapidly by mashing and then reheated along the edges, has some much more interesting colour variations.  Some interesting possibilities there.

CiM 902 Primrose

CiM Primrose is all kinds of yummy pink-sugar goodness. What a pretty, useful, opaque pink - for those, of course, who like pink.

I did find it a little shocky -  but for a pretty, opaque, pale pink - this is an excellent choice.

CiM 903 Whisper

CiM Whisper is a translucent, moonstone-type glass, that sucks up the light. (Not to be confused with Effetre's Whisper.)

Held up right under a light, it is a pleasant enough warmish light ... non-descript colour. I don't know - paleish pink.

But mostly it just looks scorched to me. Maybe I actually did scorch it. This might be your cup of tea, but sadly - not mine. Oh well - can't like 'em all.

CiM 617 Trapeze

CiM Trapeze is a wonderfully transparent medium lavender - that I get the feeling is supposed to colour shift. It has that colour about it that looks like others that shift, and I see a little tonal variation, but not huge, dramatic shifts. This may say more about my lighting options and the lack of sunlight than about the glass, however.

Like others of it's ilk - other purple-blue "Alexandrite" colour shift glasses - it is dreamy to work. Very clear, tiny bubbles, but no scumming. I wish "clear" was this nice.

 I wandered around the house, looking for different lights to shoot with. You can see a difference between the above and below, but it's hard to say how much of the colour change is a shift, or is a result of the colour of the light.

Anyhoo - it's a nice, magical colour.

Cabochon

Hey now - I really like this one. Off mandrel cabochon.

I really like the way this came out. Almost like a poppy. Woohoo!

CiM 114 Hearthrob

And here is yet another "c'mon baby light my fire" red from CiM.

Think Valentine's day for this one, and a super-bright red it is.

Again - it is slightly streaky and transparent in places - although where is has gone opaque, it is really quite opaque. 

 Again, it stays pretty true to the unworked rod colour.

 And again, while this photographs better than the last two reds (Cinnamon Jelly and Poppy) - this is the same degree of colour correction, for comparison.

CiM 117 Cinnamon Jelly

Another red from CiM - this is Cinnamon Jelly. This is another, super bright intense red.


The unworked rod, to my eye, in artificial light, has a slightly livery, brownish tone, but that appears to disappear when worked.

Like some other transparent reds, it strikes to a cloudy red when repeated heated and cooled. You can see here that the barrel or tube bead on the right side, on the mandrel, is quite transparent at the end, where I finished it and then kilned it, without the repeated cooling and heating cycles of the other beads. 

 Again, the above photo seems orangish to me, and this is the color corrected version that more closely matches the actual colour that I see as I sit here and type this.

 Here's a squiggly little buggly-boo, and you can see the translucent/transparent thing going on.

 Pretty juicy, eh?

But wait - there's still more hot red to come!

CiM 115 Poppy

Continuing with the theme of fiery colours - this is Creation is Messy's Poppy.

This is a super-intense red that appears to be translucent, but is going to read as an opaque in most uses.

The colour stays true to the  coloiur of the unworked rod.

 Reds, especially very intense reds, can be very hard to faithfully photograph. Above is the un-retouched photo, but below, I have darken this image and shifted it a little to the blue end, and come up with red that, on my monitor anyway, more accurately reflect the colour of the glass - it being a very pure red, and not at all as orange as the image above looks to me.

A very nice, vibrant red - but wait - there is more coming!

Comparison CiM Hearthrob, Cinnamon Jelly, and Poppy

So in a head-to-head comparison of these three newest reds - which wins?

Well - when it comes to colour - we all win, but here they are, side by side.

From the front, we have CiM 114 Hearthrob, in the  centre, CiM 117 Cinnamon Jelly, and at the rear of the photo, CiM 115 Poppy.

Despite being very similar,  the Hearthrob is the winner in terms of beautiful, drop-dead red. It may, in fact, be a little on the blue side - more raspberry than strawberry, but for my money - it is the red that I want things to be when I say red.

The Cinnamon Jelly, however, is very, very close, and it's quite possible that if you made a bunch of beads with one or the other, you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart.

Under these circumstances, the Poppy looks a little on the orangey side, but it mostly a matter of comparison. Examined by itself, and the Poppy looks like the intense flaming red it is named for.

Again, just for comparison's sake - this is a colour corrected image. You can see the slightly more orangey aspect of the Poppy, but it really is a red.

Choose any one of these if you want a bright red, although Hearthrob would be my favourite.

Except Poppy, with it's translucency, does seem to almost glow ... .

Comparison: Eff Dark Zucca vs CiM Tiger Lily

For ease of comparison, here is Effetre's Dark Zucca (foreground) shown with CiMs Tiger Lily.

The finished beads are virtually identical, but the unworked rods are quite distinct. Both seem to have a slight transparency in areas that have not been heated and cooled multiple times, which adds to the juiciness of the colour.

Barring unforseen reactions - I'd say these two colours can substitute for each other.