double helix rhea

Gawd, this color is gorgeous. This is double helix's Rhea. Stunning

sigh 

😍😍

Eff 428 light red

I've being trying to colour match a specific red lately, and it's been making me crazy. I thought that 4 to 8 would be a good colour match, but it goes a streaky darker red when I work it, that doesn't matter. However it looks awesome when making these.

so yay!

I've been busy ... but not at the torch

I've gotten some feedback that the two of you that actually read this blog are wondering what has happened to me.

Puppies. Puppies is what happened to me. A litter of puppies.

All together now, "d'aaaaaw."
Consequently - I've had very little time at the torch.

They are substantially bigger now, and I am starting to get back into the swing of things.

Attempting things like this. 

Nothing like a challenge!

Cheers!

Pyrex: Boro vs Soft

Here's a pretty thorough article on the

The Pyrex Glass Controversy That Just Won't Die

It's fun to read how they explain COE. 

Worth the read for the insight. 

CiM 488 Peppermint Cream

CiM Peppermint Cream is a tinted neutral. Think of the paint department at the hardware store, and 47 shades of "white." While you ponder whether to paint the spare bedroom in "Polar Blush" vs "Miami Sand" - your significant other has given themselves an eyeroll headache and snuck off to the tool section to fondle the sanders.

Peppermint Cream is a lightly greenish tinted neutral.



It does faithfully match the colour of the unmelted rod. WYSIWYG.






With turquoise (Eff) dots - no reaction, some bleeding.

 Fine-silver - some light fuming.

And the self-coloured spacer. 

 It works up nice - no issues. I think the idea of lightly tinted neutrals and a coordinated, subtle palette is an interesting one. I think it will spawn new designs in beads. More variety of colours also means that it is easier to find your own unique look, which is always a good thing.

CiM 317 Baked Alaska

CiM Baked Alaska - a creamy vanilla colour.


 From the left, self-coloured spacer, spacer with fine-silver wire, spacer with dots of Eff turquoise (one of the turquoises) and dots of Baked Alaska on top, and the rightmost bead is the same pattern, with dots of CiM Troi.








 The Troi and the Baked Alaska have done quite a bit of feather and bleeding at the edges. No grey line, however.

Here, the dots are Eff Turquoise.  The Baked Alaska seems to be struggling to cover it completely, but there is a grey reaction line, although it is doing some crazy things the likes of which I have not seen before. Interesting.

 Fine silver wire, which has fumed the Baked Alaska, but not really done the sort of thing you would expect from an ivory.

 This lone spacer turned out darker than the base of the two with dots. Whether it accidentally fumed from being next to the silver wire, I am not sure.

 Here, you can see that these two match the rod quite nicely.

So I'm not sure if Baked Alaska is a vanilla, or a french vanilla. It might be a light yellow, or a light cream. Either way, I think it has lots of potential and I'm keen to do more with it.

CiM 473 Eclectus Parrot

Gawd, this is a gorgeous colour. This whole CiM intense juicy green batch of colours just makes me want to make things in green.

Just for the eye candy - here we have Eclectus Parrot along with the rod.

Now, if you have looked up Eclectus Parrot - to see if there is such a thing as an Eclectus Parrot, you will discover that indeed, you could have also named a shade of red or violet as Eclectus. Because while the male is a beautiful shade of green (this shade), the females are red and blue, and for the longest time, no one realized they were the same species. "Hey, I can't get this cage full of green parrots to breed." "Funny, I have a cage full of red and purple parrots that won't breed either."

O_o

CiM 628 Wisteria

Just another look at Wisteria and Crocus.

Just because they are so pretty.

Left and Centre are Crocus, the one on the right is Wisteria.  Crocus is unClear, Wisteria is more Watery.

CiM 318 Lemonade and CiM 319 Egg White

Here is another pair intended to match in colour, with different translucencies.

On the left, Lemonade, and on the right, Egg White.  The Lemonade is clearer, the Egg White, more translucent. The second from the left shows a lot of bubbles, but in all fairness - I got it really freakin' hot and I saw it bubble up like crazy when I made it. I'm currently working on a Nortel Arrow, which can deliver a laser-like level of heat.

 Again, with the rod. You can see the finshed bead stays true to the rod.

However, when you heat the glass - it goes bright yellow - like - highlighter yellow. Canaries and Lemons yellow.

Which kind of made me wish for a bright transparent/translucent intense yellow. Because the current batch of Effetre yellow is wishy-washy and eventually I am going to work through my stash of Vetro transparent yellow - and then what?

These two are super match for each other in colour. I am really liking this trend with the matching colours in different translucencies.

CiM 827 Tahitian Pearl

CiM Tahitian Pearl is a colour that develops a glossy metallic dark silver or gunmetal colour.

It does this easily, without any particular effort on the part of the user. In fact, when I put these in the kiln, they actually looked a streaky chocolate brown, which worried me a little, but they came out gorgeous!





















The first thing I thought was, what is the comparison with this and Effetre's 065 Metallic Black and 275 Dark Silver Plum?

The top mandrel is a single bead, from the left, Tahitian Pearl, Metallic Black, and Dark Silver Plum. You can see the Metallic Black has a slightly gold hue, and indeed, I have always found it to have richer colours than the Dark Silver Plum. 

The Dark Silver Plum has a bit of a reputation for pitting and creating fireworks, but I can't say that I think this test was definitive enough to say that the Tahitian Pearl doesn't do it - it just wasn't a big enough piece. 

Dark Silver Plum does some nice things with ivory - bleeding and webbing - so it will be worth it to try it with the Tahitian Pearl - as soon as I get my hands on some more of it!

First Look - CiM New Greens

Before I dive into each of these colours individually - I thought I would do a first-up head to head comparison.

The new selection from CiM this season contains a lot of new greens in some very juicy new shades. Let's look, shall we?


Top Mandrel, Two of each colour, self-coloured, from the left:
CiM 480 Anole, CiM 486 Elixir Sparkle, CiM 485 Elixir.
Middle mandrel (aqua marker) From the left, two each of:
CiM 473 Eclectus Parrot, CiM 474 Ectoplasm, CiM 477 Budgerigar. 
Bottom mandrel, (mermaid marker) From the left, two each of:
CiM 472 Mantis, CiM 471 Wheatgrass, CiM 487 Poison Apple.

 Same arrangement, but with flash and some backlighting.

I think at this point, I am most excited about Elixir and Eclectus Parrot and Budgerigar. And Mantis.

Poison Apple (right) has been re-formulated to stay translucent, and Wheatgrass (left) is the companion to match as opal version. Looks like Poison Apple definitely stayed translucent, but Wheatgrass came out pretty transparent for me. But the colour match is good.

Mantis and  Eclectus Parrot (which gets my vote for the most-likely-to-be-misspelled) are another matching pair. The Mantis is the misty opal (bottom) and the E.Parrot is the translucent (top). Definitely a winner here.

Budgie (my vote for name-most-likely-to-be-shortened) (right) and Ectoplasm (left) are another matching pair, with Budgie being the misty opal (yes) and Ecto being the translucent (also yes.) And good colour match.

Anole (left) and Elixir (right) are another matching pair (I sliced up the photo to put them side by side), with Anole being the tranlucent opal and Elixir the misty opal. Colour match is also good.

And finally - Elixir Sparkle, which doesn't sparkle, or match Elixir, so not sure what to say about that. It's a pretty cool colour, actually, the poor thing just look drab in the company of all these other juicy greens. It's not easy being green. ;-)

The option to use various degrees of translucency looks like a lot of fun, and these bright happy greens are certainly a welcome addition to the palette - so yay for greens!

CiM 558 Troi and comparison CiM Mermaid

CiM Troi, a deep, opaque blue-green. It comes up very streaky, which I like, but may not be your cup of tea.

Three spacers in Troi, with the middle one with Eff 276 Dark Ivory dots. You can see there is a very pronounced reaction with the ivory, and the dots sunk into the Troi and got all malformed instead of staying round.

I thought it looked like an exact match for CiM 586 Mermaid,  except the Mermaid is not so streaky. The malformed blob on the right is Mermaid.

Other folks however are reporting that it is more like Cotswold Blue and not this close to Mermaid. So, as always, your mileage may vary.

Does that phrase even mean anything to anyone any more?

Troi - streaky version of Mermaid in my books so far.

CiM 688 Wisteria and comparison CiM 660 Crocus

In the new run of colours from Creation is Messy is a shot at making colours that match but have different translucencies. So in the case of this new colour Wisteria, it was to be a more translucent version of 660 Crocus.

I would say that they nailed it.

 On the left (in both photos) is the Wisteria, on the right, the Crocus.















Four self coloured spacers from the left, in Wisteria, and one Crocus on the right. You can definitely see the crocus is translucent, while the Wisteria is little misty.

 Same, shot with flash. On my phone.

Because my photo booth is back there somewhere ... 



and the other end of the office looks like this. 

Turns out, there was no insulation in the walls. The window has a better R factor than the walls. :-(

yay for 60's construction.

Anyway - Wisteria - super nice. Perfect match for Crocus.

CiM 559 Cerulean and CiM 560 Cerulean Sparkle

Creation is Messy's new colour line-up includes some "Sparkle" colours - colours with aventurine added for some sparkle. This is new for them, and I was very excited to get my hands on it.

Sadly, however, someone appears to have been a little conservative adding the sparkly stuff, and it is pretty much invisible.

:-(

I apologize for the photos. My photobooth is currently buried and filled with other stuff as I renovate my office. Feel my pain.

Anyway ... it is a super pretty transparent aqua - just about an exact match for the colour of Windex.

 The picture below, the top mandrel (2 self-coloured spacers and colour over white) is the Cerulean Sparkle. And the bottom mandrel (over white and 2 self spacers), is the Cerulean.

 Order reversed, bit of an angle. I found the Cerulean to be a little gassy, giving me some bubbles, and I definitely found the Sparkle to be stiffer.

 Sparkle on the left, non- on the right.

 Plain for the top one, sparkle for the bottom one.

It's a super pretty colour, but sadly, the sparkle is invisible. :-(

Val Cox Frit: Flora

Flora - new frit from Val Cox. This is a reduction frit, a mix of transparent green and aqua, but the green tends to overwhelm the aqua, especially when reduced.


The frit itself ... very pretty. 

These are both a base of clear (Effetre), layer of frit, layer of clear, another layer of frit. Not reduced, but worked in a very slight reduction flame.

 The barrel bead is a core of clear, a spiral (uneven) wrap of white, frit, reduce, spiral wrap of clear, so that some of the reduced is encased and some is not.

 Here, the top and bottom are made with a gather of clear dipped in frit, and the middle two are the same, but reduced.

 So, while if you look hard, you can see the influence of the aqua in little hints, the predominate effect is that of green, and with reduction, a sort of gold-y green.

It would make a nice base for something with flowers on top.