Thursday, August 16, 2012

Double Helix Speckled Lusters: OP-507



 Woohoo - another brand new colour to try out! This is a specked lustre from Double Helix - listed in their brochure as OP-507, and available from them as of Aug 18. This batch is labeled "7.12.12"

This glass has a texture to the rod - those whitish speckles you can see in the photo - you can actually feel - like glassy concrete.











This first bead is unstruck and unreduced and un-everything. I wanted to see if the speckles stayed - and I really didn't expect them too - but yes - you can see a sort of starry night effect. This is a self-coloured bead - just wound it and kilned it. 



 For this bead, I made a core of clear, and encased with 507. I tried striking (cooling and reheating) - with no response, so I then reduced it. I over reduced it, and it went rather muddy, so I unreduced it, and re-reduced it, with better results.



 For this one, I made a base of clear, encased it with 507, marvered it, and let it cool to not glowing, and then gently reduced it. This photo does not begin to show how amazingly reflective this bead is - it is oil-slick colours and mirror-bright. A very, very dramatic lustre effect. I'll try re-shooting it once I have it off the mandrel and cleaned.


 This is, again, a clear core, encased with 507 - some of with was applied in a slight reducing flame. It was reduced, and encased with clear - making an effort not to un-reduce it when encasing (keep it out of the flame, much like encasing silver foil.) Finally - fine silver wire was wrapped around the bead and melted in - to form the silver dots.




 This was the same technique again. Clear core, 507, reduce, encase, silver wire.



Pretty nice, eh? Definitely loving this one - wonder what they are going to call it?

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