Mini Mo' July 2011 - Lemongrass and Little Black Dress

The main colourway for my Little Black Dress Mini Mo’ glasswork this month is CiM Peace and CiM Unique Hades 511820-2 with “The Big Smoke” enameled shards.

I absolutely love the classic combination of black and white together - a little back dress teamed up with vivid colour accessories for a party or with elegant monochrome jewellery for that very important meeting - whichever way you choose to play it, it just works!

So, when I decided on the black and white them for one of my Mini Mo' glasswork themes I kept thinking back to the idea of a trim, elegant and finely detailed little black dress for inspiration. The Little Black Dress murrini follow this idea very well and I am thrilled with them.

The beads on the right show how the twistie behaves both under encasement and melted flat on to the surface of a bead. Unique Hades 511820-2 is an extremely dense black but has a different formula to regular Hades. It webs and spread beautifully on the surface of a bead but also picks up wisps of silver in and oxygen rich flame in much the same way as CiM Gunmetal. It is much stiffer to work with than Gunmetal however and looks a true black when pulled thin. In my opinion it displays the best properties of both of these two CiM blacks.

I have used various graduated shades of grey tone enamels over Peace to create these moody shards to compliment the Little Black Dress Mini Mo'. I've called them "The Big Smoke" because they look so industrial and cloud like when placed on the surface of the bead and twisted in to elegant trails with a stringer.

The main colourway for my Lemongrass Mini Mo’ glasswork is Effetre Petrol Green, Effetre Lemon Yellow Special, Effetre Uranium Yellow transparent and with “Meadow Sweet” enameled shards. The primary colour My Lemongrass Murrini is CiM Soylent, chosen for my club members who work with hot head torches because it is much less reactive to flame chemistry than Petrol Green.

My colour inspiration here comes from my tumbleweed garden at the moment, all long grass and dandelions - I chose the name Lemongrass for the collection though as the glasswork is so much prettier and more sophisticated than that!

My test beads on the left show a core of Petrol Green encased with clear cored twistie and Lemongrass Murrini which have been melted flat. A final layer of encasement gives an optical enlargement to the detail underneath.

I wanted to show how this murrini looks left raised on the surface of a bead too, and so finished this large tab focal bead with a single raised murrini.

More tinkering around with enamels for the "Meadow Sweet" shards - some were created with an additional layer of Effetre Clear 006 encasement and some were blown with enamel on the surface which allows for a pretty layered effect and some subtle organic effects with a reduction flame.

Jolene x

Frit N Chips lampwork supplies and Kitzbitz Art Beads