Messy testing - Canoe, Harvest and Monarch ltd run

There is a lovely trio of Autumnal shades on the way from CiM. From left to right these colours are called Canoe ltd run, Harvest ltd run and Monarch ltd run. My favourite of the three is Canoe, it has lots of character and strikes to a range of soft warm brown tones. When you melt Canoe it looks like a washed out and pale beige, the colours come in when you bring the bead back to the flame to strike it.

Canoe also strikes in the kiln, the spacers in this set were made 2 to a mandrel, the first spacer was struck as the second was made and the second went into the kiln un-struck. As you can see, all of the spacers have come out of the kiln a uniform shade. There is a reaction between Canoe and fine silver leaf, no colour change as such but a lovely metallic sheen is left when the leaf is vapourised in the flame.

These little flower bud beads have a core of Harvest ltd run with some Orange Crush ltd run petals swiped on top. The stamens were painted on with an encased stringer (Loch Ness ltd run over Daffodil ltd run).

Harvest is a very pretty mid orange opaque, slightly brighter than Creamsicle and quite similar in appearance to a long time sold out favourite of mine called Alley Cat ltd run.

The core of this next pair of metal beads is made with a pretty pale orange opaque glass called Monarch ltd run. Looking through my glass stash, the only glass I found that looked at all similar in rod form was Effetre yellow ochre -  but the beads that came out of the kiln were not even close!



The Monach beads have dots, the Effetre yellow ochre beads have black hearts. The yellow ocher came out of the kiln looking more like a caramel brown than the beautiful apricot orange of Monarch.

Jolene x

Messy testing - Jelly Bean and Siren ltd run

In this post I am looking at Jellybean ltd run and Siren ltd run. Jelly Bean is a pale apple green opal glass, shown here with turquoise dots. This picture shows how it compares with Chartreuse ltd run (lime dots) and Inchworm ltd run (black dots).  It's a very pretty colour, unique to  the 104 glass palette and fairly easy to work with. I find it is a fairly stiff glass and if worked too hot you can create micro-bubbles on the tip of the rod.

CiM have developed Siren ltd run as an attempt to replicate the now sold out Aloe Juice ltd run. The hearts on the left were made with Siren and the hearts on the right were made with Aloe Juice - these glass colours are dead ringers for one another but that is a little hard to see because of the vibrant turquoise and lime dots over the transparent base colours appear to trick the eye and give them each a differnet hue.

The focal hearts below are made with a thick core of either Siren (decorated with turquoise flowers) or Aloe Juice (decorated with purple flowers) encased in Effetre 006 clear glass. It is very easy to see from these beads what a close match these two colours are.

 

A quick edit to add this picture, I was asked if Siren etches and so I did a quick test by dipping this rod in tub of etchall fluid for a minute or two and neutralising it with baking soda in water. As you can see it etches beautifully.

Jolene xx

Messy Testing - Bone ltd run

Creation is Messy will be bringing out some new glass colours in the autumn. This first trio of heart pairs in made with Bone ltd run. Bone is a lovely super pale ivory shade. It melts smoothly and quickly in the flame does not show any striations on the surface of your finished work. It reacts with fine silver but seemingly not with glass containing copper such as Effetre light turquoise.

Firstly I made a stringer by covering about 1 inch of the end of a Bone rod with silver leaf then melting in the silver and pulling the glass gather out to make a silvered stringer. The first pair of hearts are wrapped with the silvered Bone stringer. The wraps have come out looking nicely organic in a warm tan brown shade. You can also see that the silver has fumed a few small areas of glass adjacent to where it was applied (most obviously seen on the left hand side of the bottom heart just below the stringer line).

Interestingly, when using the silvered Bone stringer to make dots it seems that the organic effects are confined to the surface of the stringer while the centre of the dot remains the original pale creamy shade. This gives a very pleasing dot on dot effect. The last pair of beads were made with a base of Bone decorated with Effetre light turquoise dots. There is no reaction line apparent at all.

For comparison this next trio of beads are made in exactly the same way with Effetre light ivory glass. The first beads are made with silvered ivory stringer which is commonly used to give this earthy organic effect. In contrast with Bone there is no apparent additional colour from residual fuming from the silver in the applied stringer.

The second set of hearts has been decorated with dots made from silvered ivory stringers. The dots have a solid yet mottled appearance rather than the dot on dot effect as seen with the silvered Bone stringer dots. The third pair of beads quite clearly show a dark reaction line between the base of ivory and light turquoise dot decoration.

Jolene xx