Messy testing - Elixir and Elixir Sparkle ltd run

Today I am writing about two new opal green glass colours from Creation is Messy. They are called Elixir and Elixir Sparkle and they will be available to buy in the UK in a few weeks time.

The lighter shade is called Elixir ltd run, a soft delicate pastel semi transparent green. It seems to have an inner glow.

The darker hearts are made with Elixir Sparkle ltd run. In rod form Elixir Sparkle looks the same shade as Elixir but with tiny gold glittery inclusions.  When I worked the glass it darkened up quite considerably to give this swirly forest fern almost opaque green shade.

These rounds are made with a base of Elixir decorated with stripes of another new green glass called Willow ltd run. Willow is a pretty opaque mid green shade, I'll talk about Willow a bit more in a later blog post.

Elixir is very easy to work with, quite a stiff glass to melt in the flame.

The large lentil here is made with a thin core of Elixir which has been encased with a thick layer of Effetre 006 Clear glass. Again I have decorated the surface with Willow stringers.

This next pair of rounds were made with Elixir Sparkle, decorated with teal blue green stringers pulled from a rod of glass called Troi ltd run.

As with the hearts above, these rounds look much darker than Elixir Sparkle did in rod form.

This lentil below is made with a very thin core of Elixir Sparkle encased with Effetre 006 Clear and decorated with Troi stringers. The thin core of  Elixir Sparkle in this bead looks much less opaque than the solid Elixir spacers that sit next to it.

My test beads haven't manage to show any of the subtle sparkle you find in the Elixir Sparkle rods - I don't know if it is because the glass is becoming darker and more opaque when worked of if I was working too hot and burning out the sparkles and so I decided to try again the next day and work cooler. 

I chose to make these simple rustic hoops because I can work the glass quite cool and do not need to reintroduce the beads to the flame for shaping or decorating.

The results are interesting as the beads came out a lighter and slighlty less opaque shade than my previous Elixir Sparkle beads and spacers but I still couldn't see any of the sparkles.

Jolene xx