CiM colour testing: Charlotte and Limelight

These are both very pretty transparents.

Limelight is a clean, cool green with no hints of yellow. Charlotte is a warm pink that is saturated enough to hold its own. I don’t think we’ve had anything else in 104 quite this colour (not counting CiM’s Paris, out at the same time and very similar). Both have a tendency to develop microbubbles, especially Charlotte – if you heat them further out they may get fewer.

(The last Charlotte spacer was half out of the etching liquid on this side – I left it like this because I liked it).

Here’s a comparison with a couple of other pinks I had to hand – Lauscha transparent pink is a baby pink and cooler in tone than Charlotte. I think the very pale one is Effetre rose quartz 067 – it is definitely Effetre, and their transparent pink tends to be a little peachier most of the time. You can see how well the colour shows in the etched Charlotte. I’d call this a cherry blossom colour. (The dark violet is just there because it was on the same string as the pink).

I then tried encasing silver glass with these transparents. I’ve been using Boreas for this for a while – it is a transparent reducing purple. This time I also added Luna 2.1 which is a mostly transparent striking colour.

This is a core of clear encased in Double Helix Luna 2.1 (left) and Boreas (middle and right) encased with limelight. I did two with the boreas because I had an insufficient reduction moment with the middle bead. The limelight is pale enough that you don’t notice it much. There’s some good electric blue from the boreas on the right, and you can see the range of striking that Luna gets, from opaque yellow to transparent pinky purple. Probably not the best use for limelight, just because you can’t really tell it is there and it doesn’t appear to be affecting the silver glass.

Above is a second view of the limelight beads.

I did the same thing with Charlotte – this time I did two Boreas beads because the thicker encasing on the rightmost bead just ended up a murky green-brown. The middle bead has a thinner encasing and you can see some hints of pink at the top, while over the most reduced areas it is still the weird greenish colour. Silver tends to fume pinks brown – I don’t think I’ve ever tried similar with a transparent pink before. Luna 2.1 on the left is a better match – the pretty pink wisps inside go with the encasing. On the whole, you probably want this glass to look like itself rather than use it with silver glass though. (You can also see some areas of the microbubbles on these beads – once they’re there, you can’t get rid of them).

CiM colour testing: Whisper, Primrose, Coronation Day, Bubblebath

Whisper

This gremlin is made of Whisper, which I liked better than I thought I would! It stays far more opaque than expected – again, the body is over clear and has a bit more misty translucence, but the lips are opaque enough not to let the teeth show through (which is good as it can look kinda scary!). This is rather like Frangipani, but a bit less pink, I think. Like a very diluted one of the plum uniques. It gets the same slight webbing on the surface as you work it.

This rod of Whisper was pretty shocky – I had to baby it back into the flame to stop it shocking off above where I had been working, and when adding the upper lip I must have got the flame too close to a cooler section, as it shocked right off, leaving me with a half-applied lip ending in a centimetre of rod.

In hand to make it stand out a bit better from the background.

Primrose

Primrose is a rather pretty pink (but primroses are yellow!). This rod was really shocky though – worse than Whisper – and it would crack about an inch above the end every time I took it out of the flame and put it down, so when I next had to use it, I needed to not only bring it back slowly high up in the flame, but make sure I got that whole bottom inch heated up before using it. Again, it cracked off while doing the top lip. The actual colour is really nice, and the glass is fine to work with once molten, but you do need to be careful. I imagine using this for one-at-a-time dots would strain one’s patience.

I don’t know if this will be the case with all rods of Primrose or if this was a particularly nasty one, but for a rod without airbubbles running through it this was pretty bad (those just tend to explode in all directions). I was using it alongside a thick Effetre clear rod for the cores, which can have a tendency to crack at the end when cooling just because it’s bigger, hence needing to go back in carefully enough to melt those cracks (but they do heal quickly again). That was far less hassle to use than the Primrose. I don’t even know if keeping the end preheated would help, because it might just shock above that.

A lot of rods do the “crack a bit when you put them down” thing, but usually it’s just at the tip and there’s no real problem. What was unusual here was how far down it cracked, which is what made it harder to use. I use a rod rest, so wasn’t putting it down on a surface either.

Coronation Day

Coronation Day is a dark opal purple. I like this one – nice to use, pretty colour. It’s very like some of the darker plum uniques, again, but I’d need to put them side by side to check differences. You may be able to see here – the feet and bottom lip have opacified and lightened more, while the top stayed darker and more translucent. This is the same thing a lot of the CiM opals do, and depends on how much heating and cooling they get after the last time they were molten (and mayybe on kiln position too). I added the little yellow flowers on the head after doing the feet, but didn’t melt the head while doing that.

Bubblebath

Bubblebath is a similar shade to Whisper in a pale rose quartz kind of way, but far more translucent. The body over clear is very transparent, and I didn’t even try using it for the lips and eyelid, so those are Coronation Day again. I should do some transparent styles of bead with this – could be interesting encasing something shiny, and should make lovely nuggets on its own.

Another look.

Nail art: Neon Psychedelia marble decals

Bright!

These are so very much not colours that I’d normally wear, but I thought I’d go ahead and see if they grew on me.

These were the marble pattern made from the Models Own colours – Luis Lemon, Pukka Purple and Dinky Pinky. I prefer the yellow when it isn’t on top of the blue, because of course it picks up a green tinge then.

My favourite is absolutely my pinky nail. I like the colours there and the accidental little heart!

I put the decals on over a base colour of the yellow and then Seche Vite topcoat. This decals was rather thick in places, which causes problems at the base of the nail particularly as you get a very noticeable ridge there and this is where any catching of the polish will happen. This is also why my pinkies were my favourites, as they came from a thinner section. I had to rescue a couple of these and reattach them (and of course, adding a second topcoat makes the problem worse). They lasted 6 days before I took them all off, which isn’t bad. These decals were again made on the 30th Dec, and put on on the 19th Jan. It *was* getting brittle by this point. I ended up with quite a few little broken off pieces, which you can use as a confetti decoration placing just a couple over a base colour – it looks a little different that way.

I did try going round the edges with acetone to melt them down slightly, but that’s a mistake when the backing isn’t clear because the purple especially gets smeared out and muddy along the edges if you do that. Never mind!

I took all the rest of my decals off their backing sheets when I was getting these ready. I got a surprise as the very first one I made, with greens and metallic brown, came straight off the greaseproof paper no problem! The rest were more finicky and more brittle. (They’ve all been together in a ziplock bag). It had the Collection 2000 clear down first, which none of the others did, and then W7 spearmint. So something in that combo made it very easy to remove – possibly just leaving it so long, as the clear was very hard to remove earlier on its own.

A-dabbling in nail art – marbled decals

I asked for (and received!) vast quantities of new nail polishes for Christmas, since I’ve started having a go at doing nail art again. I did a little bit of multi-colour and attempted patterns some years ago, but nothing like what people are doing now!

I like nail art because it’s a small decorative thing that is pretty much entirely for my benefit – I spend a lot of time at a computer, so looking down and being able to admire interestingly-coloured nails makes me happy. Also, it stops me biting my nails :p

There are so many nail art blogs out there now doing amazing things – I’m only just seeing what is possible.

So, just before New Year, I’d read this tutorial: Dry Water Marble Nails Tutorial on Nuthin’ But A Nail Thing’s blog. I have always loved marbled paper and this looked a lot of fun. I like the idea of making decals with nail polish that you then apply later, because that avoids having to paint left-handedly when I’m right handed.

I did mine on greaseproof paper, because another blog had mentioned parchment paper being the easiest surface to get the polish off. (I think what the US calls parchment paper we call greaseproof, but no idea if theirs is thicker). Well, it will depend on the polishes, but greaseproof paper didn’t work *that* well for me – the polish comes off, but it grips quite tightly and it’s tricky to get the edges up without stretching or tearing, and greaseproof paper is very thin, so also easy to tear with tweezers. Next time I will try on ziplock bags – someone else used a sheet of acetate.

Here are the marbled decals I made, anyway!

The top green and brown one was the first – I made my initial blobs a bit small on that one. I think the next two look a lot better. The neon one uses Models Own Luis Lemon (really neon yellow!), Pukka Purple and Dinky Pinky.

The glittery lime and brown one uses W7 Mojito and Collection 2000 maxiflex Mocha and Shiraz. I was impressed that the mojito works as dots on top of the others – it sits perfectly well on top of them and shows up as itself. Since it’s a transparent with green glitter, I wasn’t sure if it would stay dense or not.

I was really pleased with the orange one! It made such smooth dots that I didn’t marble it at all since it looked great as was. It is Topshop’s Venus Fly Trap (the lime), Stage Dive (the orange) and Pillar Box (red). Many thanks to my boyfriend for venturing into Topshop to get those! I didn’t even know they did a range of nail stuff, not been in there in years.

I was in two minds about the purple one – the colours bled a lot so you didn’t get clear edges, so I did fairly extreme marbling by dragging lines in all directions to get something that wasn’t too muddy. I tried using that one first, and it works really well! It was Revlon Chroma Chameleon Aquamarine, which is a colour-shifting blue to light purple metallic polish, plus Jess Moonflower and Breathless. Moonflower is a midnight blue satiny colour, and Breathless is a blue-pinky holographic. Looks bluish in the bottle, made all the pink glitter in the decal.

I decided to name this combo Midnight Garden because there are some decidedly foliage-like sections.

I did three nails per hand, over Collection 2000 Hot Looks Button Moon, which is a pale wintry blue. ‘Scuse edges, etc etc. Not quite at the professional finish stage yet!

The other nails are two layers of the aquamarine with one layer of Miss Sporty Sparkle Touch 889, which is apparently called Amethyst Dust – no name on bottle. Small pink, blue, red, silver and amethyst glitter. One layer is just a little bit of glitter. That’s what I had on before, so just left it on those nails as the base colour was the same.

I don’t have any fancy top or base coats as yet, so have just been using Collection 2000’s maxiflex clear. Being flexible, it’s easily dented and doesn’t stay quite as shiny as I would like.

Also, after a few days I had the rather disconcerting experience of having all layers of polish on my first finger fall off together! Look down, no polish at all on that nail anymore. I think I much have caught an edge on something and then the whole thing just came straight off, but without enough of a tug for me to notice as it happened. I tried putting one back on and it’s staying there as well as the others for the time being…

I’m keeping the rest of the decals sealed in a ziplock bag, so they hopefully won’t get too brittle.

52 earrings: #48 Terracotta

This pair are copper and warm browns.

#48 Terracotta

The rounded earwires have a little leopardskin jasper round wrapped onto them, and the dangle has two of my lampwork spacers, one terracotta, one cream with silver leaf, plus an Indian agate long nugget bead at the bottom. All wire-wrapped in copper.

52 little things links
• Craft Pimp Week 47 thread
• Linda of Earthshine Lampwork Bead and Jewellery Design: http://www.earth-shine.co.uk/
• Sue of BlueBoxStudio: http://www.blue-box-studio.blogspot.co.uk
• Jolene of Kitzbitz Art Glass: http://kitzbitzartglass.blogspot.co.uk

Lauscha 100 coe testing

This 100 coe glass from Lauscha is mostly used for making glass pens. I was sent some to see if it would be useful to beadmakers too. I received some clear and some striped rods.

The striped rods have a core of clear, then a multi-stripe on two sides that is again thinly encased in clear. So the black and white cane has one stripe in black with a thin border of white and one that is white with a thin border of black.

One cane is transparent pink with three thin stripes of white on one side and the same with transparent green on the other side.

The last cane is red and goldstone, going black-red-gold-red-black on one side, and the same with white instead on the other.

I made some spacers first.

The black/white and pink/green work better as spacers, as the red and goldstone one turns out rather muddy because of the black in it. You can see that this is a blue-based black.

These are rather pretty beads – they do mimic the effect of frit painting, though, and I think they are less striking than the cane because you lose the sharp bands of colour, instead getting a random wispy effect. So they would be an easy way of making large numbers of these same beads, but with frit painting you have as many colours as you have frit.

For a compatibility test, I tried encasing Effetre black with the clear.

Cracks! This was what I expected to happen, really. The clear also developed quite a few microbubbles – it doesn’t feel as clean as the 104 Lauscha clears. It did melt very easily.

I went on to try with some Plowden & Thompson 100 coe glass that I have.

This is P&T vanilla with a spiral of the red/goldstone cane and then fully encased in the clear. I added raised leaves or flowers with the cane. No compatibility problems showing up here yet. (I will keep an eye on it for a month or so).

I think this is quite a pretty bead, but the visibility of the red and goldstone is very much diluted by the amount of clear it has around it. The leaves just have thin bits of colour in them.

If you have other 100 coe opaques, you can do more with this glass, but you are still up against the amount of clear that they have in them.

Finally, I made an off-mandrel squiggle.

Now, *this* is a good and different result! It keeps the sharp defined bands that are in the rod, and you can twist it to have them spiralling around. The beads have the problem that they could be made in other ways – you don’t need this cane for those effects. I don’t think the beads look as good as the cane does. I could also have pulled the cane down into twisties, but again I can make my own easily as you don’t need this level of precision in the stripes of a twistie because they even out when they are twisted and pulled down. I think this glass looks best when it is kept looking like the rods, so in sculpture.

My conclusion is that you can definitely use this cane to make pretty beads, but the ways you can use it are limited. It comes into its own if you use it for sculptural work.

CiM Limited Editions Sept 2013, part 2: red, orange, pink, neutral

Here are the reds, oranges, pinks and neutralish colours.

Front to back: daffodil, alley cat, tandoori, bing, radio flyer.

Frangipani, antique lace, cake batter, musk melon and weimaraner.

Here are the pinks and neutrals all laid out.

Frangipani at the front, antique lace is the pink-tinged light colour, cake batter is the yellowish and musk melon the greenish. Weimaraner is a blue-tinged grey.

All three of the light colours are pretty, subtle, clean shades.

Frangipani was previously Unique Crocus-2. How much it opacifies varies by how much you cool and reheat it. It got some surface mottling which is rather pretty. If you don’t want it to do that, you may be able to avoid it by working cooler.

Weimaraner as spacers is a fairly uniform colour (remember the goblin brought out more dark lines from the sculpting). Blue-grey rather than green-grey or brown-grey.

Now for the reds. Bing is much more transparent, with some mistiness evident inside the spacers, but you can still see through to the mandrel hole. Radio flyer is a semi-opaque: you can’t see through it, but you can see just inside the surface, giving it a very glossy look. It is a somewhat deeper, cooler red than bing. The difference is a bit more obvious above than it is when they are put on a wire.

I will be making lentil beads from the striking colours, because that’s a better way to see how they look when heated and cooled more and in higher volume. I have a suspicion that Bing might become mistier still.

The oranges. Daffodil and alley cat both strike a little, even in spacer-sized beads so you can see some variation across the surface. Daffodil is a pretty yellowy orange and alley cat is exactly the right shade of marmalade for making cats! I like both of these a lot. (My camera does overdo the orangeness, so I had to adjust the colours in these a bit – they appear more accurate to me now).

Tandoori… well, it barely struck at all like this! So I will be making a lentil of it later. If you wanted an actual transparent yellow that isn’t misty or electric greenish, then keeping this barely struck covers that! I don’t know how easy that would be to do when you wanted it to happen, though…

As well as the lentils, I want to test various of the opaques with silver glass. And maybe break out the copper green.