beads by laura

my lampwork beads and the glass I use to make them

[beadsbylaura]

On the move

From now on I shall be posting my glass recipes and colour testing findings on Instagram. You don’t need an Instagram account to look at my feed.

I’ll leave my Tumblr posts here for reference.

Please head this way for my beads on Instagram.

[beadsbylaura]

‘Joker’

CiM Heffalump encased with CiM African Violet with polka dots and spacers in CiM Oobleck

[beadsbylaura]

CiM Testing: Bayou & Peppermint Cream

Bayou is a grey-green. Like a lot of opaque colours, it looks slightly paler when it’s encased. It’s a touch streaky but not as much as CiM Porpoise. I didn’t have any problems with shockiness or bubbling.

Peppermint Cream is a very very pale pastel green. It’s like a light ivory mixed with a dash of green. It works really well as stringer and it retains nice crisp edges on dots and scrollwork. The glass melted fine with no shockiness or bubble troubles.

These beads are Bayou with a thick encasing layer of Effetre Super (Crystal) Clear 006 and the decoration and spacers are Peppermint Cream.

The photographs were taken indoors in natural daylight.

[beadsbylaura]

CiM Testing: Eclectus Parrot

Eclectus Parrot is a bright green opal that stays translucent. It’s a right zingy green and it reminds me of lime jelly. Like all of the other new opal and misty opal greens, it was totally unfussy to use and it has the most tremendous shine. This sounds daft because all glass is shiny, right? Yes, it is, but I reckon some glasses are shinier than others. I don’t know why.

The photograph was taken indoors in natural daylight.

[beadsbylaura]

CiM Testing: Weeping Willow & Baked Alaska

Weeping Willow is a beautiful, soft shade of green with a touch of grey to it. It’s a little streaky, but that’s opaque greens for you. It’s a trouble-free glass to use and I really like the colour.

Baked Alaska is a pastel yellow. I’m tempted to say it’s similar to Effetre opaque Opal Yellow 266 but that varies from batch to batch; I’ve had barely yellow through to pinkish-apricot yellow with that over the years. So I’ll say that Baked Alaska is similar to CiM Banana Cream in the way it behaves working-wise, but Baked Alaska is definitely more yellow.

I did a quick bead (not pictured because it rolled down the back of my workbench into Land of the Cobwebs and I cannot and will not enter that realm so the bead is lost forever) made with Baked Alaska with CiM Cranberry Pink dots on it and it does do the spreading and colour reaction thing. I’ll expand on this at a later date, so right now please think of this as placeholder information regarding Baked Alaska’s reactive properties. But yes, as a colour it is a very pleasing yellow. It melted wonderfully and I didn’t do any striking faffery; I just used the glass and it did the colour stuff for me. It looks white when it’s warm but as it cools its lovely yellowness blooms.

These beads are Weeping Willow with a heavy encasing layer of Effetre Super (Crystal) Clear 006 and polka dots and spacers in Baked Alaska.

The photographs were taken indoors in natural daylight.

[beadsbylaura]

‘Fruity Brew’

CiM Cranberry Pink encased with Effetre Super (Crystal) Clear 006 with CiM Alley Cat decoration and spacers

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‘Poison Apple’

CiM Poison Apple

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CiM Testing: Budgerigar

Budgerigar is a misty opal green. It’s like a slightly greener, more transparent version of Ectoplasm.

Budgerigar melted without any issues. A lovely glass to work with.

The photograph was taken indoors in natural daylight.

[beadsbylaura]

CiM Testing: Eden

Eden is a very dense, dark transparent bottle green. The glass contains tiny particles of aventurine which give it a bit of sparkle.

In rod form the glass looks black and if you were to make a solid bead with it the resulting bead would also appear black.

These nuggety beads were made by encasing a clear glass core with a thin layer of Eden and when you hold the beads up to the light you can see their deep green tone and their subtle glimmer.

Eden is very glossy and smooth and it melted with no issues. The glass is extremely difficult to photograph, though, and I’ve been waiting for some sunshine so I could actually capture the green. 

The photograph was taken indoors in natural daylight.

[beadsbylaura]

CiM Testing: Cerulean

Like CiM Cerulean Sparkle, Cerulean is a bright aqua blue that is a tiny bit darker than Effetre transparent Light Aqua 034 but not as dark as Effetre transparent Dark Aqua 036. Apart from the sparkle in the rod form of Cerulean Sparkle, I can’t see an awful lot of difference between the two Ceruleans.

Before I made these beads I tested the white stringer applied directly to the Cerulean and it did exactly what I predicted it would: as soon as I melted the stringer in, it fizzed and pitted around the stringer edges. This is absolutely normal with the more saturated aqua and turquoise blues and I am by no means a scientist (GCSE grade D) but I think it’s to do with the copper (?) in the aqua glass.

As I said in the Cerulean Sparkle post, transparent aquas don’t really like being cooled and reheated and I’ve always found that they like to be kept at a consistent temperature or they can go scummy. You can blast the scum with heat and it will disperse but you’ll be left with telltale wisps in your work. (I’ll point out that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing this; I’m just ridiculously picky about my work. It’s problematic, I know.) Anyway, to avoid any kind of fizz-bubble-trouble here I encased the base bead of Cerulean with a thin layer of Effetre Super (Crystal) Clear 006 and then applied my Effetre White 204 stringer. The spacers are CiM Kryptonite.

Cerulean was not at all shocky and it melted and behaved like pretty much all other transparent aquas I have used before.

The photographs were taken indoors in natural daylight.

[beadsbylaura]

CiM Testing: Anole

Does this look familiar? It’s a bit like CiM Ectoplasm, isn’t it?

Like Ectoplasm, Anole is an opal that stays translucent. Colour-wise the two are very similar but Anole is a touch more yellow than Ectoplasm.

Working-wise, they were exactly the same: unfussy, smooth, lovely.

The photograph was taken indoors in natural daylight.

[beadsbylaura]

CiM Testing: Porpoise

It must be tricky making grey glass and coming up with an interesting name for it. Porpoise is a good name, though. Much better than ‘John Major’ or ‘Filing Cabinet’.

Porpoise is a nice medium grey. It’s quite streaky but melted fine and the rod was well-behaved on the shockpoppery front. Porpoise goes green when it’s hot and for a while I thought I’d open the kiln to green beads but then I remembered that no, porpoises are grey and yep, the beads ended up that way too.

These ones are Porpoise with a thin casing of Effetre Super (Crystal) Clear 006 with Effetre White 206 decoration and CiM Tahitian Pearl spacers.

The photographs were taken indoors in natural daylight.

[beadsbylaura]

CiM Testing: Tahitian Pearl

Tahitian Pearl is pretty much the same as Effetre pastel Dark Silver Plum 275. In rod form it’s a very dark purple with a sort of brown tinge to it.

I found that it behaved almost identically to Dark Silver Plum and I treated it the same way. For the spacers I made the bead and let it cool outside the flame for about fifteen seconds. Then I passed the bead back through the mid-part of the flame - not too hot, not too cold - then brought it out to cool for a few seconds and then repeated this until I had the sheen I was happy with.

I’ve found that how you reheat both Tahitian Pearl and Dark Silver Plum affects the final finish. A slow pass through the lower part of an oxygen rich, very low propane flame can bring out the more satin silvery effect, and reheating in a *very* slightly reducing one (propane rich) can give you a haematite-like mirror sheen. Too much reduction, however, and you can end up with a muddy purple-brown with a shimmery haze.

Whichever effect you want, I’d suggest not allowing the bead to get too hot whilst reheating it because as the metal in the glass rises to the surface to do its metallic magic, it can fizz and bubble and once this has occurred those fizzy bubble scars are in your bead for good. But maybe you want that. It’s your bead party and you can do whatever the heck you like.

You can work on this glass nice and gently in the flame for sculptural stuff and it will pretty much do the shiny work for you. I worked on the heart-shaped bead for about fifteen minutes, shaping, cooling and reheating. You can see a hint of a purplish oil-slick thing on the top left and on the right hand side you can see a few fizzy bubble scars where I let it get a tad too hot. There’s a nice kind of crackle thing happening in places too. Over-all the bead has a pleasing satin haematite sheen to it.

Tahitian Pearl is quite soft but not at all shocky.

The photographs were taken indoors in natural daylight.

[beadsbylaura]

CiM Testing: Ectoplasm

Ectoplasm is described as ‘an opal that stays translucent’ and yep, it does just that. It’s a sour yellowy green that looks like it might taste of Haribo Tangfastics. (Do not eat beads!)

The glass melted like butter - so smooth and flowy but not overly so. It didn’t bubble and I had no shocking or rod-poppery.

Ectoplasm is a lovely springtime green and I think it would look fab with pinks and lavenders.

The photograph was taken indoors in natural daylight.

[beadsbylaura]

CiM Testing: Cerulean Sparkle

There’s not an awful lot to say about this glass. Cerulean Sparkle is a transparent aqua with the addition of aventurine. If you’re looking at the photo and wondering where the sparkle is, there isn’t any. There’s a micro-particle of spangle here and there but it’s barely noticeable. Like CiM Elixir Sparkle, I think this is because there isn’t enough aventurine in the glass.

The aqua blue colour itself is pretty and it’s a touch darker than Effetre transparent Light Aqua 034. It behaves like all other aqua glass - it doesn’t like repeated cooling and reheating because it scums if you do this, so it’s best to keep it nice and warm.

The photograph was taken indoors in natural daylight.

[beadsbylaura]

CiM Testing: Troi

I’m assuming this bluish-green is named after the colour of Deanna Troi’s uniform in Stark Trek: TNG. It’s a pretty colour and like all other opaque blue-greens and green-blues, it’s a tad streaky. I try to get around this as much as I can by studying where the major streaking is occurring on the rod and then making sure that I position that ‘inside’ the bead-to-be as I wrap it onto the mandrel.

Troi melted well with no popping or pitting. It’s quite soft and therefore tends to spread; encasing it without any bleed onto the encasing layer is quite tricky. To get around this you need to work cooler and slower than you usually do, not allowing the base bead to get over-hot.

Troi is more blue than Effetre opaque Petrol Green 218 and I’d say it’s quite similar to and maybe a little less saturated than CiM Mermaid.

These beads are CiM Troi thinly encased with Effetre Super (Crystal) Clear 006, with Effetre White 204 decoration and CiM Cerulean Sparkle spacers.

The photographs were taken indoors in natural daylight.

[beadsbylaura]

CiM Testing: Cranberry Pink

I barely use Effetre Rubino Oro or CiM Cranberry Pink because they mess with my stringer. They sort of ‘swallow’ stringer and dots and create weird reaction effects. Sometimes you can use this to your advantage for interesting designs but 90% of the time I’m aiming for a clean and crisp finish to my work. Yes, I can overcome this by encasing the colour with a layer of clear to separate the stringer from it but, well… sometimes I just can’t be arsed. *shrugs*

The other reason I avoid Effetre Rubino Oro is that they just don’t make it like they used to. It used to be a rich, deep ruby but the last ten years or so I’ve found it to be inconsistent, ranging from a weak, patchy red-pink that you can’t get an even strike with to an overly-saturated ruby that goes livery or takes on a weird foggy orange haze in the kiln.

I’ve only ever tried CiM Cranberry Pink once or twice, years ago, and I found it to be a nice colour but again I had issues with that orange fogginess so I didn’t touch it for yonks.

However, I was sent some CiM Cranberry Pink in with my testing bundle and reading up on it, (and this is where my avoidance of lampworking forums and groups bites me in the bum because if I was more bead-social I’d have known about this sooner) it seems Creation is Messy are producing a much more consistent and reliable Cranberry Pink these days, and do you know what? It’s blooming lovely.

Yes, it’s tricksy with stringer but that’s absolutely to be expected with a gold-rich glass. It takes no faffing with striking – you just work with it and it sorts its own colour out. Saying that, remember that I work cool and slow so maybe it is possible that greying or reducing could occur if you work this glass too hot or fast.

These beads were made with a thin layer of CiM Cranberry Pink over CiM Heffalump. The polka dots are CiM Peace and I melted them in at a snail’s pace in the cool part of the flame to avoid them being swallowed by the pink.

The photograph was taken outside in daylight. (Obviously daylight because I was outside. Oh, you know what I mean.)