Progress Feels Really Good

If you've been lampworking for a few years now, and you're occasionally feeling like getting on the torch is a struggle and things aren't coming together as well as you'd like, and you're scratching your head for ideas...

Go back and look at the beads (or the pictures of the beads) you made in the first year or so.

I made all of these beads in the fall of 2008, when I'd been lampworking less than six months.

 

 

 

Choose a style that uses techniques that you really wish you had mastered better, and out of those ones, the ones that you liked the best. I chose goddesses, because I've already done a fair bit of bicone re-investigation. I may try hearts next, this was so much fun :)

Make some.

I made a whole bunch of these, and now I can't really seem to stop. Here are my two favourites so far:

 

 

Do a little happy dance if the new ones are a LOT better than the early ones. Make a lot of them. 

You might be surprised to find improvement has been hibernating inside you, and it's amazing how good that can make you feel.

Test Results :: Dark Ivory (Vetrofond)

I apologize in advance for blogging about a colour that, unless you've been lampworking for a while, you've had no opportunity to try.  I am probably going to be doing a fair bit of this, so I'll try to spread it out a bit. I have a bit of a stash of older colours that I want to use, and I want to make the test results available to other people who have the colours hanging around.  Thanks for understanding!

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - As Silvered Stringer, on self, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf, 5 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 7 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 8 & 9 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory & Peace

Note: The picture above has an error. Bead #6 is made of Effetre Dark Ivory, not Vetrofond. I made the same error in the Effetre Dark Ivory test results. I no longer have the beads, so I was unable to retake this picture, but the problem is now corrected in the body of the post, below.

Vetrofond Dark Ivory is a bit of a surprise. The rods are smooth, and almost opalescent. In thin layers, this colour has a really nice translucency to it, but in thick layers it is utterly opaque and somewhat streaky.

I will be posting about Effetre Dark Ivory in a week or two -- I need a picture of one of the beads I made and picture-taking day and my need to blog didn't really coincide. I planned to post the Effetre results first, but this is just the way things are panning out.

The principal differences between Vetrofond Dark Ivory and Effetre Dark Ivory are as follows:

• Some batches of Effetre Dark Ivory do not have a lot of reticulation, but for the most part, Effetre Dark Ivory tends to curdle, while Vetrofond Dark Ivory (or at least this batch of it) seems not to do this unless it is reduced with silver glass.
• Vetrofond Dark Ivory has less colour variation than Effetre Dark Ivory, and has less of a 'caramelization' reaction when fumed with silver.
• Vetrofond Dark Ivory is stiffer, and less 'creepy' -- unlike Effetre Dark Ivory, the Vetrofond version does not try to take over when used with other colours.
• Vetrofond Dark Ivory does not make SiS as nicely as the curdly batches of Effetre Dark Ivory do.
• Vetrofond Dark Ivory is less violently reactive than its Effetre cousin.

When silver leaf is melted into the surface of Dark Ivory, it turns brown and grey and silvery, and the reaction covers almost the entire surface of the bead. When this reaction is reduced and encased, much of the brown tones are eliminated, and what is left is a lacy, shiny, silvery crust under the clear.

Vetrofond Dark Ivory makes an interesting base colour for silver glass. I like it better than Effetre Dark Ivory for this because it is less inclined to try to swallow my frit. I got good colour from both my reduction frit and my striking frit on top of Vetrofond Dark Ivory.  Weird, brown webbing surrounds my bits of frit on the left-most bead, and the frit has developed an interesting double outline of black + silver in a lot of places. Because I reduced the silver glass, the Ivory has caramelized and looks much darker than it does on most of the other test beads.

If you look at the bead on the left where I used the Vetrofond Dark Ivory over Tuxedo, you can see its translucency. Vetrofond Dark Ivory seems to be another colour that makes Tuxedo bleed a little bit, and the Dark Ivory has separated a little on top of the Tuxedo as well.

Vetrofond Dark Ivory and Copper Green have a mutual dark line reaction.

On top of Opal Yellow, Vetrofond Dark Ivory has an all-over greyish hue to it, and a faint grey outline. When Opal Yellow is used on top of Dark Ivory, the grey outline is much darker and much more pronounced and the Opal Yellow develops a weird, crinkly outline.

There's not much to say about the reactions with Peace and Opal Yellow.

Here, I've used Vetrofond Dark Ivory as the base colour (under Vetrofond Light Aqua) and as the ground colour, and then I've used silvered Vetrofond Dark Ivory stringer to make the mushroom. I think I might have used Vetrofond Dark Ivory in one of the vine canes on this bead, too, but I can't remember which one. I was going for the Total Dark Ivory Experience.

Test Results :: Ivory (Vetrofond)

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 6 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 7 - w/ Raku, 8 & 9 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory & Peace, 10 - w/ Gaia Stringer (reduced)

Vetrofond Ivory is a very nice colour. it has a beautiful, creamy consistency and is less violently reactive than Effetre Light Ivory. It's more of a true off-white, whereas some batches of Effetre Light Ivory (which I also have deep love for) has tendencies to a more orangey, light caramel colour. Vetrofond Ivory curdles and spreads less than Effetre Light Ivory.

Vetrofond Ivory is a pale, neutral opaque colour. It can look somewhat translucent in thin layers, and in stringer form, it is more transparent than its Effetre cousin. Some batches of Vetrofond Ivory are more translucent than others, and there is a verry sheer batch out there that is known as 'Translucent Ivory' that is very nice indeed.

Here, you can see that the reaction with silver is ever-so-slightly different with Vetrofond Ivory than it is with Effetre Light Ivory. On top of Vetrofond Ivory, silver does a little less spreading, and has more of a grey/brown appearance without the ethereal blueness that I got on top of the Effetre. When the silver is reduced and encased, the portions of the Ivory that fumed brown with silver revert back to a more Ivory appearance, and the silver portions remain more or less the same colour.

Silver glass is nice on Vetrofond Ivory. Here, my reduction frit got ever-so-slightly ringed with brown, and the TerraNova2 frit struck to blues and purples, also with a brown outline. Reducing the silver glass frit in the bead on the left fumed the Ivory to a slightly warmer colour -- sort of like toasting a marshmallow.

Vetrofond Ivory reacts with other colours very similarly to Effetre Light Ivory.

Ivory separates slightly on top of Tuxedo, and Tuxedo bleeds into it when used on top of it in stringer designs.

Copper Green and Ivory have a reciprocal dark line reaction.

A dark, greyish line reaction appears between Ivory and Opal Yellow. This reaction is darker and more pronounced when Opal Yellow is used on top of Ivory.

Vetrofond Ivory makes Effetre Ivory separate. You can see this slightly in the bead on the right where the Light Ivory dots and stringer lines have darker pinpoints and streaks of colour in their centres. In the bead on the left, you can see the pronounced different tone of Vetrofond Ivory on top of the darker, more orange hue of the Effetre Light Ivory.

There are no noticeable reactions between Ivory and Peace. The colours are so close that it's very difficult to even see where one begins and the other leaves off.