Winter Colour Diet - Session 1

So... I thought that I was going to be able to post some test results for CiM Mink today, but last week was a total catastrophe in the studio for me, and out of the three beads that survived the mayhem, one self-destructed this morning on my way to work.  I'm left with two beads and hopefully enough to say to make a decent post.

I didn't make any changes to the palette either before or after this session, so I'm still working with the fourteen colours mentioned in this post.  I won't be making any changes this week, either, unless something exciting happens.

The hardest part about posting these the week after I've made them is that I get sort of fuzzy on what, exactly, I made them from.  This one, as I remember, is a core of  Copper Green with a homemade shard of Dark Violet and some striking silver glass wrapped around it.  The larvae-like thing on the bottom is Aion2, reduced and encased, and the little silver flecks are melted silver micromesh.  There are some silver clumps inside, and some silver on the surface.

I'm not 100% happy with the design here because I think something is missing in the top that should balance it all out.  I need to think about this a little more.

Unfortunately, the one that had the best design was one of the ones that cracked.  I used Mink for the core of this, not remembering two very important things.  1) People say not to encase opalinos, and 2) CiM opals have special annealing temperatures.  Now, I don't know if this cracked ultimately because the Mink didn't want to be all closed in or if I just didn't school it well enough in the kiln.  Regardless, I'm just a little sad about it.  I need to repeat some testing next week with the kiln settings changed so that I can post my Mink results.

Next, we have another Mink bead that was under-annealed.  This one wasn't encased, except for the thin layer of surface decoration that doesn't completely cover it.  Both the core and the end-caps were Mink.  Just look how the Mink super-activated the TerraNova2!  I'm not sure TN2 colours would survive a 1000F annealing, but I am going to try it and find out.

And finally, this last bead is a long monster.  There are so many colours on it that it's hard to remember them all, but I believe this one is a base of Red Copper Green, with Striking Colour Frit, Van Gogh Caramel and Sasha's Silver with Black and Silvered Ivory Stringer.  There's a piece of Dark Violet/Copper Green/TerraNova2 twistie on here too.

I need to stop making them this big if I'm not going to take the trouble to smooth the lumps out of them.  This bead goes in the 'learning experience' box for sure.