Winter Colour Diet - Session 8

It's strange you know... after I made this bead, I was almost certain I was going to hate it.  Now, looking at everything I made last Sunday I think it's my favourite bead of the bunch.  My impressions of my work at the torch almost never match my impressions post-cleaning.

This bead is a base of Effetre Okey Dokey Artichoky, rolled in silver foil with random trails of some silver glass, which actually struck.  (Yay!).  The end caps are CiM Admantium, officially my very favourite colour for sticking ends on my tube and bicone beads.   The end transitions are hidden by random squiggles of SiS, I've swirled the heck out of it and added some Ivory dots here and there.

This bead has superpowers.  I dropped it on the kitchen floor yesterday, which is tiled in stone, and it didn't even chip.  I'm going to keep it as a good luck charm, at least for a while, because I could use some more of that kind of luck.

Its base is Seashell Swirl that has been rolled in Silver Leaf, rolled in Terra frit, reduced and then encased with Reichenbach Clear.  There are some Aion plunges and some creased Aion that came out looking very interesting and ghost-like.  The ends are decorated with SiS swirls, and the picture is huge because the bead is huge.  I am slowly, but not surely, getting over my addiction to my massive lentil press.

More Seashell Swirl, with silver foil and Terra frit.  More SiS all over the place, and Ivory dots.  Adamantium end caps.

This would have been my favourite bead from this batch except that I got a big chip in one end (on the side that I didn't photograph) when I took the bead off the mandrel.  I really hate it when that sort of thing happens, although I know it's my own fault.  I've gotten a lot more consistent with my heat control in larger beads, but apparently I still occasionally forget to give the ends enough heat before garaging.

This is Okey Dokey Artichoky with a twistie made from Okey Dokey Artichoky and a couple of different silver glasses.  It's a little like a broken record, but there is SiS on the ends and in the middle, there are some giant swirls and the ends are made of Adamantium.

Weird, right?  It's Sasha's Silver over Pale Green Apple.  I plunged it, reduced it, dotted the plunges with Clear, reduced it a little more and then encased the whole thing and decorated the ends with SiS.  Oh, and I cut it.  The stupid thing was too big for the lentil press and needed to be punished.  Does anyone else see the puppy peering out of it?

And finally, this has a core of Pale Ink Blue, and I wrapped a homemade shard around that which I over-reduced.  Over-reducing it seems to have made the whole bead a little dark and icky, although it is slightly more attractive in person than it is in the pictures.  The ends are Adamantium because I needed to beef it up a little for the press, and it's finished with SiS. The big plunges are Aion.

I've already posted about the palette transitions I'm making, so I won't bore anyone with that again, but I will post my testing plan for the next few weeks.

1. CiM Adamantium
2. CiM Leaky Pen
3. EFF Red Copper Green
4. EFF Light Brown Transparent
5. EFF Avocado
6. EFF Fossil Dark

Test Results :: Khaki

1 - Plain, 2 - Reduced, 3 - w/ Silver Foil, 4 - w/ Silver Foil, reduced & encased, 5 - w/ Khaos frit, 6 - w/ Terra frit, 7 - w/ Silver glass frit blend (Elektra, Gaia, Nyx), reduced, 8 - as a floral, 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - w/ Black, 11 - w/ Ivory

General Impressions
CiM Khaki is way more appealing than I suspected it would be, which is good because finding a new colour to love is a beautiful thing... but it's bad because my test results are so mixed and I'm feeling pretty conflicted about them.  In the rod, in my glass storage box, I suspiciously regarded it as a boring elephant-coloured opaque.  And it is still elephant-coloured to me, but I'm sure not bored by it the way I thought I might be.

Reduction
Reducing Khaki alone darkens the colour slightly.  (Bead #2)

Reactions
With Black, Ivory and Copper Green, Khaki is a pretty stable colour and doesn't do much that's unexpected in terms of colour reaction, although these colours all seem to spread on it a little, and the Khaki seems to sink into them.  (Beads #9. #10, #11)

Khaki does do lots of fun things with silver and silver glass though.

It's reactive with silver in such a great way, getting all kinds of good, fumed colour.  (Bead #3, #4) Reducing and encasing the silver fades that "caramelization" out, but Khaki is fairly silver-friendly.

The interesting thing about these two beads (Bead #5, #6) is the way the Khaki sort of curdles at the edge of the silver glass.  Hey look!  More failure to strike silver glass.  This is not Khaki's fault though -- it's all me!   I've got other things to think about, so I'm not worrying about it for now.  I had good colour going into the kiln, but I've still got the kiln turned up a bit high, and I think that's unstriking my glass.  I know it's me and not the Khaki when I look at the frit bead I reduced. (Bead #7)

Khaki, Triton and I are going to have some fun this Saturday.  I can't wait!

Compatibility?
The only other observation I have about Khaki is that it really seems not to like Effetre Black.  (Bead #10)

I've been using the same 1/2# of Effetre Black for the last six months, so I don't think the Black is at fault, and I don't think there's any way these cracks are my fault. The bead is practically crumbling. I've spent a lot of time this week thinking about whether or not to keep using Khaki after seeing this, but I think I've resolved to proceed with caution -- and certainly to avoid using these two glasses together again.

Out of all the beads I made with Khaki last week, this is the only one exhibiting this unfortunate problem, so I don't want to just quit using it... but if I have any more problems with it I'll have no choice.  I'm really hoping that this was because of some clumsy or stupid thing I did and that it won't happen again.

Update - 25.01.2010

I talked to Kathy / CiM who said one of the original production runs of Khaki was shocky and could have led to the breakage I experienced.  The problem has since been corrected and she said anyone who thinks they have that original shocky batch of Khaki can feel free to trade it in for a better batch.  Just email her at info@creationismessy.com.  I intend to re-run my tests when I pick up some Khaki from a newer production run.

 

Update - 10.03.2010

I want to post another quick update, because I re-did my test with Khaki and Effetre Black with a newer batch of Khaki and had no problems at all.  The newer batch is more workable, and less prone to splintering and shocking, too.  Good news, because I need this colour.     

 Here are some fun beads with Khaki:

 

Winter Colour Diet - Session 7

Session 7 already, and I don't feel anywhere near ready to stop this mad colour diet.  And Session 8 is done as well, although I have no idea what those beads look like since they're still at the studio.  I made some test beads with CiM Khaki on Saturday (results to come) and with CiM Adamantium on Sunday.  I won't be able to post the Adamantium ones until next week after I've picked them up.

This first bead is a base of Khaki.  I rolled it in Terra frit and then used a silver glass twistie that had Double Helix R170, Van Gogh Caramel, Triton and Copper Green in it.  I swirled it in a couple of places before pressing it, decorated the ends with SiS and put some Ivory dots on that I wish I'd thought through a little more carefully.

The bicone is on a base of Okey Dokey Artichoky and has the same twistie on it as the bead above.  The ends are Adamantium, and there is SiS on the ends and in the middle.  I did a little gravity swirl on one side.

Frit stringer is a lot more fun than I thought it would be.  I used Pale Green Apple for the core of this bead, and the frit stringer that I wound around it was Pale Green Apple with a mixture of Gaia, Elektra and Nyx.  I encased it all with my brand new Reichenbach Clear, and am overjoyed at both the clarity of the new clear and the fact that the bead stayed in one piece.  I'm a little unhappy with the way Reichenbach Clear yellows around silver, but I'll just try to remember that I should use Pale Green Emerald around the silver (or some other colour that doesn't do that) next time I want to put silver mesh in a bead.

I really love using Seashell Swirl as a base colour.  I rolled it in silver leaf and Terra frit, and applied a twistie around part of it. The twistie is the same as the one I already described.  I used Adamantium for the ends, decorated it with SiS and then swirled it in multiple places before giving it a shot of reduction and popping it in the kiln.

The core of this bead is Light Brown transparent encased with Reichenbach Silver Brown.  I cut a long spiral groove in it with a steel paddle before reducing it heavily and encasing it with Reichenbach Clear.  The ends are decorated with SiS.  Since this is the first time I've used Silver Brown, I'm feeling awfully pleased with myself for getting and keeping such nice reduction, but perhaps Silver Brown is just easy to use and I ought not to get all puffed up.  Especially since Terra and Khaos still hate me.

Multicolor Dark over Pale Green Apple is a vibrant sight to behold.  I used plain old Effetre Black to decorate the ends and put down the dots.

I really wish silver glass loved me more when I tried to strike it.  This is Terra frit over Mermaid, with SiS on the ends.  The core is Effetre Clear, since the stuff I bought before Christmas doesn't seem good enough to actually encase anything with.

There's still some of everything left, so there were no changes to the palette going into Session 8.