Winter Colour Diet - Session 9

Gah, this is late.  I've been trying to post earlier in the week, but things have been crazy around here... and tonight's commute nearly made me cry.

Vancouver is the worst place in the world to drive when there's an accident on either a bridge or a tunnel (doesn't matter which) because this city and all of the little cities around it are full of people who can't mind their own business and just have to look.... and there's no way to get anywhere without navigating either a bridge or a tunnel, and the bridges and tunnels all require lane reductions.

I will never understand why people think the fastest way to go is to speed up and head down a lane that's ending to butt into line and slow everything down.  Too bad my rocket launcher is only in my imagination.

If you're coming here for the Olympics next month, bring your helicopter and a bazooka.

In any case, I have some beads!

This is a base of Avocado, with a silver glass twistie (Van Gogh Caramel, Artichoky, Triton, Intense Black) and some SiS. The swirling on the ends is silvered Avocado stringer.  I think there's some silver glass frit under it all - the same blend I'm using in a lot of other beads right now.  (Gaia, Elektra & Nyx)

A Plasmablossom. This one is Sasha's Silver over Pale Ink Blue, with encased gold aventurine and Ivory accents and Ivory florals. The florals are encased with Reichenbach Clear.

Another Plasmablossom. I used Light Brown Transparent for the flower 'beds', which I'm not sure I'll do again. The base is Double Helix R170 over Light Brown transparent, and it has Ivory and encased gold aventurine accents.

More lentil. This one is a twistie (Triton, TerraNova2 - which didn't really show up, Intense Black and Artichoky) over Dark Violet (pretty much the last of the Dark Violet) with SiS accents and swirls. I'm not fond of this bead. *shudder* I think I dislike almost everything I've made with Dark Violet.

Yet another Plasmablossom. I'm working on trying to get this design where I want it. This is a Double Helix Ekho test batch over Light Brown. I only struck it well on the ends, but it is an interesting colour anyway.  The flowers are Ivory with Leaky Pen over them which turned out better than I thought it would, and the Leaky Pen developed a really interesting redness over top of it that I can't explain but sort of like. There's encased gold aventurine and Ivory on this bead as well, and some Clear dots melted flush to add some surface variation.

I love Red Copper Green. This crazy bicone is a Twistie of Triton, TerraNova2, Intense Black and Artichoky over Red Copper Green. The ends are Red Copper Green and there are SiS bands, which I relentlessly swirled.

And more lentil. I don't remember what the base of this one was, but I added silver foil, Terra Frit, ends of the twistie from the bead above and some encasement of a dark Triton odd lot. The ends are swirled SiS.

And this last bicone is a frit blend (Elektra, Nyx and Gaia) over Dark Violet.  The ends are black and the transitions are covered in Artichoky. The Artichoky fumed copper in a few places, which I am going to need to investigate more thoroughly at some point. It's a neat effect, but I don't know if the silver did it all by itself or if the Black helped.

Sorry this was so rushed. And I know it looks (for anyone keeping track) like I didn't completely use up my Dark Violet, but the truth is that these beads are a mixture of stuff I made last week and stuff I made this past Sunday when the Dark Violet was well and truly used up. So it was a combination of sessions 9 and 11. I didn't want to jump to 11, so I just threw it all together and called it 9.

The beads for Session 10 are at the Studio, and they contain the last bits of Dark Violet and Seashell Swirl. Avocado and Dark Fossil have now taken their places.

Test Results :: Leaky Pen

1 - Plain, 2 - Reduced, 3 - Over Clear, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf, 5 - w/ Silver glass frit (Gaia, Elektra, Nyx) - reduced, 6 - w/ Terra frit, 7 - w/ Seashell Swirl, 8 - w/ Ivory

CiM Leaky Pen is super-dark, and lots of other people have already written about that.  I've also already read quite a few reports about how Leaky Pen is very sparky and prone to boiling when worked hot, which has definitely been part of my own experience with it. That means that this might be a relatively short post, which isn't very fair to Leaky Pen because I really do like it.

What I haven't seen much of is any discussion about how it reacts in combination with other glasses, so I'm hoping I can add a little to the general body of knowledge about this colour.

Colour Density
Even over Clear, Leaky Pen is very, very, very dark. (Bead #3)  It really needs to be put over a light opaque colour to shine.  I used it over Seashell Swirl in Bead #7 because it's one of the only light colours apart from Ivory that I'm using at the moment, and that helped considerably.  There's a bit of a reaction with Seashell Swirl, but we'll talk about that in a minute.

Reduction
If you happen to boil Leaky Pen while you're melting it as I did in Bead #2, and then you reduce it, the boily parts will turn red.  The rest of the bead didn't seem inclined to get that brick-red reduction film but the bubbly part sure did.

Temperature Sensitivity
During my torching session, I observed that if I pressed a bead (cooling the surface significantly) and then reintroduced it to the flame, the whole boiling thing got worse, perhaps because of the extra travelling to extremes.  If I make another pressed bead with Leaky Pen, I'll make sure I either go REALLY slow with the heating, or I'll encase it before I press it so that I can avoid the issue completely.

Reactions
I used silver leaf for my silver test with Leaky Pen (Bead #4) because it was easier to get at when I decided at the last minute that I needed some silver.  I did get the bead too hot, and it did boil for this particular test, and look what happened to the silver!  The result is that the silver is all webbed and weird, and that it's turned an interesting shade of turquoise. I wish I'd remembered to do the bead with the silver reduced and encased.  Grrr.

Leaky Pen is a good base for silver glass.  I had decent success with striking Terra frit on it, and the other silver glass frit that I reduced worked out just fine.

There's some fun to be had with Seashell Swirl and Leaky Pen.  Around the blue stringer and dots, an outline of pink formed that is at odds with the rest of the bead's streakiness.  This is sort of cool, and worth remembering.  I wonder if it does this with other pinks as well?

And look at the difference between how Leaky Pen looks over Seashell Swirl and how it looks over Ivory.  On Ivory, it goes a dark, denimy, more greenish blue.

It also develops that dark line the same way all of the blues and turquoises do with Ivory, and the dark line gets all oozy and strange.  I don't know if I like this or not, but it's definitely interesting.  I made some flowers on a bead last week with Leaky Pen over Ivory and I'm expecting them to look hideous.  I guess we'll see.

General Impressions
In general, I think Leaky Pen is a great addition to my palette, but it requires extra attention when working it or the results aren't very pleasant.  It's a colour I NEED, but not a colour I LOVE, if that makes sense.  I'm certainly not done playing with it.

In the past, I've had success striking really stubborn silver glass when using Leaky Pen as a base.  TAG Jelly Opal, for instance, is one of the most stubborn striking colours I've yet used, but over Leaky Pen it got all kinds of interesting colour.  Since it's the only notable bead I have with Leaky Pen, I'll go ahead and show it even though I made it months and months ago (last April, to be exact) and looking at it makes me wince.

For contrast, here's a bead that I made around the same time with TAG Jelly Opal without the Leaky Pen as an additive:

Here are some fun beads made with Leaky Pen.

  

Test Results :: Adamantium

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

General Impressions

CiM Adamantium is smooth, creamy and a dark grey brown.  It's gorgeous with silver glass, and it's beautiful paired with both silvered Dark Ivory and Copper Green.  It doesn't do unpleasant things with either colour, so it also seems very stable.  Adamantium doesn't do nasty things when you reduce it.  What's not to love?

Adamantium is my new very favourite glass for making the ends of my organic bicones.  I'm sure it has other uses, but I've been looking for an alternative to black, which always looks too stark. The colour of Adamantium is just slightly softer, and fabulously complements the silvered Ivory stringer I can't seem to stop using.

I need to apologize for the pressed beads in the big picture, above... and I think I'll need to apologize for the Leaky Pen ones I haven't posted yet, too.  I've been rushing these test beads and not being all that careful about how much glass I am pressing.  How embarrassing!  I will try to be better, since most of the reason I'm using the press for these at all is to practice getting the correct shape.

Reduction
Reducing an Adamantium spacer did not seem to change the colour or the appearance of the bead surface at all. (Bead #2)  Someone on LE told me that Adamantium got all shiny when they reduced it, but that was not my experience.

Reactions
One of the beautiful things about Adamantium is that it doesn't seem to be all that reactive, but the colour of it is so appealing that it doesn't need to be.  Being a fan of organics and loving what reactive colours do to each other when they get all hot and bothered, it's a strange position for me to take, but I stand by it in this case.

Like Tamarind Unique, Adamantium seems to repel silver rather than suck it in like a lot of other glasses, which I need to experiment with a little more.

When I put silver on it, reduced it and encased it, the silver got a bluish ethereal glow around it.  (Bead #4) And when I just left the silver on the surface, it developed a mottled yellowish orange/green crust.  (Bead #3)

I am a little silver-glass-challenged, but I was able to strike Terra frit on Adamantium, and being so dark, it's a great canvas for designs with reduced silver glass, too.  (Beads #5 & #6)  You can see some minor reaction halos around the edges of the silver glass, similar to what I experienced with Tamarind Unique, only a little less violent.

Ivory is one of the softest 104 glasses and the Adamantium bleeds with it a little bit when it's applied to Ivory in stringer.   If I wanted to do stringerwork with a design that was melted flush, and I wanted that design to stay crisp, I'd probably choose a different colour combination to use.

The Ivory spreads a little over Adamantium.  It gets just the faintest amount of translucency in the middle, like when you put Ivory on Black, only less so. (Bead #8)

Adamantium and Copper Green did not react with each other at all for me. (Bead #9) I was a little surprised because of how Copper Green reacts with Lauscha Cocoa -- for some reason, I expected all dark grey browns to be created equal.

When I'm out of Adamantium I am replacing it with Cocoa in my current palette, so I'll make similar beads with both Ivory & Cocoa and Copper Green & Cocoa for comparison purposes.

Some beads with Adamantium: