CiM - Creation is Messy - Sea Mist

Wow, where has the time gone this spring!

Although we had the typical spring snow and rain, my time was consumed by a project away from my studio.

As a part-time artist, I usually only get weekends to venture out to heat up the cold studio and get in some "kiln-time". These past 8 months have limited those days to 1 or 2 days each month. 
Between all my color testing and the glass I have stacked for new bead sets, I am looking forward to recapturing some lost time and stretching my creative skills again. 

I picked up some rod of CiM's Sea Mist on my last visit to Nortel and decided to see how it paired with some silver glass for my interchangeable beads. 

This glass is showing as Sold Out on the CiM website, so if you are interested in purchasing some, please reach out to Jean at Nortel soon before her stock is gone forever.

This glass was created in response to requests for a streaky blue. The rod itself is a core of clear glass, encased in transparent blue, encased in clear.

When making spacers, I did get the streaky look with a few bubbles which I thought kept within the sea mist theme. 

I tested it as a base and encasement of silver glass to see if it would fume or react.
I think the result is beautiful!

Here are photos of the two sets that I created:

Smiles,
D.

Playground Fun Sampler - Orange Crush, Poison Apple and Blue Arrow Frog!

I am coming to the end of sharing results of three more glass colors contained in the Playground Fun Sampler pack of CiM - Creation is Messy colors from Nortel. 

These sampler packs are great for artists that:
- want to "try" a new color without the commitment of purchasing a minimum 1/4 pound of a specific color
- want to create multi-colour beads from a coordinated set of colors.

This CiM sample pack contains a spectrum of crayon-like colors:
- Poison Apple
- Limelight
- Frozen
- Bing
- Orange Crush
- Blue Arrow Frog
- Ocher
- Rainforest

I usually don't work with combinations of bright colors within one set, so I set out to create a set that used the same technique and switched in 3 of the main colors of the set.

I created surface "rivets" of Double Helix silver glass with Psyche and Aurae Light.

These beads are on bases of Blue Arrow Frog, Poison Apple and Orange Crush.

Just for fun, I made a few "playground" beads while testing some color mixing.

The tri-colored beads, made from Frozen, Blue Arrow Frog and Bing reminded me of the ice-pops I would buy at the park for my kids. 

The other beads are my "caterpillar critter beads" created by mixing Frozen, Poison Apple and Orange Crush with dots of Blue Arrow Frog. 
Those made me smile.

As always, I encourage you to reach our to Jean at Nortel to pick up a sampler or two.

Smiles,
D.

Playground Fun Sampler - Limelight and Frozen

In this post, I concentrating on testing CiM - Creation is Messy's pale green transparent named Limelight.

Described as "a clean, cool green with no hints of yellow with a tendency to develop micro bubbles". I did see this in the plain spacers, but when I used it to encase, the bubbling was not as noticeable.

It is a beautiful pale tint to encase silver glass reactions. 


In these beads below, I used Limelight as a base and an encasement for Double Helix's Psyche, it's newer Skiron and rare Aurae Light.

First up, the "recipe" was Limelight base, layer of silver glass, encase with more Limelight and scrolls/dots of Aurae Light. 
This green is pure and clean, I really like the result!

Next up, a simpler look of the encased silver glass reaction. The Double Helix Psyche glass was reduced and then encased with Limelight to capture the blues/ pinks and amber hues.

Last but not least, Limelight was tested with Double Helix's newer Skiron which is a silver striking rainbow glass. 
I am always challenged with striking glasses versus those that react with a reduction flame.  I may be due to the fact that I tend to work in a cooler flame, but I thought I would try the same test with Limelight as I did with the results already described above.

So same recipe as the other beads above, but I substituted Skiron for Psyche.
I got more amber than rainbow, so I definitely will need more practice with this new glass.

I paired with bead with Aurae Light spacers and a CiM Frozen bead with dots of Aurae Light. 
Frozen is a opal white that when silver glass is applied turns the surface a pretty golden tint that compliments the silver glass droplets.

Til next post, have a great day!
Smiles,
D.

Playground Fun Sampler - Rainforest & Ocher

This week I am sharing the results of the testing of the glass colors contained in the Playground Fun Sampler pack of CiM - Creation is Messy colors from Nortel. 

These sampler packs are great for artists that:
- want to "try" a new color without the commitment of purchasing a minimum 1/4 pound of a specific color
- want to create multi-colour beads from a coordinated set of colors.

This CiM sample pack contains a spectrum of crayon-like colors:
- Poison Apple
- Limelight
- Frozen
- Bing 
- Orange Crush
- Blue Arrow Frog
- Ocher
- Rainforest

First up for testing, this set of silver wrapped barrels made with a combination of Rainforest and Ocher. 

Rainforest is a greenish teal opal and Ocher is a opaque yellow with a mustard seed undertone.

These two glasses kept their true color with no change in reaction to silver creating a earth based set of beads. Both glasses melt smoothly with no stockiness.

As always, I encourage you to reach our to Jean at Nortel to pick up a sampler or two.

More color results from this sampler coming up in new posts this week!
Stay Tuned.