Thursday, June 17, 2010

Pandora Glass Beads

Here's a set of spacer beads I made with Double Helix Pandora glass:Pandora SpacersI haven't worked with Pandora in a long time. It was fun to break it out and play with it again. While the glass is hot it looks transparent green, but after spending 6 hours annealing at 950 F, then cooling down overnight, it develops the streaky purples and blues... if I'm lucky!

Part of this bead batch turned a muddy pale green. I tried making two beads on the mandrel to save kiln space, but that didn't work too well. While laying down the second bead, the first bead would cool and turn opaque light green. They went into the kiln with one bead being opaque and one being transparent. Only the transparent green beads, the second ones laid down, turned nice colors. The beads that went into the kiln opaque, stayed muddy. Lesson learned: Get the Pandora hot only once and pop it in the kiln, don't work this glass too much or let it get cool and hot again.

The Pandora bead set is in my Etsy shop, along with this new mixed metallic set using mainly Nyx and Kronos glass:Mixed Metallic Set
♥ ♥ ♥

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Beautiful! Your blue/green/silver mix is incredible. Following the link across to your Etsy shop to give it a great big heart. :)
~M

Unknown said...

The streaky purple & blues are SO nice!! I'm into Personaworld.com beads right now. Big sale in June. Green beads do sell btw. Love the green etsy collection!!
-Jill

Karolen said...

Moags, Thanks! I love your blog! I'm your fan on FB now too. Thanks for the comment, nice to meet you!

Jill, Thank you! I checked out the Personaworld site. Nice beads, and I like seeing more euro-style bracelet beads on the market since I like them a lot, too.

However, I would advocate that people buy self-representing lampwork artist made beads for their euro bracelets. There is a better guarantee on quality and they are usually one-of-a-kind pieces. And the silver work is way better.
:-)

Tamis Place said...

These are very nice!