A new crop of Double Helix odd lot glasses has arrived!
I've had the chance to play with a few of them. One of my favorites so far is not an odd lot glass, it's their new color, Pandora:
Here are my first test beads:
From left to right, the first two beads are plain spacers. They turned out a nice, vivid but dark purple and blue. The third bead is Pandora swirled over Triton, the fourth bead is Pandora swirled over CiM's Canyon de Chelly, and the fifth and sixth beads are Pandora spacers encased in clear.
With small beads like spacers, I think the color is darker and more limited in spectrum, possibly because there is not much of a cool/hot temperature variance in the small amount of glass to encourage the development of a broad range of color. I think large or sculptural beads will have more variety of color than the dark purple and blue I got in my small beads.
Encasing, however, works great with the small beads. In addition to blue and purple, I also got red, green and yellow. The encasing lightened up the color a little and extended the spectrum.
If you're a lampworker and are wondering about how to use Pandora, I garaged these beads at 940 for 4-6 hours and annealed at 950 for one hour. That is my regular annealing schedule. I formed the beads without any special heating, striking, cooling or reducing. I just shaped them and put them in the kiln as though I were making an Effetre bead.
When the glass goes into the kiln it looks transparent green, maybe with some opaque light green streaks. There is no color on the beads at all other than green. All the color striking happens during the hours it spends in the kiln. When I took my Pandora beads out of the kiln in the morning, I was totally amazed at the color that had bloomed. It was so easy!
Now, back to the torch to make some more Pandora beads!
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Double Helix Pandora
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3 comments:
You do have a gift with silver glass. I might just have to give this one a try since I don't have that gift. It looks easy enough to me. Thanks for showing these beautiful beads!
karolen, I've been following your blog for ages - a bit naughty as I often pop in but don't comment. I am so impressed with the wonderfiul results you get from the silver glasses in general, but am loving your results & the sharing of technique with Pandora.
I can't wait until mine arrives & you can be sure that I will pop back to study some more before hitting the torch with it :o)
Thanks Mallory and Deb for your comments! Hi Deb!
What I like about Pandora, is I don't have to fuss with it in the flame like most other silver glasses. I don't need to repeatedly take it out of the flame to cool and watch for the colors to form, then quick pop it in the kiln at the exact moment I get the right colors. That is, IF I get colors! Silver glass is so tricky!
The only trick I'm finding so far with Pandora is I have to make my beads at the beginning of the torch session and make sure my kiln is on for a number of hours.
Mallory, maybe you can buy just a rod or two from someone, just to try it out before investing in a whole bunch.
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