Silver Glass Crystal Beads

Good evening bead and jewelry lovers!
I'd like to share a few beads I've made this past week, but before I do, I just need to say one more time I LOVE MY NEW KILN!!! I look forward to torching just to use it. The old kiln I was using was my very first bead kiln. I bought it in 1998. It was one of the first kilns designed specifically for beads, called the Toaster Kiln, made by Brian Kerkvliet and sold by Frantz. Kiln manufacturers have really improved on the game since then. This new kiln from The Glass Hive is like a luxury Cadillac SUV compared to the old Datsun 210 of a Toaster kiln! If you've never seen a Glass Hive kiln, click on this link --> The Glass Hive and check them out!
And now, to the beads...

These sets were made for a custom order. This first set uses Ekho:These are Luna:These are Triton and Kronos:All of the beads were encased with Aether clear and formed with the crystal press.

My customer had actually asked me to make her some Luna crystals based on this set (below) I'd made for her before, but I couldn't do it for the life of me! The Luna crystals pictured above as you can see turned out dark blue! The difference is that my skills have changed with Luna and I can strike it better now. But is it really better? This older set is actually more colorful. Try as I might, I could not undo my skills to make poorly struck beads. Ha!
I have more stuff I could blab on about, but this post is already getting long. I'll have to come back tomorrow and show you what else I've been up to.
Cheerio!

Crystals

I had an order recently for a set of crystal-shaped beads, and it got me on a crystal bead kick. I used Zoozi's Crystal press for these.

This set is Luna 2, encased with Aether:
These have a Nyx base with a little Triton frit, encased with Aether:
These are original Terra, encased with Aether:Somehow the beads look better in person than they do in these photos. They're very sparkly and colorful in the sunlight! I have another set of Pale Emerald Green and Triton crystals I'm cleaning now. I will post a photo when they're done.
:-)

Pandora and Luna Sets

These two sets went into my Etsy shop today. The first one has a Triton base with Pandora swirled over the top, the second set is a base of ASK Silver Cinnamon with swirls of Luna:In the Pandora set, four of the beads annealed for 3 hours and the other four annealed for 10 hours. There isn't any color difference between the two batches. It's like they struck to a certain point and then stayed there. A mystery!

Purple-icious Pandora

I had to try some disk beads with Pandora, of course! These two came out of my kiln yesterday. I'm loving this stunning purple color!This is the purple glass color I've been searching for... it's like a dark EDP without the E or the D!

I've seen this purple in my other Pandora beads, but somehow it looks more deliciously purple-icious in disk form.

I've tried disks with other 104 striking silver glasses, but usually only get a brown disk. Double Helix glasses like Luna, Terranova, Terra and Khaos stay dark brown unless the color is developed with a lot of heat and/or repeated heating. Thin spiral disk beads don't hold up to that kind of heat. Pandora, however, requires no excessive heat so it is the perfect striking glass for disks.

There are several more annealing in my kiln right now!

Luna and Triton Beads

I finally figured out how to get some color from Luna2! By super-heating the glass at first, then cooling (a lot), then gently heating in the back of the flame a few times, I got some beautiful purple and blue colors. Much better than the washed-out brown I usually get.

I made these beads by putting some Triton down on the mandrel, then wrapping a large blob of Luna over that. I love how the Triton makes the beads look like they have metallic end caps. They're in my Etsy shop at the moment:

Things You Missed....

Beads have been flying off the shelves of my Etsy shop so fast these days, I haven't had time to post pictures of them or ramble on about them in my blog!

Here are some sets you may have missed in my Etsy shop if you blinked. I hadn't even closed the pictures in Photoshop before they were in the mail to customers. I'm so thankful for the sales I've had this month!

Textured Silver Plum spacer beads:
Psyche swirled over Canyon de Chelly:
Luna2 over ASK Silver Cinnamon:
Back to the torch - doin' what I love to do!
:-)

Kiln Disaster Koolness

This is a photo of one of the blobs from the kiln meltdown that has evidence of coolness. You can see that, had my beads survived the swelter, they would have been gorgeously groovy! See the iridescence from the DSP, and the colors from the Luna2? Ok joking... I have a strange sense of humor :)

Luna 2 Beads

I've had a chance to try the new glass from Double Helix, Luna 2! It has taken me a few tries to get the hang of it. Now that I'm finally getting it to strike, I'm loving the rainbow of colors in this glass! Here is a set of beads I have up in my Etsy shop right now:

The base color of these beads is Dark Silver Plum. When I put the Luna over it I really got the colors to pop! Maybe it's just because I've practiced enough with the Luna, or maybe it's the chemical reaction between the Luna and the Silver Plum that did it. Either way I'm happy with the results and I can't wait to play with this glass some more!

Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

That's one of my favorite Sandy Denny songs from the 70's... a good song for this time of year:

Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving
But how can they know it's time for them to go?
Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming
I have no thought of time

For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

I love to write in my blog as often as possible, every day if I can, but the past few weeks have flown by. I've had family visiting, I've been sick, I've gone out of town, all kinds of distractions to take me away from blogging! But I'm back, at least for today!

I have a favorite bead of late, made with Terranova glass. I've been wearing this one on a Bead Hitching Post pendant for the past week - I think it's a keeper! It's a landscape, with the Terranova at the top making the starry night sky. In addition to Terranova the bead has Vetrofond Odd Olive, Effetre, ASK Caramel Apple and Raku.

I love this new Terranova glass and I've gone and bought more of it already. I'm still practicing with Luna, too. Having a harder time getting a lot of color from Luna. This next bead has a Luna base with pure Terranova and Terranova/Luna stringers on top. The picture is a little low-res, but you get the general idea of what the bead looks like. I'm getting a lot of red and purple colors from these glasses.


I guess you could look at the Luna bead and say it does have good color, but I'm hoping to get more in the blue-green range and not just the orange. If it weren't for the addition of Terranova stringer on top, the bead would be mostly yellow/orange.

Terranova and Luna

I'm a big fan of Double Helix glass and use many of their colors in my beads. One of my recent beadmaking challenges was learning to use their Terra glass. I'd finally practiced with it enough that I was getting good consistent color, and I was loving the bead sets I made with it. Terra had become my favorite glass.

I now have only two 3-inch pieces of Terra left on my bench! I tried ordering more last month but was sad to hear that Double Helix had discontinued making it. Instead they've come out with two new silvered glasses, "Terranova" and "Luna." I ordered a 1/4 pound of each to try them out.

So far I'm finding them tricky to strike, but then Terra was really difficult in the beginning too. Since I've practiced so much with Terra, I now have a little bit better idea how to strike color with these new glasses but it's still going to take practice. Here are my very first experimental beads, first the Luna:

And the Terranova:

The large button focal is Terranova and Luna swirled together and encased. The white speckles on the beads are silver deposits that are part of the color of this glass. ...okay and probably some dust too :)

I've made some more beads with Terranova since these photos were taken. I can understand now that I had not been getting the glass hot enough in these practice beads, and so the range of color is not as broad as it could be. The glass didn't reach a good striking temperature, mostly because I'm used to working cool. Still, the translucent honey-amber color of the Luna is nice, and you can see more color in the Terranova beads when you look at them in the sunlight.

The color is not bad for a start, but the beads I made yesterday with Terranova really blow these practice beads out of the water. I'll show photos of them in a future post.

My main inspiration to keep practicing with Terranova and Luna is that Double Helix has offered to make the old Terra again if we can make these new glasses "sing."

Yay!!!

Back to the torch!
Have a great day everyone!