I accomplished my goal of making an entire set of beads using silvered glass instead of just test beads. I can't wait to make these into some sort of jewelry!!!!! These were created after I read a free tutorial on Lampwork Etc. by Naos called Fire Opals.
These All have silver foil and some application of Ekho over a base of black, transparent orange or french blue and encased in clear. The last one in the second photo is not this technique - it is actually my fist attempt at my own verson of Jane Perala's Rock Pool beads. Don't really care for my result so I'm not sure I'll even give it another try. So back to the rest of the beads in this set. My favorite bead in this set is #8 which was a total accident. I hate to waste expensive silvered glass and when I had a fairly good piece of Ekho pop off the end of the rod and onto a strip of silver foil - well I just couldn't resist making it all into a blob and pulling it into a stringer on the end of a rod of dark turquoise. I wound that over a black base, reduced it and encased it and voila!!!! I really like the opal look to these beads and the intensity of the color all depends on how much reduction I used. The ones that look most like fire seem to be from the beads with Ekho applied in dot pattern rather than trails. I flattened the dots so I'm sure that cooled the Ekho faster so it is my guess that is what helps bring out the fire opal look. A big thanks to Naos for sharing this tutorial!!!!!!
I have read a lot about Canyon de Chelly and have tried it here and there but I never got anything exciting out of it. I came across Karolen's post on her blog showing her favorite combinations with this glass so I made a few using her suggestions. These are test beads but I liked some of them so much that I made a bunch more of them today. Can't wait to see how they turn out when I get them out of the kiln in the morning.
1. CDC with CG, 2. CDC with lt. turquoise, 3. CG base with silver foil and CDC stringer, 4. CDC and stringer of opal yellow, 5. lt. turquoise base with a strip of silver foil and CDC stringer, 6. same as last bead but w/out silver foil, 7. CDC base large stringer of lt. turquoise then dots of CDC on top of that, 8. CDC base, silver foil, lt. and dk. turquoise decoration, 9. same as last bead but no foil and only used dk. turquoise, 10. dk. t base with CDC decoration.
1. CDC and lt. t, 2. same as last bead but with silver foil, 3 - 6 are all bases of CDC and decorated with lt. and dk. turquoise, 7. CDC, CG and dk. turquoise, 8. CDC and CG, 9. CG base, silver foil stripe in the middle with CDC over that and lt. and dk. turquoise on either side of that.
I will probably try etching a few of these beads to see if that will look as good as I think it will.
I was trying to get close to Nomad's record of making 78 beads but I only made 35 total beads this round. I'm curious to see how many beads I can make when I have a full day at the torch - maybe then I can come closer to Nomad's count?!?!?!? It's fun to try but I doubt I will make that many in one sitting. Hats off to you Nomad!
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