I just got a whole new batch of glass with some relatively new colours from Creation is Messy. So pretty. This set contains CIM Antique Lace, Muskmelon, Cake Batter, Green Tea, Alley Cat, Weimaraner, and Raindrop and a little bit of Effetre Pale Aqua. I really like these colours and even more, I love how they work together. Nice clean lines, little to no reaction or fuzzing. And a soft spring-like palette.
These are the disc beads that belong to this set; starting from the left is Muskmelon, Antique Lace, and Cake Batter repeating in that order to the end. Soft, whispy pastels with hints of green and pink. I had a little bit of shocking with the Muskmelon but it seemed localized to one rod so it might have just been an odd air pocket or something. Alley Cat is a wonderful, intense orange that was a joy to work with and Weimaraner is a dark, slate grey with hints of blue. Green Tea is a lovely, lovely green. I usually tend towards the olive or sage greens and am not always a fan of the brighter, true greens but this one is so pretty that I couldn't even etch it. Raindrop is a medium transparent grey. It looks a little purple to me in rod form but after melting seemed to lose that and become a fairly neutral grey. It seemed to me to be a good match to the Weimaraner.
Oops, I almost forgot Cake Batter. This colour reminds me of Butter Pecan Unique #4 in that it is a very pale, off-white with hints of greenish yellow. It is a wonderful base colour and works so well when you want something a little more mellow than white.
I have a tendency to etch my beads. Etching can often brighten colours and help create a more distinct impression especially between colours of a similar shade. It can sometimes soften colours as well (depending on the colour) and create that velvety beach glass look. I can honestly say that etching has saved more than one set of beads that I've made that would otherwise have looked pretty blah. But then again, glass is shiny and smooth and often transparent. You loose these qualities when you etch glass and that is sometimes a bad thing. The worst thing is that you can't always tell if etching is going to make a bead better or worse or pretty much even.
This latest set of beads had some difficult choices for me. I thought that I would etch all the beads but I liked some of them so much when they were shiny and that I just didn't have the heart to do it. In the above beads, I only ended up etching 2 beads, the grey and orange bead and the transparent aqua bead. I had an especially hard time deciding about the green bead. Normally, I would etch a transparent bead like this in order to enhance the design work but the green is just so pretty (CIM Green Tea) that I couldn't bring myself to do it. I also really liked the little bubbles that got caught in the glass while I was making the bead. Below are 3 beads from this set before I etched them.
And then here they are in the set after being etched. The bead with the orange stripe is the first bead at the top left, then the pale bead with the small orange dots is third from the left and the bead with the grey stripes is third from the right.
In this case, etching did improve the look of the beads. The matte look helps make the designs stand out and gives some depth to the transparent dots on the pale bead. I think that in this set, the mixed approach is working for me. It also gives a bit of textural variation which I also like. Well, no hard and fast rules but I'm thinking that if I really like a bead the way it is then I should probably leave it alone, otherwise, why not etch it?
Boy, it's been awhile since I've updated this blog. It has been a real wintery winter here in the Toronto area and I have the blahs. In a effort to brighten up my outlook, I made of set of beads with some of my favourite faded beach colours. Warm sandy beige, earthy sage, and pale watery turquoise. This set started with one of my current favourite colours, Effetre Antique Green. This is a pale watery turquoise that can look either greenish or bluish depending on what you pair it with. In this case, I've added Effetre Sage Green (this is the machine pulled version which although isn't quite as nice a colour as the hand-pulled, doesn't explode on me when I use it), CIM Vanilla Latte, an incredible warm, creamy beige and CIM Butter Pecan Unique #4, a very pale, off white. Altogether, they give that wonderful, slightly sandy, cottage chic effect.
I just got a boat load of new glass so I'm hoping to be posting new sets in the near future.
