Junk Mail Inspiration

My son hands me the mail. One letter addressed to me and about five leaflets about things I neither want nor care about.  Still, curiosity, boredom and the need to read everything in front of me overpowers my ability to throw them in the recycling and I stumble across this picture...

Mmmm, I muse...I like the colours, do I have the glass?

So I trot off to my shed/studio/shed to look for the colours.  I have decided the base colour should be a light colour maybe Ivory.  Now there are two kinds of Ivory.  Light and Dark.  Dark Ivory is quite reactive and known for it's spreading effects and I don't want this for these beads so I select Light Ivory.  It is smoother, less reactive and will give me a good result.

Next colour...Effetre Avocado.  I haven't used this colour before so I don't know how this glass reacts.  It is not a colour I would normally choose so I must have bought it for something in particular, although I can't remember what. So, let's try it!

Now I need a fresh bright colour for contrast and to liven things up a bit.  Easy.....Effetre Lime Green.  I use this quite often.  It is quite stable and gives good results.  Lovely!

I make a batch of beads using only these three colours.  I start with Ivory as the base colour, then Ivory with Lime dots, Ivory with Lime and Avocado dots, Ivory with Lime Stripes and so on.....  Then I experiment using Avocado as the base colour.

When the kiln is full of my new little creations, I leave the beads to soak overnight.

Inspection Day!

Not bad.... I really do like the colour combinations.  One of the problems making glass beads is that you never really know what is going to be waiting for you when you open the kiln door.  There have been many occasions where I have spent half a day making what I think are colourful creations only to find the colours look awful together after they have been in the kiln.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings......

Onto the next stage.....cleaning the beads......  I can't help it but I always find this to be the dull part of making beads.  I put on a good film (to stop me from falling asleep), get out the Dremel and very carefully remove the bead release from within each bead.  Then I give the beads another clean, dry them and get them ready to photograph.

Photographing glass beads is another blog altogether so I will leave it there for now.

Here are the final beads......

I definitely chose the Light Ivory but in some of the beads I can see a distinct fuzzyness around the edges (part of the spreading effect I mentioned with Dark Ivory) of some of the Avocado dots.  This is another strange thing about Ivory...there does seem to be gradations between the Light and Dark Ivory......I will save this for another blog!