Flowers on a Beach.

There is coloured glass called Rubino Ora (also known as Gold Pink) which gives some beautiful rich colours depending on what you use as a base colour. My favourite of these colours is the deep, rich pink colour you can see in the photograph above. Here I have placed Rubino Ora on top of effetre's pink. Very pretty? 

It is also a real pain to work with! I started to use this glass when I worked on my first torch the Hot Head and it gave me so many nightmares until I learnt how this glass reacts. Don't be put off if you are using a Hot Head torch by the way because this bead was created on one! So I did manage it ..... eventually!

This is a glass that you have treat with respect!  It is very reactive and if you don't heat it correctly who will either lose the colour or end up with dirty grey scum marks on the glass.  It is a very naughty glass, a challenge to work with but redeems itself because it produces some gorgeous colours depending on the colour of the bead you are encasing.  This is one of my favourite types of glass because it opens up so many possibilities. For instance, here I combined rubino ora with while glass to make a set of my signature implosion beads.  I wish I had taken a close up of this photograph so that you could see the depth of colour increase in between the petals.  It is very effective. 

There is a lot of science/chemistry with this glass and I am umming and ahhing as I write about whether or not to include it ..... I will leave it this time because I want to write a series of posts about different types of glass, how they react and the different effects you can achieve using different colours.  Whilst I am writing about future posts I am also going to write about the tips and tricks to achieving a beautiful round bead with lovely finished puckered bead holes.  I am currently working on this and it should be out next month.

 

Anyway .... back to this blog (see this is how my mind works at the moment ... sorry).  In this set of beads there a wrap of Rubino Ora on top of CIM Heffalump.  It creates a beautiful deep, rich pink colour.  Now, if you look closely you can see what I mean about the reactive nature of this glass.  Look closely at the little white petals and compare the petals on the pink glass with the petals on the turquoise.  Both sets of petals were created using white glass in exactly the same way.  The Rubino Ora has reacted with the white glass and created a pink halo around the outside of the petals and intensified the pink in the centre giving a vein effect.  Do you see what I mean? 

 

 

 This glass has a tendency to do this with most colours and creates some fantastic results.  For example ....

 

 





Here Rubino Ora was added on top of a blue dot and melted into the glass.  The Rubino has spread out across the dot and created a really cool reaction between the turquoise base bead and the blue dots.  If you add stripes of colours across a bead (including a stripe of Rubino) the effects are beautiful. 

 

I made this focal bead back in 2008 .... crikey where has the time gone?  This bead consists of an ivory base encased in rubino ora with trails of opal yellow and dark blue.  Look at how different the colour is.  It is a very rich goldy/orange colour, again a reaction of the glass to ivory....  Have a play yourself an see what you come up with.

 

So, here is just a little insight into the world of Rubino Ora.  I will write again about this glass and perhaps add a few of my favourite colour combinations and reactions next time ....

 

Most of the beads and jewellery in this post can be found in my shop.  If you click on the photograph a link will take you straight there.

 

Sarah xx

www.beadscrumptious.co.uk
www.hypersmash.com