Made it myself

I'm trying out this site for selling called madeitmyself.com. It looks like it is another new website similar to Artfire that is in the beta stage. Though this one doesn't have same type of individual stores like Etsy and Artfire, as far as I can tell. It gives you a page with your listings at the bottom, but so far it doesn't seem to be as detailed as Etsy or Artfire. It will be interesting to see how it develops!

Earth Glass

Really interesting glass that reminds me of Terra but I've never been able to get any pink out of it. It will give you a lot of purple, blues, yellow to mustard, browns, and greens. It seems to do better when it comes in contact with metal; somehow the color pops better. It is similar to Terra in getting the color to come up after the initial heating by going back and heating it again with a slight warming of the top layer of the bead. You can go too far and have to start over, but I've noticed that it seems to wear out the color if you do this too many times. It's like a pair of jeans that gets washed over and over again and starts losing its color. I call it Earth when I sell it on Etsy because it reminds me of what the earth would look like from an airplane.

Some more Spun Glass

This set was first a special order and then I liked it so much I made it again for my Etsy store. The burgundy glass that is used in this set is a CIM glass and is a rich, deep burgundy that turns almost all opaque but leaves part of the glass clear for that wonderful sparkle effect. This glass reminds me of a lot of the Vetrofond oddlot glasses that have that effect of the partial clear and the sparkle. Really is pretty to see in person!

Unusual Reaction

This is Red Copper Green when I got an unusual reaction; shiny! I haven't been able to achieve this same reaction since. I have talked to glass suppliers and other lampworkers and haven't been able to come up with why or how I did this in the first place. What I get now is the usual; see below. This golden red is sooo gorgeous that I spent the better part of a two weeks going through two to three rods of glass while at the same time changing the setting on my propane, concentrator, and cleaning my torch. All to no avail! I can't get the same result. And, I remember distinctly that it happened right away. I have some disks that also had the same reaction and that tells me that I really had to do it quickly otherwise the disks would have shattered in the cold air, and/or I would have lost the design of the spiral on the disks.






What this reminds me of is a haze of turquoise over the dark red, which barely shows. If you saw the rod of glass before it melted you wouldn't believe the difference. It is dark red with a core of turquoise. These are pretty in their own right, I just wish I could get the original effect to happen again! I also discovered that getting this result is varied if you notice that some are redder than others.