Lampworking day #56. All about reactions.

This slip was all about reactions.  Mainly turquoise/terracotta and light ivory.  I just wanted to see what the glass did.

I really really love what it did.

Another thing that was different about this slip was that I used my smallest mandrels only.  I learned that the glass is a lot less manageable in terms of shape and especially the dimples.  I actually wanted beads with dimples, but I got hardly any, here.  And I do think it's because of the mandrels.  The next slip will be with larger mandrels, mostly because I just want to try my new mandrels but also to see if that is the reason.

This bead with what I think is silver in it (on the right) is something I made with my pile of shorts; the person who sold it to me left some of what I think is silver on the tip of two of her ivory rods... so I used one of them on this bead.  :)  Definitely saving the other one for something more special, because I love it!  :)

I made this bead from an unknown glass in my pile of shorts that is really difficult to melt because the tip keeps popping off when I stick it in the flame... I'm actually kind of afraid to mix it with my other glass because it seems to me that my beads will crack... any thoughts on that? 

Anyway so I made the one bead and I was interested to see which kind of color would actually come out. 

What I did to make sure these different glasses reacted is I stuck them in the closest part of the flame from my hot head torch and then to the way back of the flame, and the reaction stayed.  Otherwise they went back to the other color.  And I had to play a lot with this to figure out how to do it!

Do you think this looks as cool as I think it does?  Cause seriously it blows my mind.

And then this one... I don't know about this purple.  I will have to keep playing with it at different parts of the flame and against other colors ...I bet it does much more than this.

:)  See you later and thanks for checking out my blog!