Behind the glassy times: Effetre Striped Pink

I've never been one for hoarding glass. I never buy it in 'bulk' and my glass stash is relatively small compared to a lot of lampworkers' stashes. Mine's more of a 'stashette'. This is mainly because I don't have the money to buy up tonnes of glass, and also because I'm one of those people who refuse to rush for stuff, including new glass. I never run for the bus, even if I can see it coming. I've never queued for a shop sale in my life and I hardly ever rush to buy tickets for concerts and shows. I have a kind of relaxed "If it's meant to be, it'll be" attitude to most things in life.

This all means that I don't have many 'fancy' glasses. I once bought a pound of a particular Effetre coral because I loved it and I knew it wouldn't be around for long. It lasted me for nine years. I think that's it, though. I only really buy glass that I need when I need it, and glass that I love when I can afford it.

Recently, someone very kindly gave me some glass rods and included were some fancy colours that I'd never seen or used before, and in some cases, never even heard of. (That's what I get for being a bead hermit and mostly keeping my beadself to my beadself. In case you hadn't figured it out, I'm weird, OK?)

It's an utter delight to work with these new-to-me glasses and yesterday I made beads with the couple of rods of Effetre pastel Striped Pink 253 that were part of the lovely glass gift I was given. A bit of Googling told me that that this glass dates from about 2009 and is now mighty rare. Effetre pastel Purple (AKA Evil Devitrifying Purple, or EDP) is number 254 and the Striped Pink is number 253 and is very similar to EDP. In rod form, it's a gorgeous purple-pink, but unlike EDP it has a core of something that is pretty much, and most probably is, Rubino Oro. I know the rod looks like a hollow tube but trust me, there's a core of transparent pink there.

My Google-about brought up several forum threads about how Striped Pink devits and misbehaves, much like EDP does. (For the record, I love EDP as I've said before here and here. You just have to know its quirks and work with them and you'll get on with it just fine.) I took note of this because I only had two rods of the Striped Pink to play with and I didn't want to waste it. So I made spacers with it and I didn't work the glass as I think you're 'supposed' to do. I didn't strike the glass, or reheat it or faff with it; I just made little plain beads and annealed them.

The result was the most beautifully purple beads. They're just so wonderfully purple. And shiny. They look opaque, but they're not; they're more translucent, I guess.

When you get them in the sunlight their Rubino Oro hearts just glow. Look at that cranberry pink gleam. It's like someone lit a pink fire of pinkness inside each bead.

I couldn't find much technical information about Striped Pink 253, like how you're meant to work it, and there are very few photos of beads made with it. I know I worked the glass 'wrong' but if these purple-but-they-glow-pink beads are wrong then I'm happy to have not worked the glass 'right'.

I realise that I'm mighty behind the glassy times with this Striped Pink post, but maybe someone has some in their stash and perhaps they might stumble upon this blog if they ever have a Google-about looking for information about this beautiful glass.