Hades & Peace

I got a delivery of glass for testing from Creation Is Messy on Thursday and I've been playing about with all of the delicious glasses.  I'm going to be adding a couple of colour testing posts to the blog this weekend so do stay tuned.

One of the CiM glasses I've been experimenting with is Hades.  This is a really intense black.  Black glass is actually transparent and is normally really saturated purple or blue and when you pull that into fine stringers the black is no longer black.  Hades, like Effetre's Intense Black, doesn't do that.  It maintains its blackness even when pulled into freakishly fine stringer.

This isn't the first time I've tried Hades - I've used it before but this time I set time aside and really watched how it works.  I've found that you have to treat Hades really gently.  The beads at the top of this post are CiM Peace (white) with Hades polka dots.  You may be able to see that the polka dots are not totally flush with the base bead.  They're really nearly almost smooth but I was erring on the side of caution when it came to melting the dots in.  I've decided that if you work the Hades slowly in a cooler flame it will keep its crispness.  If I'd melted these dots in at my normal rate they would have feathered and bled at the edges creating a murky grey-brown halo to the dots.  So I went slowly which paid off and the result is crisp jet black on plain white.  Simple yet striking. 

There's more to discover and say about Hades but I will save that for a proper CiM testing post.

CiM Testing : Sangre

I'm kicking off my Creation is Messy testing at the beginning of the rainbow and the first colour I'm posting about is Sangre. This 'dense and saturated striking red' is an utterly gorgeous colour and for a striker it is pretty easy to work. The colour is as richly red as its name suggests - sangre is the Spanish word for blood.

Striking colours develop in the flame. By gently cooling and reheating the colour will become deeper and more vibrant. Some striking glasses are easier to strike than others and Sangre is one of the easy ones.

The beads at the top of the post include two plain Sangre beads - the one on the left is just straight plain Sangre and the one propped up at the back is a thin layer of Sangre over a CiM Peace (white) core. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the Sangre acts as an encasing glass.

But in my opinion the best way to show off this wonderful red is to use it in moderation and to let the light shine through it. The beads above have a core of Sangre which I've heavily encased in Vetrofond clear and decorated with polka dots in CiM Peace. As you can see I've got quite consistent results with the glass regardless of the fact it's a striker. I really didn't treat it any differently to a non-striking transparent and I went about my beadmaking business in a pretty normal manner. That's what I mean when I say Sangre is easy to strike.

Sangre, like most transparent reds, likes to be photographed in natural daylight or else it will look like it has a brownish tinge to it. The two photos above were taken in the early morning sunlight.

The photograph below was taken in the shade of the conservatory and shows one plain Sangre bead and one that is etched. The glass etches really well.

CiM Sangre will definitely be my 'go to' transparent red from now on. Love it!