A Bit of News and Miscellaneus Stuff

Hi everyone!  Hope your February is going well!

Just a couple of housekeeping things real quick...

First, the AGLF has reduced the cost of our annual calendar to $12!  I'm in it (three times!) and it's really gorgeous.  Legal fees for our case are ramping up, so I could really use your help, if you can!  Click the pic to see the calendar and purchase.  Thanks!!

Next, stay tuned for a post on CiM Reds coming very soon. I've been testing some of the new reds and an old favorite! I also get help from Kimberly with some of these reds since she loves red glass much more than I do. The testing was really enlightening, so check back to see the post later this week.

An update on my book on color theory - it's coming along slowly but surely! It's probably going to be a lot larger than a normal tutorial from me, because I have a lot more information to get out there, so it's taking longer than I thought. My best guess for release is sometime in June.  Hopefully it will be worth the wait!  :)

And finally - some pics of my latest beads! I've been having fun with cubes and lentils this past week. These are on Etsy at kseeber.etsy.com. Enjoy! :)

CiM Glass Testing: 795 Adobe Ltd. Run

Last year I was asked by my cousin Andrea to make her some beads so she could make jewelry in her wedding colors for her bridesmaids. Her colors were peach and aqua - really pretty, right? I of course wanted to say yes, so I did. No brainer.

However, as many beadmakers know, the 104 COE line has no color that can be decisively called peach - in either opaque or transparent glass. The exception is Lauscha Peach, a light transparent which I don't really like using because it's very pale and doesn't translate to peach unless used alone.

So.... I had a challenge for myself - experiment with earth tones and layering to simulate a peach color. I found the solution after a lot of wasted glass and gnashing of teeth. CiM had come out with a new color recently called Adobe. It's a limited run (damn!!), and is described by CiM as an opaque brown.


There's absolutely nothing in this color that says "brown" to me.  In rod form, it looks like some kind of bright caramel candy -  or maybe a light, vivid terracotta. I didn't see peach at first, at all, so I waited awhile before trying it.  When I finally melted it, it went much lighter.  And when I tried layering it with a pale pinkish transparent, I got a warm, sweet peach color.  Yey!!

Peach is one of those colors that we beadmakers have been wishing, pleading, and begging for over the last decade.  I don't know if anyone else knows that Adobe can translate to peach - but I do know that this color is extremely limited.  Frantz only allows people to purchase 1/4lb at a time, and CiM has stated this is a limited run - so it's, well, limited.  I only hope Kathy at CiM has her manufacturers make something similar to add to their basic line so we can have peach whenever we want.

Now, down to the knitty-gritty.  Adobe is a joy to work with.  It has a medium density - it doesn't wash out very much when layered, even against black, which is nice.  I didn't have any problems with it bleeding or spreading out, or overtaking any other color. 

I don't have photos of it used with the aqua colors when I made beads for my cousin last year, but I do have some more current photos.  Here Adobe is layered with Effetre Rose Quartz, which is very very pale pink transparent - just enough to nudge the peach color out of the Adobe.  The peach is paired with soft purple made of layers of Effetre Violet and CiM Purple Haze.  Black is thrown in with clear for contrast.  The effect is a sweet, springy combination.

Adobe acts like most opaque CiM colors - nice and stable, with a tiny bit of striation when left solid.  It didn't burn easily, didn't pit and basically stayed put where I wanted it. Adobe is brightest when left raised - it warms up a little when melted in.  Hope you like the pics - the beads are on Etsy if you're interested.  :)

New eBook Coming Soon....Color Theory!

I am working on a new book dedicated to color theory for the glass beadmaker.  This will likely be a lot longer than any of my other tutorials - I have lots of great information to put into this book.  It's in the early stages, so it doesn't have a title, price or cover art quite yet.  I just wanted to let everyone know that it is in the works and will hopefully be available at the beginning of the new year.

I do know that the ebook will be geared towards the beginning/novice beadmaker, but will have some information even for the intermediates as well.  The book will focus on color theory, application and technical aspects of color, and will have some great color combination recipes and lots of pictures. I'm throwing in pretty much everything I know about the subject - so I hope people will find it useful, inspiring and most of all, fun!  I'll keep you updated!

Technical Difficulties

Hi everyone -

Seems I am having some issues with my web host - this is why the pics aren't showing up. I am working on it - hopefully everythign will be back to normal soon!  :)

**Looks like we are back up - yey!  :)

Cim Glass Testing: 803 Twilight Ltd. Run & 602 Purple Haze Ltd. Run

I noticed yesterday that CiM has so many new colors lately, that I am way behind in testing! I am going to try and make up for it this year - it's one of my New Year's resolutions.

Today, I am writing about two newer colors - Twilight and Purple Haze. Both of these colors are limited run, so if you like them, get them as soon as you can.

First up is Twilight, a gorgeous neutral transparent grey. This color fills a small hole in the 104 palette - it's not as warm/green as Effetre Slate Gray, and is darker and cooler than regular Effetre Grey. I like my greys to be on the cooler side, and this fits the bill nicely.

Twilight works up well - it's slightly stiff, but not enough to be a problem. It doesn't bubble or scum much - which is nice for a medium transparent color.

It layers really well, too - here with Effetre Dark Grey. I really love the encased stringer it makes - it's a perfect nuetral shade.

It also worked nicely as a layer between the opaque grey and the clear when encasing a base bead - it doesn't lighten too much. It is kind of stiff, so when using on top of a really soft opaque, like white or grey, make sure you use the outer part of the flame to heat it, to prevent the opaque color from melting faster than the Twilight. This will prevent any bleeding from the opaque underneath the encasing.

I saw no odd reactions in this glass when used with normal colors, and it didn't react with the clear I used - DH Aether. Twilight is a stable, consistent transparent color. Yey!

The other color I'd like to review is Purple Haze. I really love this pretty color. However, I think it's been mis-named. I don't consider this color either purple or hazy in any way. LOL I honestly thought that when I melted this I would get some sort of opacity or cloudiness. I was pleasantly surprised when I didn't. It's a pale transparent shade that works very nicely, if you keep it from getting too hot and bubbly/scummy.

Purple Haze is also....well, not purple. CiM describes it as a lavender/blue color shift (a similar, more accurate description was given to CiM's Count Von Count).  I found Purple Haze to be a lot less lavender/blue than Count Von Count. I think it sits comfortably between Count Von Count and Effetre's (also mis-named) Lavender Blue. What these people are thinking when looking at these colors is sometimes beyond me, in an amusing way. Thankfully, the name's not really that important, once you get to know the glass.

left-to-right: Count Von Count, Purple Haze, CiM Pink Champagne, Effetre Lavender Blue

Purple Haze also doesn't color shift nearly as much in sun or fluorescent light as other lavenders do. It does a small amount - turning a light lavender color with pink undertones. In incandescent light, it is cool pink with lavender undertones.

In my opinion, we have quite a few lavender choices for both layering and encasing. So I decided to use this pretty pinkish lavender to brighten my pinks instead. Here, I layered it with Reichenbach's gorgeous Opal Raspberry, a warm, deep opal pink glass that I just love (and reviewed several years ago). It's the most saturated pink in the 104 line - and I wish it wasn't an opal! I hope CiM can make this as a dense opaque color some day.

Anyway, Purple Haze changed the warm pink into a cool pink - something which I just adore.

The major note with this color is to make sure you work it cool - too hot and it burns and you get scum. This is particularly true when using it as stringer. However, it does encase well, works as a layering color, and makes lovely spacers. It's a consistent color - no striking or odd reactions that I can see.

I plan to put this pale transparent over pretty much anything orange, pink or purple. It's also a limited run, so get it while you can. Nice job, as usual, CiM!

CiM Glass Testing: 504 Blue Suede Shoes Ltd. Run

The first thing you should know about this new color from CiM is that it is technically an opal color.  This means it's supposed to be slightly translucent, not dense, and kind of glowy.

The second thing you should know is that my camera hates it.  More about that later.

I'll get right into the nitty gritty - this color was not fun for me.  It's really pretty, but did not behave the way I wanted it to.  Part of it is my fault - I wasn't aware it was an opal when I started working with it, and it was hard to tell at first. It only acts like an opal when you layer it - but not when you encase it.  At least in my experience.

Blue Suede Shoes is described on CiM's website as "An extremely dark opal cobalt blue",  but (with respect to the people at CiM) I have some issues with it being described that way.  First of all, it's not extremely dark, unless by some chance you can get it to strike that way.  Yes, folks, this is a striking color - technically speaking.  If you can do it, it will go dark and opalescent - very pretty.  But for me, most of my spacers even were a lighter color - almost a light lapis - with striations.

Blue Suede Shoes, paired with Effetre White, DH Aether and DH Ox.

The only time I noticed any opal charactaristics were when I layered this color with clear (but not when I encased it, which is odd to me.)  When applied thinly - as in dots, stripes or on flower petals - Blue Suede Shoes lightened dramatically.  It looks more like a light lapis or even a cornflower blue in some of my beads.  I especially really loved the look of the blue stripes.

The glass itself does have a nice consistency - especially when compared with other opals.  It's not stiff at all - it melts easily.

Blue Suede Shoes does tend to bleed just a bit from underneath an encasing. But it's not too bad - easily overcome if you take the time to move your encasing near the hole.

As for my camera and the pics I took....that's the most frustrating, and not really the fault of the glass at all.  I had a good look around the web for images of this blue, and indeed other glass that's a similar shade (Effetre Lapis for instance).  Images on the web of this color show a blue that has more green than reality.  No matter how hard I tried, I could not get this color to show correctly.  But, I got as close as I could.  Cobalt blue has the same issues.  Maybe it's the way the glass transmits light into the camera lens - I don't know.

All in all, this is a pretty color, if you can get it to behave, don't mind a little bit of inconsistency in color, and if you like opals in general. It's not cobalt, though, in my opinion.  It's closest to lapis blue.

CiM Glass Testing: 632 Thai Orchid, 482 Mojito, 403 Army Men Ltd. Run

For me, the end of summer/start of fall means combining deep purples and lush greens. Yum!  This time, I started with one of the newest CiM colors - Army Men - and layered it with Mojito. I then combined the lovely result with one of CiM's older colors - Thai Orchid. Later, I added shades of amber to the mix for a really pretty autumn combination.

CiM Army Men, one of the latest colors in the CiM palette, is a subtle, muted pine green.  It falls somewhere on the bluer end of olive, with a lot of grey in it.  When I saw this color for the first time, I was reminded of the new version of CiM Commando.  In fact, Army Men sits right between Commando and Olive in tonality.  Olive has a bit more yellow.

I love the consistency of the glass - it was a dream to melt!  It is slightly soupier than some opaques.

Army Men is a dense color, despite its subtle shade, and can be layered and encased without washing out.  As many greens do, this color can bleed under encasing, and can take over other color just a little bit.  It's not as bad as some Effetre greens, but it is something to watch out for when melting in your decoration.

Army Men is also one of those colors that tends to streak and separate, which can either add variety visually, or be a pain in the a**, depending on your application. I found this only slightly irritating - for the most part, this glass behaved well and did what I wanted.

Alone, Army Men is kind of a "behind the scenes" color - one that works well as a background or filler in your designs. It made lovely spacers! This color really shined when I layered it with Mojito, which I will talk about next.

CiM Mojito is a wonderful companion to Army Men, and a lovely color in and of itself.  I've been remiss in waiting so long to review it here for you!  In pictures, this pretty pale olive green can sometimes look like just a plain yellow-green shade.  I personally think you need to see this one in person to appreciate the subtle, muted olive that it represents. It's slightly grey with only a bit of a yellow undertone. A great layering glass - with any green you want to lighten up and make a bit more subtle. It's the perfect fall green.

As a transparent glass, Mojito is smooth and not too stiff.  It didn't bubble or scum for me, nor did it react with anything at all.  It's very consistent and has a nice clarity to it.  I used it with Army Green for encased stringer, and it was very light and soft. If you want to go darker, stick some Slytherin in there!




Next we have a color that came out really early on, when CiM first started - Thai Orchid.
When it comes to opaque purple, CiM has at least half a dozen that are all really similar at first glance. They are all kind of reminiscent of Effetre's Violet shades.  They all have a slightly different way of acting, which is at the same time frustrating and fun.

Thai Orchid is at the dark end of the purple spectrum - a deep, dense violet purple. It shares some of the same characteristics as Effetre Dark Violet, but is more saturated and a little less reactive, depending on the batch you get.

I had two different batches of Thai Orchid - one that was significantly bluer than the other.  Both are lovely, though. You can see the difference in the spacers here.

As an opaque glass, Thai Orchid acts like most other opaque violets - it's streaky in the extreme, tends to spread out and bleed a little, and can pit or silver when exposed to different flame environment.  It does layer very nicely, though.  Without a layer of encasing, the lighter batch of this color doesn't do much for me.  Like most other violets, the shade is just too browned out.  But layer it with a transparent light purple or even clear and the brownish hue magically disappears, and you're left with a velvety deep violet.

In my Autumn Song beads, I layered both batches of Thai Orchid with the now discontinued CiM Count Von Count (you can get a similar effect with Effetre 081 Dark Lavender), for a lighter but slightly more saturated purple.  Wonderful for fall, I think.

Have fun playing!  :)

For my Facebook Friends and Fans

To everyone on my friends at Facebook -

I will be doing an overhaul on my Facebook account.  Since I have finally entered the 21st century and gotten an actual smartphone, I am editing my contacts and linking my accounts.

This means I need to separate my business contacts from my personal ones.

What I will be doing is inviting all of my current friends to "Like" my Artist page, and then unfriending all of the people that I don't personally know.  That way I still get to keep in contact with all my wonderful customers and visitors over on my "Kandice Seeber" and "Coloraddiction" Fan Pages, and keeping my personal profile for my family and friends and people I have contact with regularly.

This is mostly because linking my facebook account to my smartphone put all of my thousands of facebook friends into my mobile phone contact list, and this is just too confusing for my old brain.  :)  Separating the accounts makes more sense.

I love you all, and I wanted you to know that I am not unfriending you for any other reason than that I need my business and personal contacts to stay separate.  If you find yourself unfriended and you don't think that's right, please do feel free to re-friend me with a message.

Here are my fan pages -
Kandice Seeber
Coloraddiction

((((hugs))))
Kandice

CiM Glass Testing: A Bunch of Opals

I spent this week with some newer colors (new to me anyway) .....with some interesting, fun and somewhat frustrating results.

I decided to do all 4 of these colors in one post - mostly because all four of them make kind of a tiny spectrum of aquas and teals that all look good together. Also, they all acted very similarly in the flame and in front of the camera.

I'll go through them one by one, and then do some comparisons. One thing to keep in mind as you look at the pics (and this is the frustrating part)....all of these colors were very, very hard to photograph.  They tend to look a bit washed out and dirty in most pictures...which I suspect has something to do with the translucency.  Looking at the colors on the CiM website, I see I am not alone on this issue. In real life, all four of these colors are more saturated than can be shown here.

The first is 547 Electric Avenue - a color that has been around since pretty much the beginning of CiM.  It's classified as an Opal, which means it has a translucent, almost glowing quality.  CiM Opals can be compared to Effetre Opalinos and Alabasters - but in looks only.

In my experience, CiM's Opals are much less shocky and picky than their Effetre counterparts, and more compatible, thank goodness!  Electric Avenue in particular was really easy to work with.  It maintained its translucency for the most part, and seems to be compatible with clear and black as well as the opaque Effetre Light Turquoise I layered it with.

By itself, in spacers, Electric Avenue is a vivid, opalescent aqua shade, which is slightly lighter than it is in rod form. It tended to go more opaque when worked longer.

I played with the functionality of all 4 Opals, sometimes using them as an opaque base, and sometimes using them in place of a transparent, in layering.  

Electric Avenue encased well as a base with clear, and turned a bit opaque.  As plain stringer, it stayed opalescent. When used as an opaque flower petal base, it went slightly opaque, but you can almost still see the black bead underneath.  However, when layered on top of Effetre Light Turquoise, as seen here in the left floral, and underneath a dot of clear, it went a nice transparent light aqua.  Interesting!  I liked this color - easy to work with, not a lot of bubbling or burning, a nice soft consistency and a lovely color.  Now if I can just get the song out of my head!

Next we have 598 Atlantis, a teal blue Opal that reminds me a little of the color Mermaid.  Atlantis is very similar to Electric Avenue in consistency and workability.

As spacers, this color tended to vary in opacity a lot more - it was hard to actually make two alike!  There is some streaking in some of the more opaque spots.

One major difference between the two colors is that Atlantis seems to be a bit more sensitive to temperature.  It was the only color to crack under a layer of encasing - but only on one of the beads I made this week. The crack along the hole is thermal, which means that it most likely got too cold as I worked it.  It seems that the longer this color is worked, the more opaque it gets, so keep an eye on that heat if the color solidifies!

I tried the floral experiment on Atlantis, as I did on Electric Avenue above, with similar results. The flower on the right appears very translucent because there is no layer of opaque Light Turquoise.  I think it's a really pretty effect.  Atlantis stayed dark when layering, but still acted like a transparent when I needed it to, as on the left floral here, sandwiched between the Light turquoise and the clear.


Moving on, we have 499 Rainforest, a teal green opal. Again, the consistency and workability were very similar to the other opals I have covered in this post.  Pretty much everything about Rainforest is the same as its sister color Atlantis, with the exception of hue.  No shockiness, no bubbling or scumming, a soft, buttery melt and a lovely vivid color. 

One small difference is that Rainforest doesn't go opaque quite as easily, and sometimes will only opacify in spots on the same bead (near the hole, most of the time) and stay translucent elsewhere. 

This Opal is the darkest of the four, although that is difficult to see in the photographs.  The stringer is especially dark and lovely (pics below).  No floral experiment with Rainforest - I suspected that the results would be very much like Atlantis.

The last of the four colors I tested this week is the newest one - 404 Jade Palace Ltd Run.  Jade Palace is the newest and lightest of these, and lands somewhere between light teal and seafoam green.

I also found that this color had just a tad more of a tendency to go opaque than the other three. It made strikingly lovely stringer, reminding me of jade gemstones.

Again with the floral experiment, with similar results.  Very glowy, translucent florals when no opaque is used, but very normal looking florals when Jade was layered.

Now, I saved the best part for last - a little bit of a surprise that happened when I experimented with using the Opals as transparent layers.

I love when my experiments yield happy results!  It turns out that all four of these colors tend to spread out when melted into the base bead - something I think probably happens with a lot of Opals. This makes them wonderful for dot distortion - just like Rubino Oro!  In these dot beads, I layered each Opal on top of Light Turquoise and then melted the dots all the way, creating some lovely shapes that fit together like puzzle pieces.  The dot distortion with these colors was really forgiving and easy.  Fun!

Last but not least, here are some pics of the beads I made this week with all four of these Opals, plus Light Turquoise, Black and Clear.  They are on Etsy. :)  Have a wonderful weekend everyone!