Glass Color Families: Pinks out now!

I'm excited to announce the new tutorial up on Coloraddiction now! Glass Color Families: Pinks is the second installment of my color series. It's 30 pages of pink glass goodness! I'm a bit nervous about it, but I think it turned out pretty well. Here are a couple of screenshots. If you go to the website you'll see a description there of what the tutorial covers and how much it costs. I hope you'll take a look! For now, I am going to go sleep! :)

What's Coming Up

So I've been working on the next installment of my Glass Color Families tutorial series for quite awhile now. I'm finally almost dine, so I thought I would post a little announcement with a teaser picture. Yes, Pinks!!

The tutorial will be listed on Etsy as well as my main Coloraddiction tutorials site hopefully by the beginning of next week or sooner. This is a pic of all the petals I have pulled for the tutorial - each of the petals is a glass color I will be covering in the tutorial.

They are all 104 COE glass from CiM, Effetre, Reichenbach or Vetrofond. Some will be covered in more detail than others, but there will be blurbs on all of them. I will also be covering some techniques that are related to the pink glass.

The tutorial is geared towards the novice beadmaker, but is useful for a range of skills from beginner to advanced.

I'm not sure yet what the price of the tutorial will be, but it will be larger than my Browns tutorial, so might be a little more than that was. Anyway - hope you all will stay tuned! If you want to, you can sign up for the mailing list on Coloraddiction - I will be announcing the tutorial there when it's released.

When Color is...Well...Weird

One of the most challenging, and well, the most fun, aspects of working with glass is that there are a lot of times when what you pull out of the kiln the next day is completely different from what you put in the night before.

No, I don't mean that my beads are shape-shifters...I mean when it comes to the colors of the glass I use. :)

The chemical properties of glass are such that in many of the colors there is the tendency for changes to happen in the flame and even in the kiln as the glass is heated, cooled and annealed over time.

This happened to me yesterday, and when I opened the kiln this morning to look at my creations (this is a lot like Christmas morning, let me tell you) I was slightly shocked and had to stand there for a minute in the freezing garage studio peering at the color of the beads.

See - the rods I used were meant to give me a much lighter, cooler color scheme - more lavender, more pale, creamy yellow and less deep, caramel tones and a lot less pink.

That's not to say I am unhappy - in fact, I love the way these turned out! It just goes to show you that sometimes the glass has a mind of its own and will not conform to your preconceived notion of what it should look like when cool.

Color is sometimes best when it's completely unexpected - that's when I fall in love the hardest.

This set, which I am calling Opal Kiss, was made from the following colors - Precision Diamond Clear, ASK 104 Caramel Apple (for the metallic gold effect), CiM Heffalump and Pink Champagne, and Effetre Rosatto, Opal Yellow and Pale Topaz.

I believe some of the darker effects came from the Caramel Apple reacting with some of the other colors. Caramel Apple is a very reactive color and reduces a pretty metallic gold. I think the dark lines appeared when it touched some of the darker transparent colors such as Pink Champagne.

Anyway - enough of the technical stuff - they just turned out pretty, and I am not sure I could duplicate the effect on some of them if I tried to. So, they're on auction!

Colors Remind Me of People, Or

People remind me of colors....

Often when I am working on choosing colors for a bead set, my brain is busy thinking about random stuff as well (multitasking?). Sometimes, a person comes to mind, and I end up picking colors that remind me of that person without even realizing it until later.



In this case, it was my mom Karla, and this is the set that came out of the kiln this morning.

My mom is a beautiful person, with a classic and comfortable style - kind of like these colors. The sweet, earthy berries and effervescent limes remind me a lot of her personality.

Mom's kind of complex, too - while on one hand she is familiar and warm, she is also bright and quietly cheerful, and I love her!

Karla's Garden beads were made from CiM glass in Heffalump, Dirty Martini, Simply Berry, Effetre glass in Grass Green, Olive, and Precision glass in Diamond Clear.

Even the glass names remind me of my mom! How weird is that? What colors remind you of your mom?

These beads are of course on auction - click them to see!

Looks Like Fun!

Yep, more off-topic Entrecard stuff!

This contest looks like a lot of fun, and there sure are a ton of prizes and ways to enter.
Of course, it could be that I just dig the colors in their new banner. Seriously - cool!

Entrecard is great, come join in, and then enter the contest. :)

Wordless Wednesday

Click to see the auction!

Blog Award

How sweet - I got another award from Saffie's Blog - this one is called the Kreativ Award - thanks so much!!

The rules are to nominate 5 blogs which inspire me, and link back to the blog which gave me the award. Also, let my nominees know by commenting on their blogs. So here goes!

Kimberly Affleck - her blog is new, but her beads are so inspiring, and she is a lovely person!

Ever After Artistry - gorgeous beads and a clean, simple blog - perfection!

Nagibeads - she tests glass and has the cutest hearts!

The Glass Owl - a delightful blend of weird and cute - her owls are so much fun!

Lampwork Diva - Cindy's blog - just overall lots of fun to read!

Thanks for the great blogs, you guys. :)