The current batch of new colors from Creation is Messy came with a couple of colors that contain more silver than most, making for interesting reactions and striking. I'm reviewing the first one here - a lovely lapis blue called Class M Planet (points for the Star Trek reference, of course!)In rod form, this color looks like a muddy blue. But what you get when melting this glass is not much like the rod color.
I had a hard time controlling Class M Planet at first - that is until I started just putting clear on it. (in this case, DH Zephyr, to avoid any reaction.) The first spacers I made turned a dark forest-y green color, and stayed
that way until I tried to strike the glass. The longer you work this
color, the bluer it tends to get. It will go back green as you strike,
until you start layering or encasing it. This large bead was a base of
blue with clear stringer melted in, then encased again in clear. Some
color striations appeared, but stayed mostly blue.Melting this glass is pretty easy. It does have a lot of silver in it, so it's not as smooth and buttery as most opaques, but can take some good heat. Encasing it with clear and pulling stringer gave me a soft lapis blue color that I quite like. However, because this color as a lot of silver, your stringer can be lumpy if not hot enough when pulling.
It doesn't tend to bleed, but can spread a little bit when melting it in as decoration, but not enough to make me mad. :) For the most part, as I worked the glass in the beads below, Class M Planet stayed a pretty lapis blue, sometimes fading to a teal-ish color here and there. But in the kiln, most of it went back to blue. This is especially true when heavily encased. The green shows up more when the color is "naked" and raised. I preferred the blue, so that's mostly how I used it.
Even though Class M Planet is a glass that contains a lot of silver, I didn't get any reaction when using a reduction flame. The metallic effects on the beads below were done with DH Elektra.
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