Flameworking 104 Glass

Torso Beads by Joy Munshower

One of our customers, Joy Munshower, posted some wonderful torso beads made with the Effetre glass rod colors ( Sunset, Alexandrite, Green Tea, Earth, Dark Ivory, and Neptune) and Vetrofond glass rod ( Topaz ODD ). They were such great examples of these colors I thought I would share them in this blog.

The murrini used were by Donna Millard

Effetre Neptune (591230)

"Here's the fun side-by-side, before-and-after shots of a female torso sculpted out of "Neptune" glass. When I sculpt it it develops the "pewter" finish over its surface (and "haloed" around the Morning Glory murrini by Donna Millard interestingly)… I then etched the bead to expose the gorgeous mottled teal beneath." – Joy Munshower

Effetre Alexandrite (591226)

I would like to see this bead in person because Effetre Alexandrite shifts hue slightly with different light.

Effetre Earth Cool Color (591688)

Effetre Sunset Pastel (591206)

Effetre Green Tea Cool Color (591680)

This Green Tea bead looks like it was sculpted out of a Marble.

Vetrofond Topaz ODD (791989)

Effetre Dark Ivory (591276)

For more images check out her Facebook page.

CiM / Messy Color Has Four New Colors! (3-29-11)

Oh Boy, its spring and Messy Color has come out with some wonderful new colors to add to their palette.  There are two transparent and two opal colors and they are call Rainforest, Azure, Atlantis and Appletini.

• Rainforest – 511499
• Appletini     – 511497
• Atlantis       – 511598
• Azure          – 511500

Rainforest #511499	Appletini #511497

Atlantis #511598	Azure #511500

These new colors are yummy, yummy, yummy and I had a blast melting them to find out how they work when I made them into beads.

I made beads with silver foil cores that were encased with the two transparent colors Azure and Appletini and they came out great.  I discovered that if you apply the encasement gather when it is too hot, it will yellow your foil.  All I had to do to correct this problem was to apply the encasement gather just a little cooler than white hot and it didn’t yellow the silver foil.

Tabular bead with core of Azure wraped in silver foil and encased with Azure.

Tabular bead with core of Appletini covered with silver foil and encased with Appletini.

Rainforest and Atlantis are both opal colors and I have to say that Messy Color has the nicest and easiest opal colors I have ever used to lampwork beads.  These two new opals are succulent and I couldn’t help myself and I mixed dichroic into three of the beads I made with these new opal colors with good results.

Check out the beads I made out of these new Messy Colors and decide for yourselves, but I give them a huge thumbs up!

Core of bead is made with Rainforest that is covered in dichroic pieces and encased with Appletini.

Bicone of Rainforest with a diagonal band of blue on clear dichroic that is edged with a goldstone ribbon cane.	Bicone of Atlantis with a band of dichroic dots on clear with goldstone ribbon cane.

Round bead made with Appletini decorated with swirls of Mermaid.	Core of bead is made from a twisty made of Azure, Rainforest, white filigrana and a light sky blue filigrana.

What is a Cotisso?

What is a Cotisso? Having never heard the name Cotisso before, I had to do some research to find out what they were talking about at the Effetre factory.  It seems that this is the name they use to refer to a chunk of glass that here in the U.S is called glass cullet.

Large chunk of yellow cotisso from Effetre

So why am I talking about cotisso’s (A.K.A. cullet)?  Because when Mike went over to Europe last October, he got the factory to let him pick out a bunch of different colors of these intriguing chunks of glass and Frantz Art Glass is now offering some of them up for sale.

Piles of cotisso (cullet) being stored on patio at Effetre factory.

I think cotisso’s are fabulous looking and look like surreal chunks of precious minerals.  I got a big batch of cotisso’s a decade ago after pestering the factory manager endlessly to let me pick out some chunks to include in the glass shipment we were working on at that time while we were on Murano, Italy.

I love the cotisso’s that I have and I set them on my worktables, in windows in my studio and house.  I also manicured several choice chunks by smoothing the sharp edges with a handheld dremel and I use them in my booth display when I sell my beads because the cotisso’s add such a delicious splash of glistening color to my bead display.

Effetre puts the more expensive colors of cotisso's in cans to keep close track of them.

You may ask why I smooth the edges of the glass chunks I have in my bead display and it is because they are so beautiful, people want to touch them.  To prevent anyone accidentally cutting themselves on a shape edge, I took a grinding tip mounted in a dremel tool and smoothed the less friendly edges off the glass chunks.

Another question I kept asking the manager at the Effetre factory is what do they keep them for?  The answer turned out to be very interesting!  When they measure out a new, from scratch batch of glass ingredients, it is all in powder form and is very slow to warm and melt into glass.  They introduce a few chunks of cotisso’s of the color that is being melted and the solid mass of the cotisso heats up much faster than the powder and speeds up the entire melt.

When the factory is done pulling rods from a new batch of glass in one of their furnaces, they move the last of the glass batch to a shallow cast iron bowl while it is molten hot and they set it outside on their patio and let the glass air cool.  The glass naturally fractures while it is cooling in the iron bowls and when it is completely cool, their turn the bowl over and dump the chunks of glass out onto the concrete patio.

Iron bowl of hot yellow glass cooling to become cotisso.

Three legged iron bowls of cooling glass.

Sometimes, the piles of cullet are very tall and they look especially beautiful when they are transparent and the sun shines through the glass sitting in the sun.

Transparent Aqua cotisso's.

Purple opaque cotisso's.

Don’t miss this chance to get a beautiful unique cotisso for yourself.

Group of three legged iron bowls for cooling cotisso.

Cotisso being stored in big plastic containers.

Group of opaque orange cotisso.

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Photoshop tip: Layer Masks

show you 2 techniques using the Layer Mask in Photoshop to enhance your Bead photography Read more

News about the Boatload of Colors in the New Messy Shipment

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