(this is actually an archive of my "newsletters", except for those in which I announce specials)

 

Okay, let me know if you are getting tired of my little "newsletters" yet - but I just finished a bead (thus, it is still in the kiln and I can't show a picture), and I am SOOO excited about the glass I picked up this weekend at Frantz. I don't know about YOU, but I love those glasses that end up looking like Metal. It seems like Magic. For the longest time we beadmakers only had Kugler Reduction Frits that had to be pulled into stringer (I even have a chapter on that in Passing The Flame)...but since the Kugler wasn't REALLY compatible with Moretti, you could get away with making stringers or dots that were melted flat - but if you left the decoration raised on the surface of the bead it would brake off. Then Kugler offered those reducion colors in rod form, which took care of the tedious labor of pulling stringer from frit, but the compatibility issue was the same.

Then Effetre gave us "Silver Plum"...which looks somewhat metallic, but more in a muted "gunmetal" way, and also not really predictable (are you bored yet??). Then Jed, who used to work for Mike Frantz, started to "brew" his own glass - the fabled Double Helix (which is darn expensive at $ 100/pound - versus the average price of $ 10/pound of "regular glass" - and unless you are lucky to find a customer who is willing to pay a couple of thousand bucks for a set of beads, all of a sudden the material cost of your beads became an issue)...oups, I am getting off track here....so, the Double Helix has metallic effects, but again, not predictable....the colors are more predominent than the metallic look.

Jed was not the only one to figure out that we beadmakers would pay just about anything for glass that gives us the colors and possibilities of borosilicate glass - and tada "Precision Glass" was born (some people call it also R-4). I don't have all the details of the who and how, but Mike told me that Precision Glass is manufactured by Northstar - a company that usually makes colored borosilicate. Figures.... Precision Glass is also $ 100/pound... I guess we are getting used to paying those prices for glass now. I liked a color called "Sascha Silver" for my froggs - cool blues and greens in all shades, and a HINT of bluish metallic. This weekend I was chatting with Kimberly Affleck, who got lucky and was gifted a pound of each color directly from the manufacturer... so she knows exactly which color gets the richest metallic effect - and she was RIGHT!!!!! Curious at all? well, check in tomorrow, and you'll see, and if you are interested to know WHICH color is the magic ticket to "heavy metal"....let me know! have a wonderful night (or morning, depending on when you are reading this. It's midnight here in the Pacific Coldwest.