Creation is Messy Baked Alaska

Creation is Messy testing of Baked Alaska. This color is a beautiful creamy yellow. It melts beautifully and is on the softer side but not as soft as opal yellow. It is a close match to the now out of stock Cake Batter. Though Cake batter had s slightly cooler tone while Baked Alaska is more golden. Baked Alaska reacts beautifully with silver glass and has a beautiful golden glow. This heart bead is a base of Baked Alaska with DH Helios stringer










Here is a comparison of some of the other soft yellows available now.  Effetre Opal Yellow is slightly darker, though each batch of opal yellow is different so it is hard to compare.  Cake batter has almost a greenish tint to it but also turns golden when silver or silver glass is applied.  Banana Cream is just a touch browner and Painted Hills is a little darker.

CIM Testing Canoe

Canoe is a lovely warm brown, it looks plain in rod form but warms wonderfully when worked in the flame.  It reminded me of Canyon de Chelly so I thought it might react in a similar manner to Double Helix Psyche.  Canoe and Safari both react amazingly with Double Helix Psyche.

 Here you can see all the lovely reactions with Psyce which was reduced and encased.

 Here is a comparison with all the other browns, as you can see Canoe is much warmer.

CIM Testing Tardis

Tardis is a beautiful navy blue opal,  it is a new color to the 104 palette, to me it is darker and more blue than Electric  avenue.   It melts beautifully,  I have a tendency to stick a cold rod right in the flame which causes it to shock, like all opals this glass prefers to be warmed up a bit more slowly.  I noticed no bubbling or scumming.  I did have a problem with cracking when I layered Tardis over an Effertre opaque,  I have had problems with layering opals over opaques before, I was using a new press so its possible that I didn't reheat it enough. 

It doesn't really etch well, it is patchy so be aware.  

I really really love this color,  it is defiantly on my list to buy. 

CIM color Testing: Monarch and Harvest

I am so excited to be testing the new CIM colors.  I will be reviewing Harvest and Monarch together.  Both are a beautiful shades of orange,  neither bubbled or scummed.

Monarch is a orange that is more on the yellow side,  slightly more orange than Pumpkin.   Harvest is a bit brighter than Alley Cat  but not as bright as Creamsicle.

Monarch is actually really really close to the color of a real Monarch

CIM color testing: Spooky

The first glass I am going to review is Spook,  it is a beautiful opal white.  It is more opaque than Cirrus and a little more transparent than Marshmallow.  It did not shock or bubble and melted like butter.  This glass was intended to be an opal amber but came out white.  It did not have much of a reaction to Effertre Turquoise or CIM Cranberry.  I paired it with a reduction silver glass blend and it did fume to a lovely amber shade. 

As you can see from this comparison picture Spooky is very simmilar to Marshmallow but slightly more translucent.  Marble became opaque with striations of translucency, its very pretty.

This is the Spooky with Khaos reduced and encased, Spooky fumed to a beautiful gold, as you can see Frozen did not fume at all.

The rubino frit did react it formed black lines
You can faintly see that the Effetre Light Turquoise di faintly react with the Spooky,  this is a better picture of how the Spooky fumed when paired with silver glass.  It also looks amazing when used to encase a transparent.  Spooky also etches well.

Tool Review Perlenpresse b501g

Review of the Perlenpresse Tool for thin glass shapes pattern 1 (b501g)

This tool has a  custom alteration to have the wire come out of the top of the heart.  Hello for my first post I wanted to review one of my many, many tools.  This is a headpin tool designed to make glass shape on the end of a wire, I use 20g copper wire.  The trick with this tool is not to try to add all the glass on at once.

This is a custom version of Perlenpresse's tool b501g

This is a sample of headpins I made using this tool.

 For the flowers I make a small ball and center it in the middle of the flower shape

here is the ball it's about 7mm around

after the first press,  I then add small dots where the petals go

 sometime the small dots fuse together too much and seperate them with a scalpel

 You can see that sometimes the dots get a little crooked,
That can be corrected in the pressing phase.

Here is the headpin after pressing,  sometimes it gets a little stuck in the cavity and you need to wiggle it to get it out.  There is room to add a bit more glass on the top 2 petals in the photo.  Just a tiny 1mm dot should do it, then repress.

I added some dots to the center for decoration.   Give it some good insurance heat and pop it in the kiln.

















Here is just a visual guide to using the heart cavity

Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions!


In response to the comment, I use hemostats to hold the wire,  rather than rotating as you would with a pin vice or mandrel I just turn it back and forth heating the back side then the front.  The hemostats release easily.  I have a hard time removing the wire from the pin vice I have.