Posts

Striking Glass: How to Get Color

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Lampworking Tips & Techniques Any lampworker who has ever attempted to work with 'striking' glass has experienced the struggle. How do you get all those fabulous color ranges and not just boring tan? Not that tan is a bad color ... but when you spend a small fortune on premium striking glass, tan is not the desired outcome. If we go way back into the glass time machine, the whole striking glass frenzy started with a furnace glass:  Reichenbach R-108 Iris Orange - lovingly nicknamed 'Raku' by the lampworking community ...  now I'm sounding like a food blogger 😉 There have been countless forum threads, e-books, tutorials, and conversations around how to get Raku to do its magic. Every single one of them has excellent information that anyone who chooses to work with this glass will benefit by reading and watching. I am no expert. I still can't get the full color range I want out of this glass after all this time. However, if we break down the already kno

Color Palettes: How to Incorporate Brown

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Lampworking Glass Color Reference Brown has not been a trendy color in glass for quite some time ... except with those beadmakers who make adorable critter beads or decadent sweet treats. It has been difficult to find brown clothing as well. It seems when grey became the new ' it ' color for literally everything from fashion to home decor, brown ceased to exist. Trying to find a nice pair of dark brown slacks has been next to impossible. I've all but given up and banished my blouses that need brown slacks to the back of the closet. For those of us whose natural skin and hair coloring pairs better with warm palettes over cool palettes, the struggle is real. I actually prefer grey and cool tones myself, but my person looks better in warm colors. So for the other warm palette people out there like me, I'm single-handedly bringing brown back in style. And if the rest of the world chooses not to hop on board that is okay. At least folks looking for warm colors know they ca

Christmas Joy

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Lampwork Glass Colors for Christmas Designs Is there a more quintessential combination of colors to represent Christmas than the traditional emerald green and ruby red? Nope. There is not. I've done the whole 'vintage' Christmas theme with more muted burgundies and olives. A deep maroon and hunter green also work well with traditional home decor. Lime green is always a fun twist to brighten things up - especially if you are fond of the grinch. My personal preference is icy blue and white with snowflakes and icicles ... because I like to match my love for all things blue - even when it comes to holiday decor. Metallic golds and silvers always reign supreme and when it comes to glitzing things up for Christmas, the more sparkles the better. Ironically emerald green and ruby red are two colors that I never gravitate towards. Ever. I bought 1/4 pound of these colors when I first started lampworking (15 years ago) and I STILL have some left. That is how infrequently I use them.

Color Palettes: What to Pair with the Color Red

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Lampworking Soft Glass Color Reference Red is not a color I tend to gravitate towards. Whenever I pull it from my glass stash I usually just stare at it aimlessly trying to figure out what to pair with it. Then it goes back in its little cubby ... until I feel guilty that it never gets attention like the other colors do ... and I pull it out again,  only to repeat the cycle . But Fall is another story. When mother nature paints a gorgeous picture outside your window full of reds and yellows and greens and blues, then you know it is time. The red glass will have its day. Red, orange and yellow are a natural pairing as they are on the same side of the color wheel. Red and turquoise have been a popular combination for southwest designs. Red and green are together frequently at Christmas. But put them all together and it's like the most perfect woolly sweater ever made. It's as if Fall just opened up the gates and poured itself all over the studio. And really, who doesn't swoo

Color Palettes: Olive & Aqua

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Lampworking Soft Glass Color Reference I've been doing a half-baked job of taking notes when I make beads ... but I am on a mission to catalog all my bead sets and the glass colors I use to create them. There are three driving reasons for this:  First , I have a hard time remembering what some colors look like after they've been worked in the flame and I want color charts that I can quickly reference. So I do it for me . Second , I am working on my first e-book of color recipes. Since I cannot lampwork fulltime, e-book sales will help continue funding my glass habits. My hope is to build a library of resources so even when I am unable to make art, I can keep my business going.  Finally , I want to share my knowledge and experience. Early in my beadmaking I asked other lampworkers 'do you mind sharing what color that is?' Some were gracious with their knowledge, others were not. And while yes, I do plan to compile much of this information into for profit e-books, I st

Mystic Success - Getting that Shampoo Sheen from Reichenbach Mystic Glass

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Lampworking Tips & Techniques Update 2023: The secret of Reichenbach Mystic glass is worthy of a re-post ... especially given I just started using it again and went through my trials and tribulations of the past - although I caught on much quicker this time . This glass really does like to be encased . Not only does encasing help protect it from devitrification, but it also highlights the translucent nature of the glass and allows the light to pass through - resulting in an opal and pearl effect that really showcases the beauty of glass. The added fancy of Mystic Beige is that it can appear more white or more cream depending on how much you thin it out with clear and how long and hot you work the bead. The pillows from before [shown below] were worked hotter and longer and slightly reduced for the silver glass effects. Those beads came out a lovely caramel cream - especially where they reacted slightly with the silvered glass.  The new barrel beads I made just this week came out

Mystic Devitrification - Avoiding Devitrification with Reichenbach 104 Mystic Glass

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Lampworking Tips & Techniques Update 2023: This post is worthy of being re-published because I forgot everything that I used to know. Okay not really, but I hadn't used any of my Reichenbach Mystic glass for a very long time. When looking for a nice ivory glass to pair with my denim blues ... I instantly grabbed my Reichenbach Mystic Beige. And then proceeded to devitrify the snot out of it when marvering it around in my beadrollers. And then I remembered everything that I used to know . Reichenbach Mystic Beige does not like being marvered. Or pressed. Or generally touched with any tool other than the flame itself. I went back and re-read my own post and decided to set down the marver and round those babies up with gravity the old-fashioned way. Being married into a German family I've been hearing for years just how superior the Germans are at just about everything [eyeroll]. I figured they must make some pretty spectacular glass too so I went ahead and bought myself a s

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