Chalcedony - Yay!!!!

I've been having a bad couple of weeks, but thanks to a special delivery from Mona, the Glass Fairy (seriously, that's what I call her now) over at Gaffer, things brightened up considerably. Mona knew I'd been dying to try out Gaffer's G-109 Chalcedony so she hooked me up. She and the girls sent me a most excellent 'Box o' Joy' to play with and I finally had a chance to dig into it just a tiny bit.

Thanks, Mona. You rock!!!

Now, I'm going to post some pics, just so you can see the colors. Don't laugh. They are lumpy, unbalanced, wonkies. These are not beads that were made with the intent to sell or even ever have anyone see them and I am well aware of the fact that they quite suck. I was just trying to get an understanding of how Chalcedony works, torch settings, etc.

I only had about an hour to play so things are pretty basic but I love this glass so far. It melts like butter, blooms like spring and is a piece of cake to use. It positively puts some of the other striking colors to shame.

O.K., here goes. I can't believe I'm showing these beads to the world but...whatever

This is my first bead. It's just a gravity spiral over black. The edges have a stripe of clear because I wanted to see what it looked like encased. I love the color in this one and I did basically nothing to get it. Just super-heated, let it cool to almost cold, then did a deep re-heat and Voila!

This is the second one. It's an encased gravity spiral over a black base. I can't believe how much of this color remains so brilliant, even after encasing. It's color is much better in person, richer and earthier. Not sure why they look so pastel in the picture.

I made this one last and treated it a little differently. I wanted to see what the color did if I struck it after encasing. You can see that they are much softer, gentler colors. I don't know if this is always the case, but I'm going to find out next week.

And this was my final bead. I'd been wanting to make her from the start, but I wanted to try the glass out first. She's pure Chalcedony, topped with a little sprinkling of Chalcedony frit. I love her. And don't worry, I didn't squander my entire stock of G-109 on her. She's very petite, only an inch tall!

That's it for now. I can't wait until next week when I can play some more. I have a couple of ideas that I think are going to work out beautifully. I'll share pics.