Cobalt antique curliQs

in which I confirm a hypothesis...

`Antique-ing' in this context means applying two surface coatings: baking soda and pixie dust. The question then becomes, which first? Instinct told me the pixie dust should probably go on first, and that's how I make 99% of these beads. But just to check, I finally tried reversing the order of application.

As it happens, cobalt blue glass shows transparent and translucent effects such as antiqueing very well, since it's a dark color, so it would have been an ideal subject for the experiment.

Obviously I went to town rolling the sample-shot bead in baking soda ---possibly even rolling it in soda first.

Obviously plain glass is `stickier' than stuff that's already been rolled in either pixie or soda---and since the pixie is more subtle, I therefore assumed I'd want more of that, as I eventually confirmed by testing. And though the bead above matches my memory of my baking-soda-first experiment, it's been over a year since I made the beads; so I can't guarantee whether this bead was the exact subject, or just matches my now-faded memory of it.

The group shot shows a more typical version of the technique: a hollow bead trailed with transparent aqua stringer (it's available premade in the Effetre palette in 2-3mm thickness, and I had a fair amount of it lying around) rolled first in hilite purple, then baking soda. This is not at all a difficult technique to do, but to get the shifting color of the hilite pixie dust, you do have to almost cook it---though that is better illustrated in some of the other colors, notably bronze.

file created 08jun05; reworked 29nov05; beads 2004