Purples are becomming my enemy

[leia]

OK I KNOW IM A NEWBIE, BUT PURPLES ARE REALLY STARTING TO FRUSTRATE ME.

I AM "OK" WITH "BE" PURPLE GOLD AND "BE" NEO LAVENDER
BUT ALL OTHER "BE" OR "MORETTI" PURPLES EITHER FADE OUT LIKE EDP OR THE TRANSPARENT PURPLE TURNS TRANSPARENT GRAYISH

OH YEAH, IM ON A HOT HEAD, PLEASE ADVISE

I NEED HELP. I REALLY WANT TO LEARN THIS:pout:

[lunamoonshadow]

EDP, you need to keep "hot" or "shiny" or "wet looking" until you're ready to put it in the kiln. Don't let it go "flat" looking. If it gets the "flat look", you just need to put it gently in the back of the flame & heat it up till it "sweats" & it will look shiney bright purple again (it's a striking color, you can get pinks out of it--but it devitrifies--which means when it's not "wet" looking, it looks etched/chalky)

The other colors, if I had to guess, I'd say you're overcooking them. The hothead IS NOT A FAST TORCH. You need to turn it down a bit, find the "sweet spot" (see www.nlcbeads.com --somewhere on there Nikki has a drawing of the flame of a HOTHEAD -what she uses for every bead she makes- & exactly "where" the sweet spot/where you should be in the flame is!) & then BE PATIENT about how fast your glass is melting--moving it closer to the torch head isn't really going to melt it faster, it's just going to either a) get your colors sooty, or b) burn the colors OUT of more "sensitive" colors of glass. Neither is good :lol:

And, um, you do KNOW to NOT MIX 104 (moretti/effetre) & 90 (bullseye/BE) in the same beads right? 'cause if you're mixing those two glasses, uh, all your beads are gonna explode all over the place--neither of those are "leaded" glass/furnace glass, the viscosity isn't gonna match, the COE sure as HECK doesn't match & that's just a whole mess waiting to happen!

~luna
(kinda hopin' your next plea isn't all in caps ;))

[leia]

Oh yeah! I know not to mix COE but when i had a few failures on BE purples, I then tried some Moretti purples, but did not mix COE's.

Sam Hibler taught me that

[lunamoonshadow]

:)
Ah good. Just got a little worried there when I saw the "all the purples" all in one place!
You might try some of the CIM purples--they're all 104, & there's some good colors/shades there that aren't likely to do "weird things" like the moretti ones do (most of the moretti purples, particularly the opaques, are either reactive, or prone to reduction, or in the case of EDP, going to devitrify, or something--all of which are useful, but if you're trying to get "just purple", it's not what you're going to get from the glass :lol:)
Crocus, Heffalump, Evil Queen, Grape Ape, there's quite a bunch of shades that have come out in the last year-- lbsupplys, moretti & more, flame dame, all have them!

[Karen Hardy]

Ya know what? If you're a newbie, ya'll shouldn't be going
crazy with the purples. Striving for the perfect purple
drove me to want to kick puppies when I was a newbie.

It took me a very long time (and tons of tips) to get a handle
on EDP, Rubino Oro, and a whole bunch of other "difficult colors".
Don't feel bad. Just do a search on the color, and read threads until
your eyes pop out of your head. Then use what you learned.

The smarter thing to do would be to set aside any colors you are having
trouble with until you are a little more experienced. I say this as someone
who blew through about $100 worth of silver glass and ended up with nothing
but crappy clear blue beads to show for it (now I can rock the silvered
glass, but I should have set it aside until I understood it).

Edited to add: You might want to check out purchasing Sarah's
"Think Pink" Tutorial. It's pretty reasonable and you'll get a ton of
tips on how to tame Rubino glass - those can carry over to other
difficult colors.

[lunamoonshadow]

:lol: @ Karen.
I was *determined* to conquor EDP--so I read everything I could get my eyes on about it (I still sux at silver plum :( ) & found !ngrid's directions & figured out her "make it sweat" tricks on my hothead & can almost always get a glossy finish on my EDP....of course, the fact that purple is my very favorite color might have had something to do with my determination ;)
(my very first EDP bead came out silver...uh, yeah, a little bit burnt? over-reduced? somethin'!)
I so wish all the CIM colors had been around a couple years ago (heck, I wish I had ALL the CIM colors NOW :lol:....they're coming up with some *nice* shades!)

I still have issues with a few colors (striking effetre? ick. Give me Lauscha transparents anyday!)

[leia]

Yeah I have a friend who is so addicted to anything pirple, that if i can get them down, she would probably finance my entire studio. :lol:

She is so into anything purple, she even had the brush guards and bumpers on her truck painted purple.

[Karen Hardy]

Best advice I ever got on working EDP was to basically ignore it.
Just MAKE the bead the way you want it. Add all the glass.
Shape the bead. Then, RIGHT before it's ready to go into the kiln,
heat it up so it's a nice even glow, then transfer it to the kiln without
letting the glow go down all the way. I use rod rests in my kiln, so
the ends of the mandrels rest on those and the bead doesn't
come in contact with the kiln floor (no flat spots!).

[tammydownunder]

When you are confident with your torching skills and no longer waste expensive glass, put ink blue over EDP and you get a stunning grape color. The talented Jan Cahill (http://www.jancbeads.net/) turned me onto the formula. I learned to make this style of bead when I was fortunate to take Sarah Hornik's class in Brisbane.

147771

[lunamoonshadow]

Oooh, that's PRETTY!

A great way to get to "waste expensive glass" is to buy shorts from some of the people who do a lot of work with more expensive glass! (Like Lynnie's/Danelady's $10 for pound & a half bags in the garage). Then you're paying "cheap glass prices" for the nicer colors, & you can kind of expiriment & mess around with it & not feel guilty if you destroy it (or, at least not feel like you're blowing through stuff you paid $40 a pound for! :lol:)
That's how I got totally hooked on copper green (and found I didn't really have any issues with working it)
~luna

[CelesteK]

My current favorite purple is the transparent violet from Effetre. When I got it, I had to check my order sheet because it looked black. Layer it over a core of white and it is fantastic! I also layered it over clear that I had rolled in baking soda and got a really fabulous bead. The amethyst seems too reddish to me unless it goes over periwinkle. The violet is a nice inexpensive color, so I don't worry too much when I experiment with it.

Celeste

[leia]

Baking soda? what does that do?

[CelesteK]

Roll a small clear bead in baking soda. "Melt" the baking soda into the glass. Cover the bead with another transparent glass--light colors work best. You get really splendid bubbles!

Celeste