Encased silver foil - what did I do wrong?

[cmhorvath]

I wanted to make some beads for an outfit I bought for a cocktail party and I thought a silver foil encased bead with little splashes of intense black through it would look really great. So here is how I attempted to get this effect, but obviously I did something wrong becuase they turned out awful. Here's what I did:

Started with a small bead base of lauscha clear
Rolled it in silver foil scraps and marvered it
Moved the bead to the outside of the cool flame so the silver didn't burn off while I was heating my clear for the encasement
When I applied the clear (out of the flame) the silver foil just disappeared and left me with an ugly yellow tint.

What did I do wrong?

[MaureenKennedy]

Silver foil WILL turn yellow if the clear casing is very hot. That is why in beads that Michael Barley makes that have "windows" he uses the palest aqua tint transparent rod, and that keeps the silver the silver color. So either use cooler casing clear transparent, or switch to the pale aqua color - you really can't tell it's aqua when the bead is finished.

[Kikki]

Lauscha will react to the silver in a different way than Effetre or Vetrofond as well. I don't like to encase silver with Lauscha (my choice of clear for anything else) for that reason.

If I want encased silver foil I don't use silver, I use palladium instead. It stays silver and is a lot easier to work with as it doesn't burn away (actually my main gripe when working with silver foil, it burns away in a millisecond... That could be lack of proper technique from my side though...).

[cmhorvath]

Thanks for the feedback! I'm going to go try the pale aqua and see how it turns out. Wish me luck.

Cheryl