Frits and florals.

[bolimasa]

I like florals (studied botany in school if that says anything). I love other peoples floral beads but an rarely happy with my own. I often make a base bead with frit decoration, then put flowers on top. When I melt my flowers in they often get kind sort of criss-crossed with brownish lines and discoloration, which I think come from the frit. The discoloration is especially bad when I use yellow glass for my flowers, and I think it is much worse with furnace frit than effetre frit. I presume this has to do with the metal content of furnace frit. I usually put white under my colored petals to try to help this problem, but it sure doesn't always work.

So what's the solution??? I see other people putting flowers on top of frit all the time. It there some trick I haven't stumbled across yet?

[sassy]

Are you melting yur flowers in too much? try leaving them raised a little or just melting till the are even with the surface of the bead and can't melt into hte frit.

[Just Nancy]

I'm wondering if you need to encase before adding the flower? Probably not, but it's a thought.

Do you make your own effetre frit or do you have a source? I'd really like to own some but haven't brought myself to actually make some.

[Pat]

I just for the first time used Spiral Dance Green Acres for the background. But I encased thinly with clear before building the flowers. Worked OK.

[Cosmo]

When using yellow (which is colored with sulfur) it will react with other colors. Try encasing the frit layer with clear before adding the flowers so the flowers don't touch the frit. Plus, it gives a little nicer finished product, in my opinion. Makes the flowers look like they are "standing up" on the base of frit like in a real flower bed.

Of course, if you wanted to make one like MY flower bed, leave it the way it is and let it get all brown and shriveled...

[Dasi]

Put down a base of color and frit. Then encase thinly with clear! Now you can do the flowers and they will look like they are floating on the bead. Encase again for more depth.

[NLC Beads]

I encase with clear in between each layer. It takes longer, but I think the results are worth it. Mary-Moth's encasing with stringer tutorial is awesome, my florals got loads better once I read it. :)

[bolimasa]

Encasing... isn't that a dirty word???

I do that for some florals (the more paperweight style ones) , but sometimes I just want simple surface florals.

Any hints on thin encasing??

[SuzyQ]

You need to play around with different combinations. Here is one you might like. Opal yellow base, raku powder, periwinkle petals topped with rubino. Rubino as a petal loves to spread but the raku keeps it in line. So think bleeding agressive colors when trying to top frit. If you try turquoise on this base it will shrink up and look lonely, yet turquoise is a wonderful petal on a plain base.

[Rose]

I run into this problem myself. Cetain colors will react with each other. But I've found a way around it, to some degree. I usually make lentils and I finally figured out that when I was shaping them I was moving the glass and reactions got worse. Now to shape I just tap and don't move the glass. Another thing I had to do was go to larger frit. That works better. Like #2. So I just use less frit. Play with those ideas and see if it works better.

Rose