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Old 2011-02-01, 2:57pm
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Kalera Kalera is offline
I'm a lilac!
 
Join Date: Jun 09, 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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OK, this one is so simple... and sooo complicated at the same time! It's going to be a long story but the story is necessary in order to explain why the answer is complicated.

The frit blend I use for those started out as an accidental act of heartbreaking stupidity. I had two jars of frit open; one was Gaffer Tobacco and one was Reichenbach Iris Opal Orange (Raku). I had just finished playing with the Tobacco, and basically deciding I didn't like it and had no use for it, and took what was left in my frit dish and dumped it back into the jar.

The wrong jar. I accidentally dumped it into the R-108 jar. Gah! So I scooped it out, and the frit under it trying to get it all out of my precious R108, and put the blended frit into a jar. A few days later, I thought, what the heck... I'll at least see if it's usable. So I made a bead with it. To my astonishment, the tobacco and the R-108 reacted together and the result was absolutely beautiful! That was the birth of a line I called "Klimt", which was equal parts Gaffer Tobacco and R-108, size 1. One day, I had another "duh" moment, and, while blending more Klimt frit, I added the wrong size of R-108... now it had size 1 and size 0. To my surprise, it was even more lovely, so I continued mixing it with those proportions: One part size 0 R-108, one part size 1 R-108, two parts Gaffer Tobacco.

The next happy accident was getting a little Z-99 Purple Rose special in it. At first I was bummed because of how dramatically the Z-99 changed the look of the beads; it's really dominant, and a tiny bit makes a huge impact! Plus, the tendency to devitrify makes it harder to work with. I thought I'd use up that batch and go back to my old formula... but realized, after making a set or three, that I loved the look except for the random patches of devit. That's when I started tumbling the beads in a rock tumbler, to get rid of the devit and give them a uniform matte finish.

Somewhere along the line the formula morphed to include pinches of other colors, which morph and vary depending on my whim, but the basic, most crucial elements are still one part R-108 size #0, one part R-108 size #1, two parts Gaffer Tobacco size #1, and a pinch of Z-99 #0.
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Last edited by Kalera; 2012-03-24 at 4:55pm. Reason: The Z-99 I have is actually size #0... oops!
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