[ginkgoglass]

I'm ba- ack!
Updated April 2015

(BTW if anyone wants to contribute a color combo just Pm me and I'll add it. Thanks!)

I've been compiling a list of things you can do with boro by mixing and layering color. Some of these are from the Melting Pot and some from LE and my own color experiments.

If you have some cool color mixing tips or combos that you want to share please post them here. I will keep updating the original thread.

Here they are:

Color Mixes to try:
(if you are handmixing colors, weigh your colors so you can reproduce the effect again. I keep a journal to write down what I used in a piece, because it will come out off the kiln and I won't remember!)

1. Pastels under striking colors ie. magic mirror, purple thunder, amber purple or transparents over dark striking colors.
2. Cobalt blue and borostix blush make a sweet purple, play with the ratio more blush then cobalt.
3. Northstar exotics encased with northstar yellow.
4. Parramore white fumed with gold or silver encased with clear.
5. Blue moon mixed with clear.

6. blue over white, red over white, experimental green over a bunch of colors. fume colors then coat with clear.
3. Mix Elvis & Momka citrus Roll gather in chunky frit; either Momka silver beach or GA silver. The dots of frit leave a neat scaley organic kind of effect, particularly effective against the citrus.
8. Mix Blue and Yellow for a green in shades from bright lime parrot green (chartreuse kinda with more brilliance) all the way to deep dark forrest green . Fully mix , more blue =darker shade more yellow=lighter shade .
9. Mix silver colors with pretty much anything.
Triple Passion, Silver Strike 5 or whatever + Green Sparkle.
Any silver color with a ruby or opaque red is interesting.
10. Any transparent color + a white

11. Tan brown from Momka Magic Mirror + Star White. Totally 70s-ed out.
12. Purple thunder on top of the Light Blue Amber Purple and flame strike .... the key is putting the top on very light and not heavy, kinda like a thin encasement and this makes a light lavender color.
13. Momka's Crystal Blue mixed with NS Paris Green 6, will make a transparent aqua green.
14. silver seaweed fumed with clear dot overlay, you will get some nice greens and purples.
15. Brilliant blue over white gives a beautiful blue for backgrounds.

16. Warm yellow, butterscotch or carmel over black makes vibrant blue-greens.
17. NS Ruby K sandwiched in between NS yellow. It can get anything from a pink flesh tones colors to a deep purple
18. GA indigo luster mixed with solara
19. Momka Charles Brown over white, then striped with GA Silver Sands, or Momka Almond Nugget. You get a really nice coffee/cream swirl with this. Don't encase though or you will end up with more green tints.
20. NS Irrid mixed with GA Disco Sparkle results in something a lot like Silver Unobtainium

21. clear tubing encased with moss, then a layer of dark cobalt or brilliant blue encasing the moss, pull that down.
Clear tubing, then a layer of periwinkle covering the entire tube. then a coat of dark cobalt encasing the periwinkle. Pull that down and use to how you see fit. = lapis blue tubing.
22. Borostix 14 ~ Spring Purple cased with NS 113 ~ Turbo Amethyst.
23. Mix up real good equal amounts of Northstar rootbeer and Northstar green exotic then if you want coat with a thin layer of clear, twist a bit then pull down to a usable size.
24. Green exotic frit over Ruby Strike 4. Use simax clear encasement for some cool reactions.
25. Galactic Dragon Fire, Silvered Amy and White

26. Momka's American Beauty with Northstar Butterscotch frit over it creates magenta.
27. English Ivy over OG Moss... Large clear frit or dots... cook it HOT and pour the oxygen... so beautiful... so sparkle-icious...
28. Two Recipes for Deep purple: this can be the holy grail of boro colors because it's totally missing from the spectrum.
Clear core (important) 19mm, thin layer of amazon bronze then ns extra lt yellow on top.
OR 15 mm clear rod base, 3 stripes of amazon bronze to every 1 thick stripe of caramel.
Get it really hot and repull down to thin rod size. strike really hard (like 1150 for 45 mins)
29. NS-08 Dark Ruby (or Dark Elvis) encased with NS-09 Yellow (or Yellow Elvis) give great purples.
30. Triple passion or warm yellow over black is extremely vibrant.

31. borostix blush mixed with cobalt 4 (play with the ratio) best purple ever
32. China ruby tube, wrap and rake w/ clear, use as many different flame atmospheres as you can and get all the possible clearish tones, purple to brown to brick red to ruby
33. Double Amber Purple, NS yellow, some garlic and a pinch of rosemary. Doesn't taste all that great but has a wonderfully crunchy texture. Great over rice.
34. NS Egyptian White sand coiled or core, with a medium to thin coating of NS yellow, flame strike gradient and then kiln strike at 1150 for 30, you get a cosmic cloud of purples and oranges.


Colors for Outlines:
1. Ruby over green exotic, gives a nice ivory outline.
2. Green amber purple with orange dots, you get light blue and rose with an ivory outline.
3. base of white, encased with green exotic, with dots of extra light yellow, you get a light blue outline.
4. DAP over Pomegranate.
5. Clear over any silver color
6. Silver Strike over any color
7. if you put Mystery Aventurine over some dark transparent colors, you get a cool blue haze around it
8. Green exotic frit over Ruby Strike 4. Use Schott to encase, or you will not get the reactions. I always use simax clear, for these.
9. Amber purple over irid gives an ethereal blue ghosting effect with transparent yellow center, back it with black for best contrast.

Mirror Surface:
For a silvery metallic (mirror) surface these colors may be worked as usual then hit with a reducing flame at the end:
NS Blue Caramel, Black Pearl, Aquatic Carnival, GA Silver Strike 5.

Also try Silver fume over a color like cobalt or black

Colors for Imposions:
1. A thin coat of an opaque color like star white, bubble gum or periwinkle over a thicker core of another opaque color. when the stringers implode the thin outer coat stretches to make a frosty looking surface.
2. Star White and coat it in a thin coat of Onyx or Black Violet. It will give you a white petal with dark edges.
3. Thin layer of black over full sized rod of exotic citrus, pulled into stringer is good for implosion flower petals.
4. Good Colors for implosions are Amazon Night, Blue Moon, Twilight Chameleon, Rust, Green Envy, Aurora, Dark Multi, and Purple Luster. Momka's Blue Lightning or Antique Beauty gives a really nice light blue. Caramel gets a faint blue outline around it's edges when used for petals. Exotic Citrus Grapefruit gives a nice pink petals and Gypsy Queen gives nice multi colored darker petals.
5. Triple passion then a layer of amazon bronze, implode, spin, strike. Its hot orange/yellow/red/purple with a ghost of blue.
6. For an awesome red in implosions try encasing cadmiums like goldenrod or cherry with elvis ruby then pulling into stringer.
7. Line of tag kiwi backed (offset) with any black, i use jet. compress or implode, the kiwi will overlap the black and will result in a really nice flower petal full of organic lines and multiple colours.


One thing worth noting is that different brands of clear give different results. Pyrex and Kimble will make colors with a lot of silver get the halos around the edges. Simax won't do that. Although a lot of striking colors will retain their color better in Simax than other glass.

Colors for Sparkle:
1. Mix Dark cobalt or black elvis (for red) in unobtanium and then coat that in clear before pulling. the unob color fades enough that you are left with the sparkle but not too much of the original color.
2. Millenium moss and/or crystal bliss mixed with any color adds great sparkle.
3. Encasing Unobtainium in something like Amber, Blue Moon, Paris Green, or something like that. Gives a really nice sparkle effect.
4. Mix Loch Ness with the amber purples. Just a little of the LN goes a long way... but it adds a very nice shimmer to the AP and it still strikes out nicely.
5. Unobtainium encased with Chinese Amber. Makes a forest green sparkle color that can be encased with no problem.
6. Disco/steel wool mixed with parramore white. Crazy sparkle with a butter texture.
7. GA Spring Luster over Unobtainium then encased in clear... It's a smoky green from the encased Spring Luster, but the sparkle form the Unobtainium goes gold/orange/salmon! It's also nice unencased with a not too thick layer of the Spring Luster so you can see the sparkle.

Working with Greens and Sparkle:
1. With greens and anything sparkly, striping it over a clear core and pulling it out into a cane ensures there's only a very thin layer sandwiched between lots of clear, and you can avoid most cracking.


Pink:
1. If you layer NS yellow or extra light yellow or GA Warm Yellow over pretty much any shade of transparent red or orange, you will end up with varying shades of fuchsia pink.
2. warm yellow over ruby makes a purple pink that strikes on the inside of glass.
3. Layer Ruby or Elvis on top of clear and then using light yellow on top and pulling that out and using that on top of clear and encasing that in clear.
4. 10mm clear with a layer of Elvis or GA cherywood strike and then NS Extra light yellow for fuschia pink
5. NS orange cased with NS ex. light yellow = nice pink pink
6. GA carmel Luster cased with NS ex. light yellow = pink with more variations, some greens and yellows mixed in
7. Amber purple over egyptian white sands.
8. Coral Blush, try thinning in down by covering a rod of clear with it and then cover that with GA warm yellow.
9. elvis yellow over elvis red.
10. hand mix transparent pink by northstar or (eribium pink by alchemy) and northstar star white.

Purple:
1. Dark amethyst over spring purple
2. Turbo cobalt over BoroStix pink.
3. Cobalt blue and borostix blush make a sweet purple, play with the ratio more blush then cobalt.
4. Two Recipes for Deep purple: this can be the holy grail of boro colors because it's totally missing from the spectrum.
Clear core (important) 19mm, thin layer of amazon bronze then ns extra lt yellow on top.
OR 15 mm clear rod base, 3 stripes of amazon bronze to every 1 thick stripe of caramel.


I love this quote from SuzyQ: "I have a feeling I need to just put stuff on top of more stuff and see what I get."