Fritting the day away...

I recently decided to start exploring different design elements in my lampworking.  I'm getting "pretty good" with stringer (read: not embarrassed by it anymore but still needs lots of work), my rounds are good, my lentil pressing is good, my doughnuts are AWESOME, if I do say so myself (always been GREAT with doughnuts... especially the devil's food kind ;).  So now I've picked up a couple more presses and more silver leaf, foil and wire, and I've dusted off the frit I already had and purchased a little bit more to play with.

I'll be doing little test beads of all the frit I've got, and here are the first results of those tests.  All the frit in this post is from Val Cox Frit. They have a beautiful array of frit blends and really great customer service.  I highly recommend them.  The below picture shows the contents of my first order from Val Cox.  I'm really looking forward to picking up more later.

On all of the following test beads I applied the particular frit to the following colors: white, clear, and then a bead with a monochromatic (matching) color and another bead with a complementary (contrasting) color to the frit.  (It didn't occur to me to take the pictures with the beads all in the same base-color-bead order, so I'll have to identify in each picture what base color is in which bead.)

Val Cox Belgian Linen on white, rubino, clear and olive.  I love how this blend looks over the white and the olive, and that's probably why I like the blend to begin with: there is olive and white in the blend itself.  I think I overstruck the rubino, because even looking through the side it's lost most of it's transparency.  I think if I'd struck the rubino better the second bead from the left would shine more.

Val Cox Catalina Blue on white, clear, turquoise and red.  I love the colors of this blend, but I don't like working it.  Normally, turquoise and I just don't get along, and it appears that this frit blend acts just like turquoise for me.  While melting the frit in, it seems to bubble and boil.  I think I'm just too impatient and want to heat the frit faster and hotter than it should be heated.  I'll try again, but I don't think a glass that needs babying is something I should be working with. :)

Val Cox Champagne Rain on olive, clear, white and light blue.  This frit includes sparkly goldstone, which as of yet I don't know how to work.  I think I burned the goldstone too much, 'cause the beads aren't very sparkly, and I'm also not sure what those reddish brown spots are on the first and second beads.  I liked this blend at first glance, but I am not sure if I just made a mistake with it or if I don't like it in melted form.  I'll try again to give it a second chance.

Val Cox Sea Pearl on purple, beige, white and clear.  Just a nice, mellow blend.  Subtle and delicate.  No complaints, really easy to work.  I like how it looks on all the base beads I tried.  I keep wanting to say, "especially on..." but each one looks the just as good as the others.

Val Cox Mood Swings on white, pink, clear and olive.  Delightfully playful, this frit is a kiln-striker and as you can see the ruby in the frit struck beautifully, even on the olive.  Love this one on each of the test bead colors.

Val Cox Violet Storm on clear, blue, white and yellow.  I didn't much like how the Violet Storm turned out brown over the yellow, and luckily that's the only color combo I disliked in all of these test beads.  The Violet Storm was the first frit I tried, and I think that's why it came out with such big splotches on the two center beads.  I'll try those again to see if I can improve how I dipped the frit.

And a little treat for my Emma fans.  This pic was taken last weekend for Easter.