For the past few weeks I have been working on up-dating the “color palette”.  I thought it might be timely to talk about this tool.

The “Color Palette” is part of the Frantz Art Glass Newsletter website, this is where you will find a wealth of information about glass and our latest sales and promotions and more!  Just visit us at: www.frantznewsletter.com, click on Color Palette – it’s the flashing green and blue button at the top of the page, you can’t miss it.

If you have never checked out the Color Palette, I think you are in for a treat.  I have always liked looking at paint or thread color palettes and I think our glass color palette is exceptional for comparing available glass colors from all the glass factories at one time.

I have set up a few screen shots of what you will see as you use the color palette.  I think that the color palette is a way awesome tool for finding out what colors are available and an easy way to get to the web page of the colors that you are interested in.

There are 72 new colors that came in from the different manufacturers since the color palette was up-dated last year.  When the up-date is complete, Frantz Art Glass will notify everyone who is on our newsletter email list.  If you are not on our newsletter list, I urge you to sign up so that you will know when important information on sales and New Products are available.

Click on image to go to larger version of image.

Home page of Color Palette

Picking color from palette.

Web page of glass color from color palette.

patfrantz 104 COE Glass Review, Flameworking 104 Glass

Those of you who like Vetrofond “Black” (791064) and “Crystal Clear” (791005) will be happy to know that we received a new Vetrofond shipment that contains Black and Crystal Clear, plus a few other colors.

Vetrofond Black is one of the better Blacks on the market these days because it is a very dense Blue-Black and remains very dark even when it is pulled down to stringer size.  If you are new to lampworking, you might not know that the Black sold by Effetre is a very dark Purple-Brown that looks like dark purple when pulled down to a stringer and used over a light colored glass.

The third Black on the market is provided by CiM-Messy Color and it is a dark Gray-Black that stays very dense when pulled down to a stringer, making “Tuxedo” (CiM’s name for their standard Black glass rods) a great contender for best Black on the world market.

There is a unique glass color that came in this shipment that has the name “ELO” (791817) which stands for Extra Light Olive. This glass has a pale but distinct olive green color and is being released to our customers January 29, 2010, adding another unique color to the now vast palette available to lampworkers.

There is another color of note that came in this shipment. When we first received Yellow Ochre from Vetrofond many years ago, it was never yellow-it was green! Well, that’s Vetrofond’s trademark, odd lots. Then a few years ago this color (791460) came in much more yellow in tone. I’m telling you all this because this shipment produced BOTH tonalities. So, to not confuse our wonderful customers, we decided to give the “Wasabi” Green version it’s own stock number (791461). So the good news for everyone is that there are two versions of Yellow Ochre, one being avocado green and one a warm yellowish green. If you look at Effetre you will see Yellow Ochre as a strong yellow.

“ELO”  791817	“Black”  791064	“Wasabi”  791461	“Crystal Clear”  791005

Bead made with ELO and a Lt. Turquoise swirl design.	ELO with patches of Wasabi and Te-362 stringer decorations	This bead is half ELO and half Dirty Martini with SIS swirls.	Bead made with ELO and bumps of Aurae covered in Clear.

Wasabi with Triton & Hades ribbon.

patfrantz 104 COE Glass Review

I have been working with some of my Carlo Dona tools lately and I have an itch for more of these great tools and I was wondering if there were any more of you out there that feel the same way?

It is kind of hard to get Carlo Dona tools, so I have been working with my husband Mike to organize an order of certain Carlo Dona tools because Mike will be going to Murano in April.  The apartment that Mike stays in on Murano is just a few blocks away from the Carlo Dona shop and I thought that this is a perfect opportunity to have him pick up some more tools.

I am mainly having Mike bring back the three sizes of raggiera or fin mold for producing fancy cane.  There are two or three sizes of bell flower presses and the wire holding tool to use with them ( I tried making glass objects on the ends of copper wire by holding it with piers and the wire vibrates from the torch heat and makes working the glass very difficult) that I want him to bring back.  The Carlo Dona work shop started making some really nice leaf mashers, plain mashers and ribbed mashers mounted on heavy tweezers that work really well.  There are some nice bead presses like a sea shell shape, different size hearts and squares that I want him to bring back also.  Another tool to consider is the glass shears, they are a well balanced hot glass cutting tool.

There are a few brass single sided press molds that I think are interesting.  One is a lady’s face, one is a lion and the most interesting one is a skull.

If anyone reading this blog is interested in possibly connecting with some of these fine Carlo Dona tools, contact me at patfrantz@frantzartglass.com and I will try to make your tool wishes come true.  I will not know the prices until I find out from Carlo Dona what is available.

Below are some photos of the tools I am interested in.

Bell flowers and leaf made with Carlo Dona tools	Bell flower presses_Carlo Dona	Wire holding tool
Wire holding tool #1	Small raggieras Carlo Dona	Glass Shears – Carlo Dona
Skull press_Carlo Dona	Small sea shell press_Carlo Dona	Tweezers showing three different heads

patfrantz Lampworking

When you order some glass colors, is it a surprise to open the box and find a radically different tonality than the color you were use to?  Well, this is something that happens with certain glass colors and it took me a long time to get the Italians to explain why this happens.

It seems that there are a handful of glass colors that are very sensitive to heat and even the amount of humidity there is in the air when the components are measured and put into the batch.  Murano is built on tiny islands in the middle of a large salt-water lagoon and is constantly subject to varying levels of humidity that can make a powder (which is the form the elements that go into a glass batch come in) be lighter or heavier.

Another component of the tonality variable with certain glass colors is heat.  I complained for years about the changes in the shades that Coral (591420) would shift to from batch to batch.  A couple of years ago I was shown a sample book of a single batch of coral and there was a huge difference in the tonality from the beginning of the pull to the end of the pull, there was about 6 different tonalities in a single run of coral!  The factory said that they try to send what they think coral should look like, but we told them that they should sell all the tonalities to us because they are all beautiful in their own way.

Two other colors that have huge tonality variables are Dark Pink (591265) and Gold Pink (591456).  What you must do if you get a tonality of the three colors I have talked about in this blog and you like it a lot, get as much as you can.  With these colors, it is kind of like getting yarn to knit a sweater.  If you don’t get enough yarn of the same dye batch to make your sweater, when you go back to get more yarn, there will most likely be no more of the batch that you bought and your sweater will have two different shades of the same color in it.

I have been trying for 25 years to get Effetre to make a pinkish coral that I got in the very first batch of glass I ordered from them ( when the factory was still owned by Moretti) and I am still waiting.

Shown below are sample cards of the different Corals, Dark Pink and Gold Pink, to give you a sense of how different these three colors can be from batch to batch.

A sample board showing the range that Coral #591420 can come in.

A sample borad showing the range that Gold Pink #591456 can come in.

A sample borad of Dark Pink #591256 that shows the range of tonalities this color can come in.

patfrantz Flameworking 104 Glass

Happy New Year everyone!!!  There are two new colors from CiM that just arrived this week and they are both new blues.  One is “Zachary” 511589 and the other is called “Great Bluedini” 511590.

• Zachary – #511589
• Great Bluedini – #511590

Zachary is what some people call baby blue, but it can also be called a very pale periwinkle.  When you compare regular Periwinkle with Zachary, Zachary is 50% lighter than Periwinkle.  I like the results I got by pairing Zachary with Cranberry Pink (used in the form of a rose cane), with a little goldstone ribbon thrown in the mix for some flash.

Tabular bead made of Zachary decorated with goldstone ribbon and rose cane.

Bead made with Zachary, Great Bluedini and goldstone ribbon cane.

The Great Bluedini kind of looks like a transparent version of Mermaid and could be describe as a rich dense blue-green.  In fact when you pair Great Bluedini with Mermaid, it makes both colors pop.  I made a white heart out of Great Bluedini and decorated it with roses out of Cranberry Pink and some goldstone ribbon, with good results.

To see how Great Bluedini worked as a core color, I made a dichroic covered heart pendant with a core of Great Bluedini and I really like how it came out.  I tried several more beads out of Zachary and Great Bluedini to show how these colors look in different arrangements and you can view them below.

White heart bead encased in Great Bluedini decorated with roses and goldstone.

Dichroic heart pendant with a core of Great Bluedini.

Flowers made of Great Bluedini, Pulsar and Poison Apple leaf.

Tabular bead made of Zachary decorated with goldstone ribbon and rose cane.

patfrantz 104 COE Glass Review

I have been personally struggling over the past 10 years with the challenge of getting prescription eyewear to use while doing torch work.  In the past I have had to buy new prescription didymium glasses every time my eyes changed significantly and I had to get new glasses made.

I was thrilled when our protective eyewear provider started making a comfortable Fit-Over style of didymium’s, plus shade #3 and shade #5 borosilicate type eyewear for the lampworking community.

I have had didymium glasses that had a prescription for close-up work for years, but when I look up and focus on something farther away I get slightly seasick and I have to change back and forth to my regular glasses in order to not get a headache.

I decided I had to try the Fit-Over style of didymiums when they became available and I am thrilled with being able to see no matter where I look.  Plus I don’t need to get a new pair of prescription didymium glasses anymore!

I highly recommended this eyewear solution for all lampworkers who wear glasses, especially bifocals or transition lenses.

patfrantz Lampworking

I hope you got your free account at www.wordpress.com because here is the second part showing you how wordpress can help you. I’ll show you the basics of wordpress so you can get your website.

Back end:

Once you get your account, sign in to view your back end of your website. Here, all your tools are organized and easily accessed. From here you can make a new posts, pages, upload media, change themes, widgets and links. You can also change your settings for users, passwords, and account settings.

Post:

Wordpress is commonly used as blogging software. Under the Post menu, you can edit existing posts, add new posts and change the tags and categories. The purpose of tags and categories is to help organize your posts. This will make it easier for your readers to search your articles.

Pages:

Pages are separate from the posts. They are static and commonly used for info that doesn’t change much like a contact page or about me page.

If you go to “Attributes” menu on the right you can change the attributes of the page.

The Attributes page explains how it works:

“You can arrange your pages in hierarchies, for example you could have an “About me” page that has “Life Story” and “My Dog” pages under it. There are no limits to how deeply nested you can make pages.”

Media:

You can upload your photos, audio files, and videos. You can use wordpress for podcasts. It automatically creates a RSS feed so people can subscribe and get notified when you update your posts. Unfortunately the free wordpress accounts only allow image uploads.  For a small fee they will allow you to post audio files for a pod cast. But if you are hosting Wordpress you can post anything you like on it.

If you want to post an images on your site you have some choices how you can do it.

1. You can post an image with out a link.
2. You can make the image have a link that  to the image file.
3. You can make the image go to a page with information you wrote about the image.
4. You can adjust the image size, position, and create a gallery

Themes:

A great thing about wordpress is the amount of themes you can use and how easy it is to switch back and forth. To view your themes go to the Appearance menu on the left. Click themes and it will give you a list of themes you have access to and if you have a free account you can browse through a list of themes.

Themes come in many different designs, colors and layouts. Try them out and find the one you like.

Widgits and Plugins:

Do you have a Flicker account? Do you sell on Etsy? Do you want to link to other websites?  Well there is a widget or plugin to put those on your site. Widgets are add-ons to wordpress that perform a certain function. There are thousands of them you can put on your site. Some are better than others, but they make it so you can have great features on your website with out having to write code. Just another way to customize your page. It’s as easy as dragging the widgets from the middle area to the side column on the right.

Tricks:

For those of you that don’t plan on blogging that much Wordpress can still work for you. If you just want a more traditional static website to show off your work and use as a hub of all your online stores like Ebay, Etsy  and Artfire, I can show you an easy trick for that.

First go to the Pages menu. Create a new page and call it Home and another called Blog.

Go to the Settings menu on the bottom left. Click “Reading” to pull up the  reading option page.

Default set-up for Reading is to have the post page be the front page of your site. You can switch the front page to be a static page by clicking the option of “Static page”. Choose  Home as front page and Blog as post page. Now when some on goes to your sight they will see a more traditional looking website.

Construction of the pages and posts:

When creating the pages and post you will be using wordpresses “Wysiwyg” (Pronounced Wiz-E-Wig) It stands for “what you see is what you get”. There is a bar of tools above the work space. There you can add, edit  and format your text. You can also upload/insert media from it as well, like images.

When you are done with a page or post you are able to save as draft, preview it or publish it for all to see.

There is so much more I could write about Wordpress. It is a great application.  I hope you enjoyed this blog. If you do create a wordpress website for your business or portfolio share it with us. Post a link in our comments to share with everybody.

Thanks and have a great day.

Keith Promotion

Do you want a website but you don’t know where to start?

Don’t feel bad a lot of artists are in the same boat. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a good website. If you can use Microsoft word or Gmail, you have enough skills to create a professional looking website with Wordpress. It is the easiest and most versatile Content Management System (CMS) that I have tried.

What a CMS online application does is makes it easy for you to manage your content like images, video, audio and pages with ease. It’s great to use to share an online gallery, start a podcast, or anything worth sharing. You can have people interact with comments. But if you don’t want them to comment, that’s an easy fix as well.

Wordpress can be used as a blog style website, or it can be tweaked a little to look like a traditional website with a static front page. There are hundreds of themes and layouts on the web to fit your needs. And on top of that there is hundreds of different Plug-ins. Some of the plug-ins are for galleries, eCommerce, stats, and being able to showcase your flicker or etsy page on your site. There is a massive amounts of them. And most of them install with a simple click of the button

Next week I’ll show you a few steps on how to get your website started, and pages and posts, change your themes and ad plug-ins.

Until then your homework is to go to www.Wordpress.com and sign up for a free account.

Keith Promotion Website help for artists

I am writing about the new Effetre colors named “The Silver Challenge 7 Rod Assortment”, which were given out or sold with orders placed in mid-November.  I am urging everyone who got this glass to please send in photos of their results (good or bad), so that they can be entered into the raffle for a box of rare glass from Mike’s vault.

The seven glass colors in the "Silver Challenge" assortment.

A beadmaking friend, Sue Stewart and I both did test beads and I am posting different examples of what we got from these new colors.  We want to see what everyone else  made out of these new colors.

I liked the Silver #4 the best out of the four silver colors and I really like the yellow and orange colors from this group.  Listed below are the names and reference numbers for the “Silver Challenge 7 Rod Assortment”.

• Silver #1 – 591718
• Silver #2 – 591719
• Silver #3 – 591720
• Silver #4 – 591721
• Yellow Ocra – 591411
• Lt. Zucca – 591425
• Dark Zucca – 592426

BTW Sue Stewart is teaching several different classes at Frantz Art Glass focusing on techniques for using silver glass in beadmaking.

Bead made out of Silver #1 with twisty of Psyche and Opal Yellow, then encased with Aether.

Core of bead made with Silver #4 and encased with Aether.

Bead by Sue Stewart made with Silver #1, Ivory and Clear.

Bead by Sue Stewart made with Silver #2, Pulsar and Mermaid.

Bead made with #591425 Light Zucca and silvered Ivory shards.

Core of bead made with Silver #3 decorated with a Psyche stringer and encased with Clear.

Bead by Sue Stewart made with Silver #3 and encased with clear.

Bead by Sue Stewart made with Silver #2, Unique Sapphire and Clear.

Bead made with Yellow Orca and decorated with Black Metallic shards.

Bead made with Silver #4 and decorated with reduced Triton designs.

Bead made with Dark Zucca and decorated with silvered Ivory shards and Triton.

Bead by Sue Stewart made with Silver #1 over Teal.

patfrantz Uncategorized

Quantaray +10 lens filter

A year or so ago I bought a close up filter from Quantaray at a camera store. I wasn’t sure how well it would work because it was only $30 and just screwed on to the lens of my camera. It seemed too easy. But I was really happy I did buy it because a few weeks back we got a shipment of some new millifiori called Road Map. It was a chance to really test it out. Mike really wanted to show how unique the pattern was.

If I didn’t use the close up filter I would have got this image.

Road Map

This image is with the filter.

Road Map with Filter

For folks shooting anything small this filter is a great alternative to buying an expensive macro lens.  I hate spending money when I don’t have to.

This is how I used the lens.

1. In order to use this filter the camera has to be right on the top of the subject.
2. Because the subject is so small make sure you use a light diffuser and light bounce to cut down on the shadows. Click here for to see prior blog.
3. Because the subject is so close to the lens use a narrow aperture and a long shutter speed to help widen the depth of field. Click here to read more about depth of field.
4. Finally focus and take your shot. Make sure you always bracket your images. Take a bunch of shots at different exposures. That way you can help ensure that you get at least one good exposure.

If you are a beadmaker that makes small beads and have a D-SLR or SLR this tool is a must have. Here are some more examples of this filter at work. These photos are full frame. I did not crop them to show how much of the frame a small bead can fill up a frame.

Dichro

Dichro with filter

Small Beads

Small Beads Filter

If you have used this item or something like this then let me know what you think. What are your techniques for shooting small items?

Keith Bead Photography