Val Cox Painters Series - Starry Night
Originally published at Two Glassy Ladies. You can comment here or there.
Starry Night
Starry Night is doubly special. It’s rare to find a true navy blue-one that doesn’t veer toward red or yellow-and it SPARKLES!
This is a dark blend that stays true. It does not become black even when you goop it on.
Painting by Vincent Van Gogh.
Buy this frit blend at ValCoxFrit.com
Amy’s notes: I really love this blend and I feel like I still haven’t had enough time to explore it. It really is a fantastic navy blue, and the aventurine sparkle is a great addition. I generally cooked my beads pretty good and didn’t lose the sparkle either, although maybe I would have gotten more sparkle out of it if I had used a lighter touch. I am one of those impatient types of lampworkers though I must admit
This frit was absolutely gorgeous encased and with silver foil, although I have to say I was having cracking problems when I used Lauscha clear to encase. I have started to have doubts about this particular batch of the Lauscha I’m on, because the cracking problems have been happening more. So I don’t know whether to blame the frits or the batch. Either way, I finally came to the decision that I am going to save my Lauscha for encasing 104 COE glasses, and use Reichenbach R100 clear for encasing the 96 frits. Most of the time when I encase I use a clear base anyway, so what’s the difference except a bit of peace of mind that the compatability is more on par? The price and quality of the R100 is very comparable to Lauscha clear. I didn’t have any issues with Starry Night on the surface of the 104 glasses, with one exception - I used it on CiM Atlantis and I noticed some cracks on those beads. Atlantis is actually an opalino I think, which tend to be more fussy in general, and the CiM glasses are not always perfectly compatible with everything in the 104 lineup even, so I guess this isn’t too much of a surprise (it’s too bad though, because the colours were very pretty together).
I guess the moral of the story is, always test before you make a hundred of any bead. Glass is temperamental and although there should be some science involved (and of course there is), sometimes it feels like the planets have to align just right for things to work out, or even work out the same way twice! That’s part of the fun of glass to me. The magic. But… I think that I’ve rambled enough here. So, on to my results:
Val Cox Starry Night frit encased in Lauscha clear
Val Cox Starry Night frit encased in Lauscha clear with silver foil
“Midnight Swirls”
Val Cox Starry Night frit swirled in and speckled on Moretti 004 Clear
Val Cox Starry Night frit on CiM Atlantis (note that I noticed some incompatibility cracks with this combination after taking this pic… but I wanted to show it because these beads did look so pretty. Actually most of them survived, it was just one or two that did not - it might be worth trying this combo with just a bit smaller frit to base glass ratio).
“Sapphire Grey”
Val Cox Starry Night frit on Moretti 268 Pastel Pearl Grey
“Starry Night”
Val Cox Starry Night frit on Moretti 050 Transparent Pale Blue
“Midnight China”
Val Cox Starry Night frit on Moretti 204 Pastel White
“Periwinkle Persuasion”
Val Cox Starry Night frit on Moretti 220 Periwinkle
“Midnight on the Water”
Val Cox Starry Night frit on Moretti 031 Transparent Pale Emerald Green and Moretti 219 Pastel Copper Green
“Twilight”
Val Cox Starry Night frit on Moretti 034 Transparent Light Aquamarine and Moretti 224 Pastel Light Sky Blue
And finally, here are my paddle tests of this blend. It doesn’t demonstrate the 104 palette in full by any means, but gives a pretty good idea of how the blend reacts with a variety of colours.
