alex-opal glass

[wombat1138]

http://wildlybohemian.blogspot.com/2008/08/alexandrite-in-action.html

I got some of these in a mixed lot earlier this summer, and had never seen them before; didn't realize they were a variety of neo-alex glass until after I'd roughly sorted the mixed lot by color, and then changed the light source on them: they're petal-pink in some lights and pale lilac in others, as well as having the usual pale opal-glass shift in undertones depending on light/dark backgrounds. I'll have to keep this color code (21210) in mind, though so far I haven't found a "real" listing for them among my usual suppliers (I don't have order access to the company associated w/ that blog).

Meanwhile, finally located my "real" UV LED again; need to retake some pix from a batch a while back that I'd taken w/ the borderline UV/violet light-- easier to juggle w/ the camera, but tends to wash out the glow from non-transparent uranium glass toward white rather than green; the glow from manganese glass also tends to disappear into the violet. Also want to haul out some of my neglected green fluorite beads to mix in with those, now that I know about their spectacular indigo glow; there's also a small strand of yellow/green colorblend beads from Michael's that glows *yellow* under UV, and under initial bead-jumble conditions looks great with ffp jonquil/aqua.

Comments

[narumi.livejournal.com]

oh wow! those are awesome :D
also thanks so much for all the info on the beads in my LJ :3 I noticed the trend of things mislabeled as sunstone as well! x.x

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

You're welcome :) Oh, and I forgot to mention peach moonstone? which can have a similar overall color to sunstone, though of course a different lustre-- sort of a pearly harvest-moon shimmer, instead of the bright fiery sparks. "Red" aventurine quartz (usually more orange than red) often has little reflective flecks of mica scattered through the matrix, but the reflections aren't nearly as colorful as sunstone.