Playing With Fire....Again

Okay, this is going to be a long scroll......I have included the process from start to finish of three enamel pieces I just did, minus three or four firing steps.
I was recently inspired by photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, in particular the various Nebulae.
I wanted to try and reproduce the depth of space and the complex colors present in so many images. I have a long way to go to achieve what I want, but  

these first attempts look rather interesting anyway.

Check out hubblesite.org to see the photos to which I refer (the Crab Nebula, the Orion Nebula, the Omega Nebula, etc.).
So, I began with a white ground on two pieces and black on the third, but added a white center to ultimately highlight a transparent blue. The round piece was to represent the Crab Nebula, which has a brilliant turquoise center surrounded by strands of something (gases, probably) white, red and green...I suppose I should do my research if I am to go on about  the subject!                         

I added thin lines of a hard-firing white to represent the gases, hoping that it would stay rather in shape while firing several layers of transparents over top, and for the most part, it worked.  I had to reapply some towards the end to sharpen the detail a little, as the later, hotter firings allowed the thick glass to start sliding towards the edges.

On the other two pieces, I went through two different blues, two purples, yellow and bronze after adding  silver leaf.
I was hoping to create the illusion of edges of clouds, but it didn't quite work. Both pieces ended up looking more like opals (which is okay with me, I like opals!)

Next came some pink, and more light purple and sky blue. The photos I was looking at had such extraordinary combinations of color, and it will take some time to sort out in what order to layer them.

I used a little of the hard-firing white here too, to add to the cloudy effect. The (I am assuming) gas clouds looked a lot like a beautiful sunset, with pink and purple and gold all floating over a bright blue ground...Gorgeous stuff!

I could have stopped layering at any time, as nearly all of the various stages looked nice to me, but I wanted to see how far I could take the process.

I think I reached the limit with ten or eleven firings. The double layer of counter enamel and the top side kept merging at the edges and dripping over the firing trivet towards the end, meaning a lot of stoning down to smooth them out.

From here to

here, I added another layer of silver and gold leaf to  two, and some red and orange to the third.

Here, you can see the edges dripping over the trivet a little. I think I pushed it a bit too far, but I do like the result!

This one definitely went too far, and I had to re-do the white bits. The firings had to continually get hotter, as the thickness of the glass grew. I don't think I could have done much more without a larger torch.

This one was good, color-wise, but I didn't get the last firing completed. You can see a little rippling (sugar-fired) texture in the upper right corner, which I had to re-fire to get rid of.

Of course, when I did, the glass began to slide toward the sides and drip over the edges. Dang it! More grinding down......

This is the last firing of the Crab Nebula....Not too bad, but not quite the way I wanted it.
I definitely learned a lot from these pieces, so next round should be better!