Creation is Messy

Scott Wellsandt
Messy Palette

Messy Color™ Uniques

The Creation is Messy mission is to produce a consistent line of 104 COE compatible glass colors to expand your lampworking palette. We work hard to produce the highest quality hand pulled glass rods for your art work. We also strive to produce glass that is not only consistent from melt to melt, but also to keep all Messy Color products available when you need them.

Due to our rigid color standards for Messy Color consistency, there are two scenarios where a Messy Color Unique may be produced. First, all glass manufacturers experience occasional variation in hue when melting, despite our best efforts to replicate formulae and conditions from prior melts. We know that it is common in this industry to ship mis-melted colors anyway without communicating about the differences, creating confusion in the marketplace. Creation is Messy believes it is better to acknowledge the differences by re-branding the color as a Messy Color Unique so that artists will know exactly what they are purchasing.

Creation is Messy’s goal is to communicate clearly about all Messy Colors so that lampworking glass artists are confident that their purchase of Messy Color 104 COE compatible glass color will be consistent with previous purchases. If a production melt is lighter or darker than our standards for that specific Messy Color, then we sell it as a Messy Color Unique. We’ve found that this helps keep our pricing low by offsetting the cost of some of our melts and is also an advantage for our artists. For example, those who find regular Simply Berry too dark can still enjoy Berry’s brilliance in its lighter Unique counterpart.

The second scenario in which Messy Color Uniques occur is when we transfer a formula from our test pot to the production pot. Oftentimes our test pot reveals an exciting new color, but when melted in a larger pot it loses the special qualities we targeted in the test melt. Messy Color Sunshine is a good example of this. Our test pots revealed a soft cake batter yellow, but in production it became a bright carnival yellow. We chose to sell this one pot as a Unique and go back to the drawing table for a cake batter yellow.

All of our Messy Color Uniques are subject to the same standards of compatibility, quality control, and testing as our regular Messy Color line. You can read more about our compatibility testing method here. We also physically inspect each Messy Color glass rod sold with the intent of selling only premium quality rods: straight and smooth, consistent 4-7 mm diameters, free from irregularities, stones, bumps, dust, scratches, bubbles, etc. You can rest assured that our Messy Color Uniques are of the same standard of premium quality that you have come to expect of Messy Color.

The following is a list of Messy Color 104 COE compatible Uniques that are currently available, including information on how they compare to their regular Messy Color counterparts. Messy Color 104 COE compatible Uniques are available from Frantz and associated resellers in North America only.

	511128-1	Unique: Sangre A melt of Sangre that came out too dark.
	511140-1	Unique: Lipstick A melt of Lipstick that came out a shade too light. Regular Lipstick is more of a brick red color.
	511140-3	Unique: Lipstick A melt of Lipstick that came out too light. Regular Lipstick is more of a brick red color.
	511223-3	Unique: Pumpkin In rod form, 511223-3 is just a shade lighter than regular Pumpkin. But the color works out very similarly to regular Pumpkin.
	511223-4	Unique: Pumpkin A melt of Pumpkin that turned a translucent burnt orange color.
	511333	Unique: Sunshine Sunshine came about because we had excellent test pot results for a soft buttery yellow, but when melted in a large pot it turned bright carnival yellow.
	511351-1	Unique: Stone Ground This melt of Stone Ground came out too light.
	511413-1	Unique: Peacock Green A melt of Peacock Green that was slightly more bluish than regular Peacock Green.
	511413-2	Unique: Peacock Green A melt of Peacock Green that was slightly more bluish than regular Peacock Green. 511413-2 is paler than 511413-1.
	511427	Unique: Tabby Grey A silver grey color. Bead courtesy of Janet Robinson.
	511430-1	Unique: Elphaba Although our test melts looked radically different from Elphaba, this color turned out to be very close in hue when produced. We decided to sell it as a Unique of Elphaba instead of adding it to the regular Messy Color line. Bead with reduced effect courtesy of Chris Molter.
	511430-2	Unique: Elphaba This melt of Elphaba came out a dark petroleum green.
	511430-3	Unique: Elphaba This melt of Elphaba came out a shade too dark.
	511449-1	Unique: Kryptonite This melt of Kryptonite tends to turn opaque when worked.
	511531-1	Unique: Lapis Although this melt of Lapis looks very similar to regular Lapis in rod form, it works out slightly more purple than blue. Bead courtesy of Bonnie Polinski.
	511618-1	Unique: Simply Berry This melt of Simply Berry came out too light.
	511618-2	Unique: Simply Berry This melt of Simply Berry came out slightly too dark.
	511644	Unique: Dusk A beautiful transparent lavender in our test pot, this color turned out to be on the blue / grey side. Please note that this color looks very different depending on whether your lighting is natural or artificial. Bead courtesy of Susan Sheehan.
	511656	Unique: Black Currant A very dark purple, almost black in many applications. See the test bead to the right to show how Black Currant appears on top of white. Bead courtesy of Pat Frantz.
	511701-1	Unique: Ginger This melt of Ginger came out too light, even lighter than Butter Pecan. It is very similar in hue to 511703-2.
	511703-1	Unique: Butter Pecan This melt of Butter Pecan came out too light, almost whitish.
	511703-2	Unique: Butter Pecan This melt of Butter Pecan came out lighter than regular Butter Pecan, but darker than 703-1.
	511703-3	Unique: Butter Pecan This melt of Butter Pecan came out way too dark.
	511703-4	Unique: Butter Pecan This melt of Butter Pecan came out too light and slightly more yellow than regular Butter Pecan.
	511742-1	Unique: Sepia This melt of Sepia was more amber than pink.
	511806-1	Unique: Cirrus This melt was a test batch at making Cirrus. 511806-1 is a cloudy white translucent color if worked fast and small. This batch is perfect for those who feel that regular Cirrus takes too long or is too difficult to strike to cloudiness in small sized beads. See beads to right: bottom bead and snowman are 806-1 while top bead is regular Cirrus. Beads courtesy of Donna Ballard.
	511806-2	Unique: Cirrus This is a melt of Cirrus that was too light on colorants, meaning the glass is closer to clear than regular Cirrus' milk white appearance. It will not turn opaque or more milky when annealed.
	511834-2	Unique: Clear Our goal is to make an optically very clear Clear (no green or bluish tints), without scratches and packaged carefully / individually in tissue paper to prevent scratches during shipment, bubble free, consistent 4-7 mm diameter, straight and smooth without bumps, without any impurities like stones, dust, or black spots, consistent from batch to batch, 104 compatible, and available on a regular basis. If the melt comes out slightly greenish or bluish (which sometimes happens despite our best intentions and using the highest grade of raw materials) we have been selling it as a Unique: Clear at a lower price point for those customers who do not require the utmost clarity. Please note that our testers say what we categorize as "greenish" is similar in optical clarity to Lauscha. We still quality control for the rest of the abovementioned categories when it comes to the Unique, so only the clarity is slightly different.
	511926-3	Unique: Cranberry Pink This melt of Cranberry Pink came out too dark.
	511938	Unique: Cored Cane: Gelly's Sty & Peace Our cored cane was an experiment in mixing colors. This rod is a Peace heart shaped core encased with Gelly's Sty. When worked it produces a streaky pink effect.
	511939	Unique: Cored Cane: Gelly's Sty & Cranberry Pink Our cored cane was an experiment in mixing colors. This rod is a Cranberry Pink heart shaped core encased with Gelly's Sty. When worked it produces a streaky pink and red effect. Bead courtesy of Pat Frantz.