Using gold leaf and palladium

[Kaz]

I treated myself to a book of each at the Flame Off and have tomorrow afternoon off to have a play - so wondered if anyone had any helpful hints and tips for using either/both of these and any interesting reactions I can get?
Kazx

[Dragonfire Glass]

Not used palladium but gold is nice - looks lovely on some colours.
I used it the same way I use silver leaf.

[Isabelle]

Palladium is lovely, it goes all sorts of nice colours - but they all go back to silver if you encase it!

[Diane]

I always burnish the gold leaf in, heat gently, burnish again for a few times.  This seems to help stop it burning off - unless you want that effect, of course. Gold doesn't react with glass the same way as silver but  it is lovely.  Looks good with enamels - applied either over or under.  Palladium - have only tried it a few times - it has a more 'dense' irridescent look purples and blues?- have seen in a book if you put it under transparent dichroic it looks good and it doesn't burn off as much as silver. 

[Trudi]

I beleive Palladium is a bit more heat resistant - and can turn wonderful colours.

I have some info somewhere - let me look it up for you. Nudge me if I forget!

[Lush!]

I've encased palladium a lot, lovely inside transparents.  Claire Rowanberry introduced me to it when I had a session with her a while back.  As others have said, it doesn't melt away like silver does so if you're doing lots of shaping and twisting, you'll still see a bit of inner sparkle 

[ARBeads]

I tried gold leaf and got it everywhere, tools, fingers and eventually some on the beads!

The beads looked lovely, red wrapped in gold, encased in silver - tabs. Several weeks later any larger than 18mm had cracked, bugger.

Think it was incompatibility with vetrofond clear or I'd not marvered the gold enough. Still got some left so will try again on a wind free day!

Ruth