There are so many commercial ceramic glazes and clays on the market today! For beginners it's sometimes hard to discern the difference between glaze types and how they'll look on your clay. I hope to help; I've been making ceramic beads for the past 7 years or so and have tried many different glazes and several Cone 5-6 clay bodies. As luck had it, when I bought my Olympic doll kiln from a 'paint your own pottery' place that was closing, they let me pick 100 glazes for an additional $250; I still have many of those pints. I also bought the Georgie's 'sample pack' and a few of the Coyote sample packs as well, plus a few pints of newer glazes that looked intriguing. I use so little glaze in jewelry making that it doesn't make sense for me to mix my own, as I probably have more commercial glazes than I can use in my lifetime. In addition to the glaze test posts, I'll be adding info on forming, glazing, firing, and surface decoration techniques, which is kind of my 'specialty'. I hope to help other budding bead artists gain knowledge and have a useful reference.
For now, every few days I'll be uploading pics of a single commercial glaze on 5 different clay bodies. I have close to 200 glazes that have been tested over the years, so I hope you really, really like glazes!
Glazes are primarily from these companies: Georgie's, Amaco, Mayco, Coyote, and a few from Spectrum, Laguna and Duncan (which is now part of Mayco). I'll also have some underglaze and glaze layering tests.
Here are the clays I used for testing (all cone 5-6):
Kentucky Mudworks: Sheltowee (terra cotta red stoneware), White Lightning (translucent porcelain), Dark Star (specked white stoneware), and Brown Bear (dark brown/chocolate stoneware)
Standard Clay: 112 (speckled buff)