I finally figured out what was causing my ink + trans beads to develop a purple cast: Premo Frost! I've used it in the past with ill-effects, so I'm not sure why it turned rogue on me. Oh well...

So, I tried the same beads with regular Premo Trans. No evil color cast! Yay! But I was tired of the whole issue and when the beads finished baking, I just left them in my toaster oven and went to bed. This was unusual for me, since one of my favorite parts of working with trans is taking the red hot beads out of the oven and tossing them into ice water. In the morning I checked out the beads to make sure they were truly purple-free (yes!) and noticed every single bead had mini fissures running their length (they're elongated ovals). Great, I thought. Trade in one problem for another.

Then I remembered I hadn't ice-water-bathed them. Also, in the back of my mind, I remembered reading something about the ice water helping "heal" small cracks.

So, I put those bad boys back in the oven and brought them up to curing temp. Then I took them out and threw them in ice water. Ta-da! The cracks healed. To be sure, if you look really close, you can see where they were, except the surface is smooth and unbroken. I think they cracked along ink layers between the trans. I might mix things a little differently in the future.

Yay for ice water! 

Linelle, this IS very interesting!  Definitely a tip to remember!  Thanks!

nice save! I didn't realize it could make that much of a difference. good for you for figuring that out.  

Brilliant to heat them up again - must write this one in my notes of clay oddities and miscellaneous tips.

Weird, huh? Wouldn't you think that the shock of rapid cooling (contraction) would be more likely to make them crack? 

I had heard that you didn't need to put them in ice water - is all it does is cool them faster. Glad to know it also has other reasons than cooling fast.

I've read that the ice-water plunge increases the clarity of trans clay. I'm not so sure. They immediately look clear and shiny because they're in water! After they cool and you take them out, they look matte and opaque all over again. But I can't resist the drama of the ice-water toss. It does give you an idea of how they'll look after sanding/buffing/polishing. I've also read that you must leave them in the water for 20-30 minutes, until they've cooled completely, for the crack-healing to work.

Are your beads on crack?