Lovely purples: Alchemy and montana burgundy luster

Ok, this isn't the fist time I talk about these beads, but I just love the colours. So bare with me just one more time.

The rivoli is from Preciosa and the lovely Alchemy is one of their H.Y.T. Colors. It has gorgeous brownish and heather purples. Rather difficult to describe, but oh so lovely. Preciosa themselves says about Alchemy:

The colour of ancient copper -- at first glance unremarkable yet at second glance enthralling. What is its true colour? Brown or purple? Red or pink. Simply captivating.

The quote comes from their website hytcolors.com -- don't miss all the other H.Y.T. Colors that are presented on the site: Lilac smoke, Graphite, Plum, Dark Orchid, Night Helio, Dream, Lava Flow, Brown Sugar, Light Gold, Caramel, Pinky Peach, Red Fuchsia, Beach Topaz, and Steel.

The fire-polished beads next to the rivoli are in a hue called montana burgundy luster. Stictly speaking it's not a purple colour, it just looks that way. The glass is montana blue and then coated with a burgundy luster. In fact, when holding the beads up against light you can see the blue shine through the coating. But most of the time you see the blues mixed with the dark reddish surface finish. And we all know that blue and red make purple. In this case a lovely dark purple, leaning towards burgundy.

These beads are probably my favourite buy this year, another thing I bought with the gift certificate I won on the R&T blog. And at R&T there's actually a small photo of the beads where you can see how the beads look,being held up in front of a light source. If you think it's hard to see the variation in my pic.

Two different purples, one a warm almost brownish nuance and the other a cooler more metallic look, but both equally gorgeous!