Mind Melt

Test Results :: Pimento

2012-01-23T18:00:00.000-08:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - Encased, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf, 5 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 6 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 7 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 8 & 9 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, Peace

CiM Pimento is a vibrant orange-red opaque, and it is a limited run so it won't be around for long. The beads I made with Pimento are so bright and flawless, and seem almost to glow from within, the colour is so pure and beautiful.

While the colour is gorgeous, the glass was somewhat shocky, the end of my rod popping off unexpectedly at inconvenient moments and causing some minor panic. I also found that it is fairly easy to boil Pimento, although I was working out of my comfortable Minor/Oxycon element on a Natural Gas/Liquid Oxygen set-up, so it might have just been a 'me and heat control' issue. The boiling seems not to be evident at all in the finished beads, so I guess it's not much of a concern.

When I reduced Pimento, the colour of it darkened a little. This could be because of the reduction, or it could be because Pimento strikes a little since I generally cool a bead off before I reduce it. Either way, it is an interesting effect so if you have more than a few rods of Pimento, you might want to play around with it a little. Encasing Pimento lightened the colour a little.

I was able to encase Pimento in both Bead #3 and Bead #5 with Reichenbach Crystal with no problems at all. Good news, because sometimes you want to encase red/coral/orange and I haven't had a lot of luck encasing the Effetre hot colours.

Silver leaf on top of Pimento turns a brownish, webby golden colour. I like this effect - especially when you add a little silvered ivory (like I didn't). When the reduction is subsequently reduced and encased, it sort of loses something and just looks dull and dirty under the Clear.

Here, I got sort of interesting results with my silver glass frit. The TerraNova2 frit struck, but it is pretty dark against the Pimento and a thick dark outline has formed around all of the little frit bits that sort of gets in the way of the colour. In the bead on the right, my reducing silver glass frit looks more interesting, having developed into pretty dark blues and greens with a mottled black and white outline interspersing the frit bits. I think it's safe to conclude that Pimento is nicer with the reducing silver glass colours, although if you make something beautiful with Pimento and striking silver glass, I'd love to see it.

Finally, here is Pimento with Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace.

Pimento seems not to be a very reactive colour. Here is a brief summary of the reactions I see:

Tuxedo - Pimento separates on top of Tuxedo, developing a thin, dark translucent line in the middle of the stringer lines and a blotchiness in the dots. Pimento is darker on top of Tuxedo than it is on top of Opal Yellow, Ivory or Peace.

Copper Green - Pimento seems to scare off most of the dark sheen that Copper Green likes to develop. It also develops a dark line reaction with Copper Green, both when used on top of it and when used under it, although the dark line is more pronounced when the Copper Green is on top. When Pimento is on top of Copper Green, the dots and stringer lines are darker than when used on top of Opal Yellow, Ivory or Peace.

Opal Yellow - This is sort of strange, but Opal Yellow seems to develop a dark line reaction around it when it is used on top of Pimento. There is also a dark line reaction when Pimento is used on top of Opal Yellow, but it is less vivid.

Ivory and Peace - Both of these glasses seem to curdle / separate a little on top of Pimento. Pimento will spread out on top of both of these colours if it is superheated or smeared, and when that happens it looks more orange than red. My Peace went a little grey. Since I'm working on a set-up that I'm not accustomed to, it may just have been me not giving the bead enough oxygen, however it could also be a reaction. If you have some Pimento and are curious, give it a go.

I'm back into making beads, but I haven't got any fun beads to show with Pimento. However, as I ramp up and test some more colours, I'll be back in the swing of things. The Pimento is gone, but more glass beckons :)

Test Results :: Jade Palace

2011-11-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 7 & 8 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, Peace

CiM Jade Palace is a medium, teal semi-opaque. It seems a little like it might be a lighter version of CiM Rainforest, however the reactions I got with Jade Palace aren't really all that similar to the reactions I got with Rainforest, so it is materially a different colour as far as I am concerned.

When silver leaf is used on top of Jade Palace, it disperses into a fine silvery mist. Underneath the silver leaf, the Jade Palace has struck to a darker version of itsef, but I can't be certain whether this happened because of the silver or if it struck because of some repeated heating and cooling. I'm not sure how many times I pressed this bead, which doesn't really help any of us know for sure.

When I encased reduced silver leaf on top of Jade Palace, it turned decidedly gold. I believe I was using Reichenbach Crystal Clear for this test. You can probably see that the bead split in half along the mandrel line as well, which could be my fault, but also might be due to the differing viscosity between the Reichenbach clear and the Jade Palace because Reichenbach Crystal Clear is a very stiff colour, whereas Jade Palace is very soft and runny. I had a similar problem encasing Mulberry with Effetre 006 clear for possibly the same reason. The jury is still out.

It looks like Jade Palace is a little nicer as a base for striking silver glass than it is for reducing silver glass. I got a great start to my strike in the TerraNova2 frit bead, but not a lot of magic happened there. In the bead with the reduced silver glass frit, the frit and reduction seems to have fumed the Jade Palace to a yellower, greener version of itself but the appearance of the frit is sort of smeary and lackluster.

Jade Palace does not do much in the way of reaction with Tuxedo, but it does some crazy things with the other colours I tested it with.

Copper Green

On top of Jade Palace, Copper Green separates into a reddish, shiny colour and a darker teal colour. A faint lighter line is visible around the edges of the Copper Green stringer and dots. I observed something silimar with Seafoam, however with Seafoam the lighter line was much more regular and pronounced than it is here with Jade Palace.

When Jade Palace is used on top of Copper Green, the greenish colour of the Jade Palace gathers in the centre of the dots and stringer lines, surrounded by a light turquoise line, all surrounded by a deeper, dark turquoise. This is a pretty neat reaction, however in the centre of the dots and stringer lines I also got some random sooting/blackening which sort of mars the overall effect.

Opal Yellow

Opal Yellow separates on top of Jade Palace and underneath it. The light yellow halos that pop up around Jade Palace stringerwork are very interesting and worth some playtime if you happen to have some of this colour. I like how the Jade Palace seems to forget that it is semi-opaque and looks very transparent over Opal Yellow.

Ivory

On top of Jade Palace, Ivory separates, gets a dark line reaction and curdles... ALL AT THE SAME TIME. The Jade Palace underneath stays more or less like itself, not getting all curdled the way Seafoam did. This is very similar to how Ivory reacted with Rainforest, although this reaction is quite a bit more dramatic than that one was.

On top of Ivory, Jade Palace turns into a darker, browner version of itself and spreads quite a lot, brown webbing spreading all over the Ivory. Underneath the Jade Palace, the Ivory curdles.

Peace

Peace separates on top of Jade Palace. When Jade Palace is used on top of Peace, the Peace separates underneath it, white halos popping up around the Jade Palace. The Jade Palace goes very transparent and a very dark line forms in the middle of the Jade Palace stringerwork.

Test Results :: Sea Foam

2011-11-12T06:00:00.001-08:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 7 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (as stringer, encased in Clear), 8 & 9 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace

As you can see in the picture above, CiM Sea Foam is a pretty reactive colour. It is a Limited Run, and seems to be an odd lot of Kryptonite, although the reactions I got with Sea Foam are far more intense than the reactions with Kryptonite were. Sea Foam is a little greener and a little brighter in colour than Kryptonite. I didn't order any of this colour (and have since sort of put myself on a buying freeze) but I really wish I had because I think it is a colour with a lot of interesting possibilities. I did get some Mint Lozenge, though, so here's hoping that one behaves similarly.

Like Kryptonite, Sea Foam is one of those rare blue/green colours that does not get a dark line with Ivory, it does all kinds of exciting things with other colours, and it gets really weird with reduced silver glass. All of these things make it really appealing to me.

On top of Sea Foam, Silver sort of fizzles out and turns yellow. Reducing and encasing the silver gives you a strange, lacy web under a layer of clear with some brown and yellow discolouration. Neat, right?

Sea Foam is neat with silver glass. My TerraNova2 frit, although I didn't get the most vibrant strike out of it, has bloomed in interesting ways, and there is a hint of a yellow halo around the frit pieces. When I used reducing silver glass on top of Sea Foam, the Sea Foam turned noticeably more green in colour, and an oilslick of brownish yellow reaction surrounds the frit bits. The frit has also broken up and marbled in a very interesting way. Yum.

It is possible that Sea Foam is one of the most reactive colours I have yet tested. You can see in the two beads above that while Sea Foam and Tuxedo have no reaction at all, the test results with Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace are all crazy.

Copper Green

Copper Green on top of Sea Foam yields a rare three-ring reaction. A light line forms around the Copper Green lines and stringer dots, and then the Copper Green separates into two distinctly different colours - a darker, shiny pinkish version of itself and a deep teal opaque version of itself. When Sea Foam is used on top of Copper Green, it breaks up and forces the copper green into a light turquoise vs. dark turquoise situation.

Opal Yellow and Ivory

Opal Yellow on top of Sea Foam separates into a dark, translucent yellow and a pale, ivory version of itself. The Sea Foam underneath it gets all kinds of strange cracquelure, which is visible in the Opal Yellow dots and stringer lines as well. This is similar to what happened when I used Opal Yellow with Ming. When the Sea Foam is on top of Opal Yellow, the same reaction happens in reverse, and the Sea Foam definitely looks more blue than green.

With Ivory, the reaction is exactly the same as with Opal Yellow except that the Sea Foam dots and stringer lines on top of Ivory look more aquamarine in colour than blue.

Peace

Sea Foam makes Peace separate into an opaque and translucent, both when it is under Peace and when it is over it. This reaction does not have the same kind of curdling craziness that the reactions with Opal Yellow and Ivory do.

I didn't really make anything fun with Sea Foam, but I think I still have a little bit. If I find it and something cool comes of that, I'll be back to do an update.

Test Results :: Marigold

2011-11-06T06:00:00.000-08:00

CiM Marigold reminds me a lot of Effetre Butter Yellow, which is a particularly pretty variation of Effetre Yellow that doesn't have a lot of orange striation. Marigold is a bright, warm, happy colour.

Marigold also has a beautiful, soft, smooth consistency, is truly opaque, doesn't curdle or separate easily and is a little reactive.

Marigold reacts predictably with silver, in that the silver spreads out on top of it, turns the Marigold brown and turns brown itself. Silver tends to behave this way on top of all of the opaque yellow glasses I've tried. When the silver is reduced and encased, there are some faint streaks of blue in it, but apart from that it seems to just turn grey with a faint sheen.

My TerraNova2 frit on top of Marigold started to get some pretty nice colour in it. Around the frit, the silver glass creates a brown webby outline. This same brown ooze attacks the Marigold from the reduction frit in the bead on the right, but the reaction is more dispersed and engulfs the exposed surface of the Marigold. The reduction frit looks very interesting on top of Marigold, all of the different colours in my frit blend making themselves known, and I got good shine from reducing it.

Marigold is only moderately reactive, but there are a few reactions worth noting here:

Tuxedo bleeds into Marigold. This is visible on both test beads.
Marigold and Copper Green have a dark line reaction. Also, the Copper Green gets darker and sort of shiny.
Opal Yellow and Marigold have a dark line reaction.
When Ivory is used on top of Marigold, a bright yellow line forms around the Ivory, like the Marigold has uniformly bled into it all the way around the dots and stringer lines.
When Peace is used on top of Marigold, the same bright yellow line forms, and in addition the Peace seems to turn sort of translucent and almost look like it's set into the bead like a groove.

I didn't make anything fun with Marigold yet, but once I do I will be back to update this post. I think that out of all the yellows I've tested, this might be my favourite one (although I am awfully fond of Hollandaise as well).

Test Results :: Evil Queen

2011-10-31T06:00:00.000-07:00

Evil Queen is my 100th colour test. That sort of seems like a lot, yet there are more (maybe even a lot more) than 300 104 COE colours out there that I haven't even tried yet. Isn't it fortunate that being tasked with something that even I recognize to be impossible only makes me work harder?

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 7 - In Silver Glass Frit Stringer (encased), 8 - w/ Tuxedo, 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - w/ Opal Yellow, 11 - w/ Ivory, 12 - w/ Peace

CiM Evil Queen is the nicest opaque purple glass I have yet used. As luck would have it, it is also one the most expensive, trailing just behind Effetre EDP in terms of cost.

The consistency of Evil Queen is very soft, smooth and drippy. Some of the other very soft CiM opaques have a noticeable 'stickiness' to them (e.g. Poi, Split Pea, Sherwood) but Evil Queen does not, although that is a pretty meaningless observation because the colours that do have that 'stickiness' are equally pleasant to use. In very thin layers or as hair-thin stringer, Evil Queen is slightly more on the semi-opaque side of opaque, so it's not an ideal colour for surface detail work.

Evil Queen does not devitrify, and pretty much stays where you put it on a bead. It is a little reactive, but in a gentle way, as opposed to the crazy reactivity I experienced with EDP. It does not turn a livery brown with repeated striking the way Effetre Dark Violet does, and isn't particularly streaky like Effetre New Violet or CiM Poi are.

Evil Queen does not change colour when silver leaf is added to the surface, and the silver leaf sort of fans out and balls up on the surface, creating a sort of mist of silver spray. When the silver is subsequently reduced and encased, it gets some blue highlights and forms a solid, matte armour-like coating over the core of Evil Queen. I think the yellowing that we can see in the bead on the right is due to a reaction between the Clear and the silver, and is not attributable to the Evil Queen.

Silver Glass on Evil Queen isn't very exciting. My TerraNova2 frit stubbornly refused to strike, although the light purple halos that sprung up around it are very neat. The reducing silver glass frit on top of it just looks kind of mottled and sad, but it is kind've intriguing how reducing the silver glass made the Evil Queeen underneath take on a shiny, purple iridescence. When I used Evil Queen with silver glass frit in frit stringer, wrapped that around a core of Evil Queen and then encased it, I got a little bit of interesting streakiness, but Evil Queen is just not reactive enough to really succeed with this technique.

Evil Queen and Tuxedo are mutually reactive. When Tuxedo is used on top of Evil Queen, the Evil Queen rises up around the Tuxedo dots and stringer lines and forms a lighter purple outline around its edges. When Evil Queen is used on top of Tuxedo, it separates, developing a dark, translucent purple line in the middle of stringer lines, and the edges of the stringer lines and dots look a little hazy on the left side of this bead.

The combination of Evil Queen and Copper Green doesn't really result in a lot of reactivity, but a couple of things sort of spark my interest here. First, the Copper Green develops a bit of a sheen. On the left side of the bead where the Evil Queen is over Copper Green, the Copper Green looks sort of vibrantly turquoise, but has also sheened up, taking on a dreamy, mottled appearance. On the right side of the bead where Coper Green is over Evil Queen, the Copper Green does not have that vivid turquoise colour, but does seem to have spread a little and is definitely somewhat shiny.

On the left side of the bead, you can see how the dots and stringer lines of Evil Queen have separated gently, and a darker line of purple runs through the stringer lines. The edges of the Evil Queen dots and stringer lines seem a little blueish and indistinct.

Opal Yellow and Evil Queen are both soft, spready colours, so it was not very surprising that I experienced some spreading of the dots and stringer lines on both sides of this bead. On the right side, where Opal Yellow is over Evil Queen, the edges of the Opal Yellow are sort of indistinct and have a somewhat violet hue to them. On the left side, where Evil Queen is over Opal Yellow, the Evil Queen has also spread a little, and has also separated into two different shades of purple, a thickish, lighter line forming around the edges of the dots and stringerwork. Neat.

Ivory spreads out a little on top of Evil Queen, and my Ivory stringer lines and dots also have a curdled, mottled appearance. On the left side of the bead, the Evil Queen dots all have a lighter purple outline and faintly darker centre. Their edges are also a little cloudy and indistinct.

Over Peace, Evil Queen seems more of a semi-opque than an Opaque. Peace spreads on top of it, and you can see in the centre of the bead how the Evil Queen has bled into the Peace turning it a purplish blue colour.

I didn't make any real beads with Evil Queen, but I am sure that I will revisit this colour. When I do, I will come back and update this post with some pictures.

Test Results :: Sunshine

2011-10-23T06:00:00.001-07:00

1 - Plain (reduced), 2 - Plain, 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 6 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 7 & 8 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace

Vetrofond Sunshine is a vibrant, pure yellow. It reacts in ways that I consider predictable for an opaque yellow glass and while the rods can be a little shocky, and if you get it too hot it boils, it is not an unpleasant colour to use.

One of the tricky things about Vetrofond Sunshine is how grainy it is when it's hot. It's a hard colour to get good coverage with in thin layers, making dots and stringer lines of it on top of other colours sort of mottled and untidy.

Silver spreads out on top of Sunshine and turns a silvery brownish colour, keeping its shine. The Sunshine underneath fumes a deeper, brownish colour. I put additional dots of Sunshine on top of the silver in the bead on the left, and they stayed mostly yellow, but do have a greenish tinge to their edges and have a distinct line around them where the silver has grudgingly given way. In the bead on the right, the reduced and encased silver has taken on a sort of ethereal bent on top of the Sunshine, turning faintly blue and pink in places. If the ethereal pink and blue covered the whole bead, it would be attractive. If that is achievable every time with more careful application of the silver, that would be pretty neat. More experimentation required.

On top of Sunshine, I got really nice colour and coverage with my reducing silver glass frit, and a nice variety of blues and greens popping. In the bead on the right, my TerraNova2 frit is largely unspectacular, although I did get some colour here and there. This is a colour that seems to be a better base for reduction colours. If only it weren't yellow.

On top of Tuxedo, Sunshine looks sort of livid and splotchy. Tuxedo dots and stringer lines on top of Sunshine cause a little activity in the Sunshine underneath and receive a faint yellow outer ring.

Copper Green and Sunshine have a reciprocal dark line reaction. When Sunshine is used over Copper Green, that dark line is brown and spready, engulfing and transforming most of the Sunshine dots and stringer lines so that they look more brown than yellow. When Copper Green is used over Sunshine, it develops an army green shiniess and a black outline.

Something about using Sunshine with Opal Yellow made my Opal Yellow do some very strange greying things, in both of the test beads.

There is not much in the way of reaction between Sunshine and Ivory, but when Sunshine dots and stringer lines are made on top of Ivory, the yellowness of the Sunshine seems to creep into the Ivory, leaving what is left of the Sunshine looking more of a mustard colour and making the Ivory seem more yellow. The same effect in reverse is visible when Ivory stringer dots and lines are placed over Sunshine.

Peace and Sunshine also seem mutually reactive, but there are multiple things going on so it's hard to describe. The Peace seems to separate, both when Sunshine is on top of it and vice versa, but the two colours in combination also cause some greying/blotchiness. It's not attractive, so I'm not bothering to analyze it further.

Here are some fun rainbow beads with Sunshine. Apart from hiding it in vine cane, the only thing I can ever really think of to do with a yellow this bright is to put it into rainbow beads. When I make rainbow beads with an opaque yellow in them, I need to be careful because yellows, like Ivory, don't usually react particularly nicely to greens. To proactively solve this problem, I encase my Sunshine with Reichenbach Mystic Yellow, which is a yellow translucent that does not have that problem.

Test Results :: Strawberry

2011-10-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

1 - w/ Silver Leaf, 2 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 3 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 4 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 5 - Plain, 6 - w/ Plain (reduced), 7 & 8 - w/Peace, Ivory, Opal Yellow, Copper Green and Tuxedo

Reichenbach Strawberry is a bright, cherry red opaque that has just the slightest bit of translucency to it. I didn't really like working with this colour, because as you can see in the beads above, it tends to grey up with repeated striking. All of the smaller beads I made are fine, but the larger ones look just terrible. I didn't do enough experimentation to really get a feel for how to control the greyness.

This is an awfully pretty colour of red if you can figure out how to make it stay red, and it does have some interesting reactive properties.

Strawberry turns black where it meets silver leaf, and the silver leaf in the bead on the left has a grainy, webby consistency to it that is rather attractive. Reducing and encasing the silver removes some of the texture and doesn't really add anything nice to the effect. The silver over Strawberry after encasement looks a little like the surface of the moon.

Silver glass frit doesn't really do very well on top of Strawberry. A black line develops around the edges of the frit and sort of overwhelms it. In the bead on the left, I got some nice blues and turquoises where the black did not completely engulf the silver glass, but my TerraNova2 frit bead just looks kind've sad and yucky.

Strawberry has some interesting reactions with other colours, although they are not easy to read here because the Strawberry, in a lot of places, has turned almost completely a uniform dark grey colour. However, even through this yucky grey, some reactions are evident:

Copper Green separates slightly on top of Strawberry, developing a thin, dark green line down the centre of stringer lines and faint translucent halos inside dots.
When Strawberry is used over Opal Yellow, it causes separation in the surface of the Opal Yellow and a thin yellow line rises up from the Opal Yellow to surround the Strawberry stringer lines and dots. When Opal Yellow is used over Strawberry, it separates very dramatically, and spreads out, curdling around the edges.
When Strawberry is used over Peace, it causes separation in the surface of the Peace and a thin white line rises up from the Peace to surround the Strawberry stringer lines and dots. This reaction is less dramatic and less consistent than the same reaction with Opal Yellow. Peace separates on top of Strawberry, developing a thin dark line/dot in the middle of stringer lines and dots.
Ivory curdles underneath Strawberry. On top of Strawberry, Ivory stringer lines and dots get jagged edges around them and develop fine, translucent centre lines/dots.

Here is a fun rainbow bead with Striking Red-encased Strawberry.

Test Results :: EDP (Evil Devitrifying Purple)

2011-10-13T06:00:00.002-07:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 6 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 7 - w/ Tuxedo, 8 - w/ Copper Green, 9 - w/ Opal Yellow, 10 - w/ Ivory, 11 - w/ Peace

Effetre Purple, most commonly known as Evil Devitrifying Purple (EDP), is a very strange colour. The reactions with EDP and other colours are strikingly similar to the reactions I got with Reichenbach Flamingo. This is a very reactive colour. It is also a very frustrating colour because of its tendency to devitrify, turning matte and white in odd ways and places.

What I think I've discovered about working with EDP is that it is important to work it hot, and to not let it cool too much before finishing the bead. Cooling the surface of the bead -- by waiting outside the flame, by pressing -- and then reheating it seems to be what caused me the most devitrification headache. Keeping the bead pretty hot and cooling it only once, at the end on it's way to the kiln, is what helped me keep the devitrification off of these test beads. Where I did get some, I reheated the bead and got rid of it and put the bead away fast before my luck changed.

I find that when I work on large focals with EDP or Sedona (it devitrifies too *sigh*) that I usually just end up either etching or encasing the bead because I get discouraged once the bead is well and truly devitrified. I learned from Kimberly Affleck that you can reduce the devit off in a dragon's breath flame, but sometimes I don't really want to reduce my bead, and as you will see below, reducing EDP can have some unpleasant effects.

Here we have two plain spacers made from EDP. The one on the left is a rich purple with hints of blue. The one on the right was reduced, and is now a shiny, brownish purple. I did not know that EDP did this when it was reduced, so it was an interesting surprise.

EDP and silver don't really seem to like each other very much. You can see in the bead on the left how the EDP has sort of gone haywire under the silver, getting all pink and yellow. The silver leaf on top of the EDP has a strange greenish orange cast to it. When the silver is subsequently reduced and encased, almost every interesting thing that silver and EDP do together is no longer evident, the silver just looking like a dirty white shell over the mottled purple core of the bead.

Here, in the bead on the left, the EDP has turned almost all of the reduction fritty bits yellow. Underneath the frit, the EDP has turned pinkish and yellow (from the silver) and brown (from the reduction). In the bead on the right, my TerraNova2 frit sort of stubbornly refused to strike, and all around it, the EDP has turned pink and coral.

On top of Tuxedo, EDP looks blue and cloudy.

EDP makes copper green separate into two different colours of turquoise, and seems to prevent the copper green from getting that greyish sheen. The EDP is sort of mottled in this bead, looking like itself in some places and looking bluer and cloudier in others. This is an awesome reaction, and if you are familiar with the classic EDP/Copper Green/Opal Yellow colour combination and are looking for other colours that will work, I'd start by looking for other colours that do this to Copper Green.

A few opaque colours that I have found so far that have this kind of dramatic reaction include Lauscha Olive, Lauscha Steel Blue, Lauscha Cocoa, CiM Rainforest and Reichenbach Flamingo. Of course, I have not tested them in combination with both Copper Green and Opal Yellow, so I don't know what the final result would look like, but these all seem like they'd be good ones to experiment with.

This is the yellowest yellow I have ever achieved with Opal Yellow, although Opal Yellow has behaved strangely with all of the same colours that have made Copper Green go crazy. In this bead, the EDP is a mottled pink and purple, and has formed a sort of pinkish brown line between itself and the Opal Yellow. The Opal Yellow, apart from being a lot yellower than I would have thought on the left-hand side of the bead, has also separated and developed purple dots in the centres of its dots where I've put it on top of EDP. Fun!

Weirdness with Ivory, again in almost exactly the same way Reichenbach Flamingo was weird with Ivory, turning it black. EDP looks sort of blueish on top of the blackened Ivory, in the same cloudy way that it looked blue on top of Tuxedo. The Ivory lines and dots on top of EDP look black, but in a strange pencil-lead kind of way that makes them look sketched on instead of painted on.

On top of Peace, EDP looks almost pink, and spreads a little. Peace on top of EDP separates, and all of the dots and stringer lines get a dark, translucent purple centre.

Here are some fun beads with EDP.

In all of the crunched beads, I used a cane that I made from EDP, Light Turquoise, Celadon and Iris Dense Blue. All of the orange you see in the beads is from a reaction between the EDP and Iris Dense Blue. The unencased bead (bottom left) devitrified pretty heavily, but you can't see any devit in the two beads I encased, and I rather like the resulting mottledness.

Test Results :: Candy Corn

2011-10-08T06:00:00.000-07:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 6 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 7 - w/ Tuxedo, 8 - w/ Copper Green, 9 - w/ Opal Yellow, 10 -w/ Ivory, 11 - w/ Peace

Rods of Candy Corn are orange on the outside and have what seems to be a core of White running through them. What this translates to in a bead is a streaky orange that ranges from a pretty light orange to a dark, tomato colour.

Candy Corn, like the other Vetrofond veiled odd lots, can be a little annoying to work with. It's not as bad as Honey Crunch or Avocado Marble, but some of my rods did have that problem with cracking off every few inches while I was working.

On top of Candy Corn, silver leaf gets a yellowish, crusty look to it, and causes a bit of a dark line reaction between it and the Candy Corn, otherwise pretty much staying put. When the silver is subsequently reduced and encased, it turned back to silver except for some patches that either stay yellowish or develop a blueish tint.

My reducing silver glass looks bluer on top of Candy Corn than it has on top of other colours, but I have been using the same blend for most of this year. The silver glass on both beads has a very distinct black border around all of it's little fritty bits. The TerraNova2 frit in the bead on the right didn't really get off the ground in terms of striking.

No reactions to see here, really, but it is interesting how on the Tuxedo side of the bead the Candy Corn stringer lines have a light outline. I think this is from the streakiness of the glass, and I like how that streakiness translates into a textured look in the stringerwork.

Candy Corn and Copper Green develop a mutual dark line reaction. Again, the Candy Corn stringer lines have a beautiful streakiness that makes them look almost three dimensional, or like they've been intentionally shaded.

On top of Ivory and Peace (much more so on top of Peace), Candy Corn spreads a little and because of its streakiness, has some interesting things going on. Peace separates and develops a thin, translucent line down the middle on top of Candy Corn.

I've taken some short cuts here, but Candy Corn just isn't a very reactive colour. The streakiness is fun though, and I can't wait to work with the other Vetrofond odds that are languishing in my glass box.

Here's a fun bead with Candy Corn.

Test Results :: Electric Yellow

2011-10-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

1 - w/ Silver Leaf, 2 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 3 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 4 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (encased), 6 - Plain, 7 - Plain (reduced), 8 - w/ Copper Green, 9 - w/ Opal Yellow, 10 - w/ Ivory, 11 - w/ Peace

Effetre Electric Yellow is not all that electric. For some reason, I was expecting a brighter, less tolerable colour when I saw what they'd named it, but it's sort of surprising that I didn't know better since I've done more than eighty of these colour tests now and it's pretty common for the colour names to not elicit the right mental picture.

I didn't do a great job of striking the Electric Yellow in small spacers, but since I never make small beads, that won't ever matter to me very much. In all of the other beads, I had no trouble striking it at all - it seemed to happen naturally just by working it.

The irritating thing about Striking Yellow is that it looks exactly the same as a lot of other colours that aren't yellow. For instance, it's sort of hard to tell Electric Yellow apart from Clear unless you've melted the end of it, and it's almost impossible to tell it apart from Striking Red, too. This can make a torching session a little like a game of Russian Roulette if you aren't careful about keeping track of where you put stuff down. The very first thing I do now when I 'm working with this colour (or Striking Red) is melt one end of the rod slightly and tease a strike out of it, and then use that end as the handle from then on (AFTER it cools. OUCH!) so that no accidents happen.

Electric Yellow does the same thing opaque yellows do when you add silver to it, which is turn brown. Silver leaf on top of Electric Yellow goes very brown, almost black in places, with some silvery bits crusting on the surface. Encasing this reaction predictably nets silver and brown under clear.

Silver glass is surprisingly nice on Electric Yellow, or at least the reducing silver glass frit was. The TerraNova2 frit didn't seem to get a very good strike on the face of the beads, but on the edges where it naturally cooled more, it is nicer. This tells me that the lack of colour here is MY fault. The reducing silver glass frit looks really neat, sort of blending together and forming those funky yellow lines around its edges.

Blech. This is the result of making frit stringer with Electric Yellow and reducing silver glass frit, using that to encase a bead made from Electric Yellow and then encasing with Clear. Not attractive at all, although some of the effects inside are interesting to look at.

Copper Green and Electric Yellow are also surprisingly nice together. I particularly like the side of the bead where the Electric Yellow is on top of the Copper Green. There is not much in the way of reaction on the Striking Yellow side of the bead, although the Copper Green does have an interesting sheen to it and is noticeably paler and faded around the edges of the dots and stringer lines. The light line that has formed around the Electric Yellow dots and stringer lines on the right-hand side of the bead are more interesting, and really just sort of cool. Like.

And then Electric Yellow just sort of stopped being interesting. Ivory and Peace separate on it a little bit, but honestly, that happens with a lot of colours so it's hard to get excited about. There is really not much of a reaction between Opal Yellow and Electric Yellow at all.

I didn't really make a lot of beads with Electric Yellow because I was afraid (unnecessarily, as it turns out) that it would be stupidly reactive and wreak havoc with the other colours I was using, but I did make this rose cane. The cane is Electric Yellow and a hand-mixed yellow that I made by combining Orange Sherbet and Dark Ivory in roughly equal proportion.

Test Results :: Twilight

2011-09-26T06:00:00.000-07:00

1 - w/ Silver Leaf, 2 - w/ Silver Leaf(reduced & encased), 3 - Over Silver Foil, 4 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit Stringer (encased), 7 - Plain, 8 - Plain (reduced), 9 - Over Clear, 10 & 11 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace

CiM Twilight is a beautiful dark grey colour, and is both darker and bluer than Effetre Dark Steel Grey which has more of a greenish cast to it. It is very similar in hue to Charcoal, only it is less saturated and its reactions with silver and other colours are more subtle.

I believe that Twilight is the result of one of my (and no doubt lots of other people's) requests for a transparent version of CiM Adamantium, and while it does not meet the "need" I expressed when I requested it (I want a dark brownish grey) it is a very nice colour to work with and has some good reactive properties. I love neutrals, as I'm sure you have been able to determine through reading this blog, and no matter how many browns and greys the glass companies make, it will never really be enough for me. I still want the transparent dark brownish grey.

Twilight is very nice to work with, and isn't especially prone to bubbling, although it's not a good idea to tempt fate by parking it in the flame. I didn't experience any unpleasant shocking or splintering at all while making these beads.

On top of Twilight, silver leaf spreads out and sits on top of the bead, blushing blue in places. When the bead is subsequently reduced and encased, the blue is much more evident. When Twilight is used to encase silver foil, the silver foil mostly stays silver but can yellow in places.

Silver glass and Twilight is a happy story. Reduction frit looks beautiful on it, and I got fantastic colour out of my TerraNova2 frit, although you sort of have to enlarge the picture to see it. I even enjoyed moderate success with my frit stringer test.

While Twilight is pretty reactive with silver, it seems not to be very reactive with any of these other colours I tested it with. Below is a summary of the few notable reactions I observed in these beads:

On top of Twilight, Copper Green develops an interesting border around itself, looking almost three-dimensional.
Ivory and Peace both separate on top of Twilight, a fine dark line appearing in the middle of dots and stringer lines.

A fun bead with Twilight
(note: the blue bits at the tips of the wings are Caribbean - I don't remember mixing them, but I guess I must have)

Test Results :: Hollandaise

2011-09-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

Now we're getting to the yellows in this most recent batch of CiM Limited Runs that I actually like.

CiM Hollandaise is more of a mustard colour than it is the colour of Hollandaise. In fact, I will go so far as to say that if you order Eggs Benedict in a restaurant, and the Hollandaise sauce it is served with is this colour, SEND IT BACK because it will mean they've made the sauce with margarine instead of butter and it will taste so foul you'll wish you'd ordered the corned beef hash instead. However, while I wouldn't eat Hollandaise sauce this colour, I like beads made with it just fine.

On the CiM site, if you are looking for Hollandaise you currently need to look under the palette entry for oranges, which I think they should change. Hollandaise is not even a little bit orange unless you strike it -- it is a mustardy, greenish/brownish yellow.

Hollandaise reminds me a little bit of Stone Ground in terms of its consistency, although that is really where the similarity ends. It strikes a bit in the flame, although not a lot, and that striking changes the colour so that it is slightly more on the orange/brownish side, but not enough that you could get me to say that it had actually turned brown or orange.

Silver spreads out over the surface of Hollandaise, which is nice because it means that a little silver goes a long way. It also turns the surface of the Hollandaise to more of a tan colour. You can see in the left-most bead that some of the silver has a faint blueish tinge to it. When the silver leaf is reduced and encased, the brown is even more pronounced.

Silver glass and Hollandaise just doesn't do it for me, although technically the glasses have all done what they should. I think it's something about the yellow, and just a matter of my personal taste. In both beads, pleasantly, the silver glass has stayed put and not made a beeline for the middle of the bead the way it's done for some colours. I got good colour out of both the reduction frit and the TerraNova2.

Hollandaise is a pretty stable colour without a lot of surprises. Here is a summary of the notable reactions I observed in these beads:

When Hollandaise is used on top of Copper Green, it gets a brown line around it, which in some cases has spread enough to engulf the Hollandaise itself so that some of the stringer dots and lines look more brown than yellow. When Copper Green is used on top of Hollandaise, the line is blacker and thinner. Copper Green spread out like crazy on top of Hollandaise.
There is some strange pitting/spotting on my Opal Yellow underneath Hollandaise, and where I used Opal Yellow on top of Hollandaise, the Opal Yellow has spread quite a lot and also struck to an organgey-pink in places.
White and Peace both spread on top of Hollandaise.

Here are some fun beads made with Hollandaise.

Test Results :: Army Men

2011-09-19T06:00:00.001-07:00

CiM Army Men is a very, very streaky colour. It is also really pretty, very close to the same shade as ASK Aloe Vera / Kugler Isar Blue. This colour is greener and greyer than Commando. It is a very soft opaque and the working consistency of it is beautiful.

Army Men is a relatively stable colour, and doesn't seem overly reactive. It's gorgeous in vine cane.

Here, silver leaf on Army Men gently yellows the army men, but seems to just sit on top of it in a lacy pattern. When the silver is reduced and encased, the yellowish green aura that it emits is sort of icky looking, but also kind of intriguing.

Army Men seems to be a better base colour for striking silver glass colours than it is for reduction ones. The reduction frit has yellowed the Army Men quite a bit, but the reaction / results are otherwise unremarkable aside from a few haloed frit bits. The decisive green halos that popped up around the TerraNova2 frit are much more interesting. The TerraNova2 frit struck nicely here, in the purple/blue ranges. I think if I'd struck it again there's be more blue.

Most of the blotchiness you see in the bead on the left, above, is the result of Army Men's streakiness. Army Men seems to not be a very reactive colour at all. Here is a short list of the reactions I see in these beads, however the reactions are very subtle:

Copper Green on top of Army Men looks pinkish and shiny.
Opal Yellow on top of Army Men strikes to a pinkish-orange colour in the centre of dots and stringer lines.
A gentle, thin dark line springs up around Army Men when it is placed on top of Ivory.
Army Men seems to thin out a little and spread on top of Peace.
The separation and streakiness of Army Men is most apparent in the beads above with Tuxedo, Ivory and Peace.

Here are some fun beads with Army Men:

Test Results :: Caribbean

2011-09-16T18:00:00.000-07:00

1 - w/ Silver Foil (encased), 2 - w/ Silver Leaf, 3 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 4 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit Stringer (encased), 7 - Plain, 8 - Plain (reduced), 9 & 10 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace

CiM Caribbean is a pretty medium blue colour, a touch darker than Effetre Medium Blue, and quite a bit lighter than CiM Sapphire. It also seems like it might be a hair on the greener side than Sapphire is. It is a pretty colour that is fairly stable, not reacting strongly with other colours.

I found Caribbean a relatively pleasant colour to use, although it is a little easier to boil than I really like. Working higher up in the flame solves this problem. I only really had trouble with it when I was using it as stringer or heating the end of the rod specifically to make dots.

Silver Foil stays mostly silver when it is encased with Caribbean, although you can see that there are a couple of gold patches in the left-most bead. Putting silver on top of Caribbean makes it darker. The bead on the middle here is far darker in colour than the bead with the silver foil in it, with smudges and sprays of silver wandering over its surface. When this combination is reduced and encased, the Caribbean lightens back up so that you can see through it again and the silver takes on all kinds of attractive blue colour.

These last two reactions are pretty similar to what I experienced with CiM Sapphire.

Silver Glass Reduction Frit is pretty on top of Caribbean, but I didn't get much colour out of my TerraNova2 Frit on top of it. The bead with the silver glass frit stringer is interestingly streaky, but I didn't get any really interesting effects in it. In terms of the reactions I have seen with other colours, this one was only moderately successful.

Unlike Sapphire, Caribbean does not turn orange when used on top of Copper Green. It does develop a faint dark line reaction with Ivory, and it almost disappears on top of Peace.

Tuxedo is faintly translucent on top of Caribbean, Copper Green turns shiny and orangey when used on top of it. There were no really obvious reactions when Opal Yellow, Ivory or Peace were used on top of Caribbean.

Some fun beads with Caribbean:

Test Results :: Canary

2011-09-05T06:00:00.000-07:00

Warning: Very Yellow (again)

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 6 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 7 & 8 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opeal Yellow, Ivory and Peace

CiM Canary is the second loud yellow (in a series of loud yellows) that I've reviewed from this most recent batch of CiM colours. Like Submarine, Canary is not really very opaque. It's also, however, not very semi-opaque and it would be more accurate to describe it as a 'streaky opal' colour. While working, Canary is a little sensitive to boiling, although you can't really tell in the finished beads. Working a little higher up in the flame solves this problem.

If you follow this blog, you may notice that the paragraph above is almost a direct copy of the words I already wrote about Submarine, but there's a good reason for that (apart from me just being a little lazy 'cause it's hot out). They are almost exactly the same, except for some subtleties in their reactions with other colours. Most of the reactions that are interesting are the result of colour combinations that I feel don't really belong in the world, but maybe you will like them.

On the CiM website, the pictures of the Canary paddle make it look like it is a little more orange in colour than it actually turns out to be after you work it.

Like with Submarine, silver turns brown on top of Canary. The yellowness of the Canary does not seem as easily diminished with the addition of silver as the yellowness of Submarine was.

Like Submarine, Canary is much nicer with the reducing silver glass than it is with TerraNova2 Frit. The main difference here is that while I was able to get some decent colour out of the TerraNova2 frit on top of Submarine, on top of Canary it seems to have turned black/grey in places and has not struck very much at all.

Tuxedo bled into Submarine and turned it a greenish colour, but it doesn't really seem to do that on top of Canary. In fact, some of the dots of Tuxedo don't even show up very well in the bead on the left, above, and instead just look like grey circles around themselves. However, Canary on top of Tuxedo does have a slight greenish cast to it.

Copper Green and Canary have a reciprocal dark line reaction. With Submarine, this reaction was very crisp and defined, but with Canary it is sort of spready and not of a consistent width. The Copper Green itself exhibits the same tendency towards a pinkish colour that it did with Submarine, but without the shine.

Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace all separate on top of Canary and form a double line, with some translucency in the middle. The Opal Yellow shows this effect the most prominently, and if the colours were nicer together I'd be really excited about that reaction.

Fun beads with Canary:

Here I used Canary as the core of my vine cane, and rather like the resulting way in which the cane has behaved, getting a dark line up one side almost like a real leaf or blade of thick grass. This is a perfect way to use Canary, since it has an interesting, desirable effect and you also don't really need to look directly at the yellow once it is safely hidden by the outer layers of the cane.

Test Results :: Mulberry

2011-08-31T06:00:00.000-07:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 6 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 7 & 8 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace

CiM Mulberry is a juicy shade of purple with a bit of a magenta leaning to it. It's dreamy to use - so buttery soft and nice to melt, but a few of my rods also had a tendency to splinter, which is a sharp jolt back to reality when a piece lands on the back of your hand.

In terms of its colour, it seems to me like a combination of Plum and Eggplant. It's more opaque than Plum (more like Eggplant) but it is pinker than Eggplant, with more of the soft pinkish-purple of Plum.

Silver goes an odd brownish colour on top of Mulberry, but otherwise pretty much stays put. When the silver is reduced and encased, it gets blue patches in it. This encased Mulberry/Silver Leaf bead on the right cracked, but it cracked right down the mandrel line which means it might just have been my own stupid fault. However, it also might mean that Mulberry doesn't like being encased with Effetre 006 Clear. More experimentation would be required to know for sure which.

On top of Mulberry, silver glass develops colour really well. Mulberry also seems to do a weird thing that pushes the silver glass away from the edges of the bead. If you look at these two beads, I rolled them in silver glass frit exactly the same way I usually, do, but there is almost no silver glass bits near the bead holes at all. Strange.

The TerraNova2 got beautiful colour on top of Mulberry. I sort of already said that, but I feel like saying it again. It's hard to find these good 'accelerating' bases for silver glass, so when I find one I get pretty happy about it.

Mulberry is sort of reactive, but the reactions are not very interesting when other colours are used on top of it. It has a dispersing, watercolouring impact when stringerwork is done on top of it which makes the reactions sort of hard to read.

Mulberry is very interesting, though, on top of Copper Green and Opal Yellow. In the bead on the right, you can see how the dots of Mulberry on top of Copper Green resulted in a dark transparent outline, then a whiteish ring and finally the purple of the Mulberry shyly peeking out of the middle. It causes Opal Yellow to curdle underneath it fairly violently and spring up in big halos. These two effects are very cool and worthy of additional study.

Here are some fun beads with Mulberry.

This is Mulberry over a core of something blue (don't remember) and then subsequently encased with more things blue. The rose murrini are Effetre Bubblegum and Kugler Golden.

Mulberry is used in the base of this bead, over top of a base of Dark Violet and is then encased with Light Aqua (I think).

Here I've mixed Mulberry with other colours, however I don't remember which ones. I think some Kugler Golden was involved, and some Bubblegum or Pink Alabastro. The resulting hand-mixed colour was used to encase a dark violet core. The stripe of purple down the right-hand side of the bead is Mulberry.

Test Results :: Journey

2011-08-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

1 - w/ Silver Leaf, 2 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 3 - Over Silver Foil, 4 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 5 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced) 6 - As Silver Glass Frit Stringer (encased), 7 - Plain, 8 - Reduced, 9 & 10 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, Peace

CiM Journey is a pale grey-lavender colour. I found Journey to be a little less user-friendly than some of the other recent CiM transparents because of its tendency to boil. Working it up high in the flame helps manage the boiling problem, but on the whole I prefer to use colours that don't need this kind of special treatment.

Reducing CiM Journey changes its colour from greyish-lavender to greyish-brown.

Journey and silver have an interesting relationship. Journey turns a golden brown colour with silver, as you can see in all three of these beads. In the centre bead, the reduced and encased silver on top of Journey develops a very pretty purple/blue colour reaction. The bad news is that the centre bead cracked. I'm not sure if it was the encasing or if it was the silver or if it was combination of the two, but there are hairline cracks crazily spreading throughout this bead.

In the bead on the right, you can see how yellow/brown silver foil looks under a layer of Journey.

Journey is a fairly good base for silver glass. The centre bead here is exceptionally vivid and pretty. In the bead on the right I tried Journey as a base for silver glass frit stringer, and the results are sort of unspectacular. The interesting thing about this bead was that it was encased, and like the encased silver leaf bead (above) it also cracked.

On top of Journey, Tuxedo thins out and looks pretty purple.

Copper Green, when used with Journey, develops a brownish lustre. This is evident in both of the beads above. On top of Copper Green, the Journey dots and lines look very precise, and appear to have a dark outline around them. This did not happen with Journey on top of the other colours I tested it with.

Journey did not have memorable or noteworthy reactions with either Opal Yellow or Ivory, however it behaved interestingly when used on top of Peace. You can see in the bead on the right that in the middle of the Journey dots and lines, some blackness has gathered. I'm not sure if this is the result of working too hot or if my flame was a bit dirty at the end of my propane, so if you have some Journey, you should give it a try.

I don't have any fun beads with Journey, because I ran out of it a little too quickly. I will come back and add some pictures if I make any more beads with it.

Test Results :: Marble

2011-08-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

When I got the Marble rods, I found myself asking "How is Marble different from Marshmallow?" because the Marble rods are a similar semi-opaque white colour. After melting the Marble (although never having melted any Marshmallow) it became clear that it is different from Marshmallow in that it does not stay semi-opaque. On the CiM site, Marble is described as a streaky, marble-like white but I didn't get much in the way of streaks. It looks pretty white to me.

So then I felt the need to ask myself "OK then, how is Marble different from White?" since it seemed like I should be asking some questions, questions being the mother of answers and answers being what we are looking for when we test anything.

And sadly, the answer is that I only sort of know, because in spite of all of the testing I've done, I haven't yet bothered to test the staple colours that I test everything else with. This didn't really seem like such a huge oversight until I tested Marble, so I'm a little annoyed with myself. Fortunately for Marble (and for me) it is a very interesting colour, so not having done my homework can only really eat at me so much.

This seems destined to be a chatty post. Bear with me.

In some of the pictures, Marble has blended right into the background. I'd like to say that I photographed Marble on a white background on purpose to demonstrate its inherent whiteness (or lack thereof) however the truth is that I just didn't think to get out the black plexiglass. I guess the next time I test such a light colour I really should, since some of these beads are sort of hard to make out.

CiM Marble is an opaque white that is very reactive with silver, and has some unusual reactions with other colours as well. It's a fairly stiff colour, and is sort of nice to use because of its smooth consistency.

Marble fumes a yellowish colour when used with silver. You can see the mottled yellow/orange/brown reactions in the bead on the left. You can see the yellow in the middle of the bead on the right, too, where the silver didn't cover the core of the bead. On top of Marble, silver goes a brownish colour as well, but then when it is reduced and encased as in the bead on the right, it takes on blueish and pinkish tints and goes pretty shiny. This is a pretty reaction (or at least it would be if the yellow had stayed hidden).

I had mixed results for Marble with silver glass. I really like the way the reduced silver glass behaved on Marble, and the sheen reducing the silver glass gave to the marble is really interesting in the bead on the left. I swear I make all of these test beads the same way, and I had great success with Midnight just the day after I made these, so instead of blaming myself for this one I am going to say that Marble is much nicer as a base for reducing silver glass than it is for striking silver glass. One interesting feature of the bead with TerraNova2 frit is the way the Marble came up in little halos around the frit. I love that effect.

Tuxedo
I'm not really sure what was going on here, so you are going to have to work this out for yourself if you are interested. In the bead on the left, my Marble stringer got a lot of dark 'gunge' in it, and I have no idea if this is from a reactions or if it is because I was coming to the end of my propane. It's sort of suspicious that the Marble did this on top of all of the colours EXCEPT copper green, but weirder things have happened. In any case, the 'gunge' seemed to only fill the centres of the dots and lines on Tuxedo, which means that that the Marble separated on top of it. If you try it, I predict you will either get two different consistencies of white, or that you will get what I got. Let me know :)

When Tuxedo is used on top of Marble, the Marble rises up around it in little white halos.

Copper Green
On top of Copper Green, Marble separates a little, and when Copper Green is used on top of Marble, white halos rise up around it as well. Copper Green stays an odd, shiny yellowish colour with Marble.

Opal Yellow
When Opal Yellow is used with Marble, it seems inclined to blush pink. On top of Opal Yellow (apart from where it turned grey) the Marble seems to acquire some of Opal Yellow's pinkish yellowness.

Ivory & Peace
It's difficult to really discern anything meaningful from what I did on top of Ivory and Peace with Marble, and from the complete wash that was Ivory and Peace on top of Marble, but this seems to be the area of the bead that received the most blackening. There's not a lot of point in ever attempting white-on-white, so I'll probably never do this again so we may not find out if there's anything more to it.

I made some fun murrini with Marble (although I've just realized I didn't take any pictures of it *sigh*), and also used it underneath Midnight in my Midnight bead. On the whole, I liked Marble. It's got character.

Test Results :: Midnight

2011-08-17T17:45:00.000-07:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - Over Clear, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf, 5 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 6 - Over Silver Foil, 7 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 8 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 9 - In Silver Glass Frit Stringer (encased with Clear), 10 & 11 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace

My three pounds of this colour are safely on their way to me, so it's safe to post about how utterly AWESOME this colour is. I'm kidding, kind of. I haven't delayed posting this because I'm a mean hoarder, but seriously, I don't ever want to run out of this colour so I will be adding to that stash until its gone, and if CiM doesn't make more I think I'll weep.

CiM Midnight is a very stiff transparent colour, sort of like Leaky Pen, however it does not have Leaky Pen's tendency to boil, pit and spark in the flame. It is very dark, even over a core of Clear, and is wonderfully reactive with other colours but stable with silver.

In the bead on the left, the silver has stayed silver after melting it into the surface of Midnight and just sort of sat there. This is very similar to what happened when I did this test with Dark Grass Green and Ink Blue / Pale Ink Blue.

When the silver leaf is melted into Midnight and then reduced and encased, some dark blue leaches up out of the Midnight into the silver. I think the yellowing is mostly due to the Clear reacting with the silver.

On top of Silver Foil, you can see that Midnight is a dark purplish blue colour. It does not change the colour of the silver underneath it.

Like Dark Grass Green and Ink Blue / Pale Ink Blue, Midnight makes a wonderful base colour for silver glass. It behaves more like the ink blues in that the TerraNova2 frit tends more toward the purples, pinks and blues. With Dark Grass Green, TerraNova2 frit is much more colourful, but I love these deep purple and blue tones I got with Midnight. Midnight does not really bear any other similarities to these colours though in terms of reactions.

My reduction frit in the middle bead looks beautifully vibrant on top of Midnight.

Midnight is only somewhat successful used as frit stringer. I didn't expect it to work at all because a) it is so dark and b) it is blue, so this was a bit of a surprise.

Tuxedo
Not much reaction expected here, so not much disappointment experienced.

Copper Green
On top of Midnight, copper green separates slightly and goes faintly pinkish. This reaction also occurs when Midnight is used on top of Copper Green -- the Copper Green is a mottled pink and green patchwork in the bead on the left.

Opal Yellow
Opal Yellow rises up in a halo around Midnight dots and stringer work, which is a very fun effect. On top of Midnight, Opal Yellow develops a reaction ring inside dots and stringer lines, but doesn't really 'separate'. I like this combo very much.

Ivory
When Midnight is used on top of Ivory, it appears to be a dark olive brown colour. When Ivory is used on top of Midnight, the edges get brownish and dirty looking and the Ivory seems to separate.

Peace
The reaction between Peace and Midnight is the same as the reaction between Midnight and Opal Yellow, only slightly less pronounced.

In these beads, I've layered Midnight with other colours. The rose cane is Effetre Spring Willow and Midnight.

Test Results :: Submarine

2011-08-16T06:00:00.001-07:00

Warning: Very Yellow

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 7 - w/ Tuxedo, 8 - w/ Copper Green, 9 - w/ Opal Yellow, 10 - w/ Ivory, 11 - w/ Peace

I'm going to admit right off the bat that I really don't like this colour very much, but I think it's because it is disinclined to look nice in the kinds of beads I customarily make. It is also a really bright colour, and semi-opaque, two categories of colour that I find a little challenging. I did manage to figure out a way to make this colour work for me, which you will see if you read on.

CiM Submarine is sort of a loud yellow with greenish overtones, and is not really very opaque. It's also, however, not very semi-opaque and it would be more accurate to describe it as a 'streaky opal' colour. While working, Submarine is a little sensitive to boiling, although you can't really tell in the finished beads. Working a little higher up in the flame solves this problem.

Submarine is a limited run, so if you like what you see here know that it will not be available forever.

When silver leaf is melted into the surface of Submarine, it turns a dark brown colour. This is very similar to how silver reacts with Ivory, however since Submarine is of a completely different consistency, instead of curdling and webbing, Submarine just changes colour. With the addition of silver, the colour of Submarine deepens and becomes somewhat more subdued. Good to know :)

When the silver is reduced and encased, it becomes an earthy brown colour.

Silver glass frit reacts and develops colour on top of Submarine nicely, but the colour of Submarine doesn't really match most silver glass colours. I particularly like the thin whiteish lines that developed around the edges of the reduction frit in the bead on the right.

Tuxedo bleeds into Submarine, turning it a greenish colour.

Copper Green goes very pinkish and shiny when used with Submarine. A reciprocal dark line reaction develops between these two colours which is pretty interesting. I actually really like the left side of this bead, with the Submarine on top of Copper Green.

Submarine bleeds a little into Opal Yellow (you can see yellow outlines around the stringer work on the left side of this bead), and a faint dark line that looks like a shadow sprang up around the Opal Yellow stringer work on the right-hand side of this bead.

Submarine bleeds into Ivory. If you enlarge this picture, you will see what I mean. The bleeding is pretty uniform, and surrounds the stringer work on both sides of the bead.

With Peace, the same bleeding effect happens as with Ivory, only it is more pronounced. The Peace stringer lines on the right side of this bead looks more yellow than white.

It is really hard for me to make nice beads with bright colours, and this one was very challenging for me.

Here is all I was able to manage. I prefer the Submarine inside other colours in cane where it is not quite as livid. In the bead on the left, it is the middle of the cane used in the bead's core, but is also the yellow around the 'wings'. In the bead on the right, the whole bead was made on a base of submarine with some of the cored cane, a twistie and some SiS.

Test Results :: Lizard

2011-07-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

Effetre Lizard is one of those colours that you just can't get to know intimately after just one date. It feels like a slightly unholy mixture of Mud Slide and Dark Matter, both of which I like very much. A couple of my Lizard rods have been a little shocky, but on the whole, it is pleasant to use. It seems to have enormous potential, and it is definitely unique in the 104 palette. I have fallen enough in love with this colour that I've built a small stockpile of it, since it seems to be one of the question marks in terms of whether or not there will be a regular supply of it once Mike Frantz has sold all of his stock. I guess I should ask.

Lizard is very reactive, and it's a striking colour. Repeated heating and the addition of silver make Lizard browner and darker. You can see above how my lentils and spacers are much darker in colour than the bicolor ovals that I made in the lower row of beads. I made the two spacers on the same mandrel, but only reduced one of them and you can see that the one I did not reduce looks significantly greyer than the one I did reduce. I like the earthy grey of the unreduced spacer almost as much as the rich brown of the reduced one, so it's nice that I can have both.

In the bead on the left, the silver leaf has turned yellowish on top of the Lizard, and the base bead has fumed/struck a rich brown colour. When this reaction was reduced and encased, the Lizard seems to have gone almost purple in places and the silver leaf has a mottled but blue-ish sheen to it under the encasement layer. A thin layer of yellow 'crud' is also visible on top of this reaction.

Lizard is yummy with silver glass. In the bead on the left, where I did not overstrike the TerraNova2 frit, you can see the pretty colours. It is also interesting how the Lizard is greyer and lighter in the middle of this bead, near the frit, than it is at the ends. In the bead on the right, the Lizard has developed a bit of a patina, and looks almost yellowish brown around the frit and dark grey at the ends. The reduced silver glass frit on top of the Lizard has a strange, mottled look to it. Me likes.

Lizard and Copper Green have a reciprocal dark line reaction, and you can see on the right side of the bead that the Copper Green dots and stringer lines also have a sort of brownish blush around their edges and seem to float just slightly on top of the Lizard.

On top of Opal Yellow, Lizard separates a little at the edges of dots and stringer lines, leaving a brownish residue. The Lizard also seems to coagulate in the centre of the stringer lines, looking much darker in hue there. On top of Lizard, Opal Yellow develops a thin dark outline and on both sides of the bead, the Opal Yellow has blushed a rich yellow with some darker, mustardy mottling.

On top of Ivory, Lizard's outline is sort of translucent, and the Lizard has the appearance of floating slightly on top of the Ivory glass. It also looks pretty brown on top of Ivory. Under Ivory, the Lizard has separated slightly in spots, giving the appearance of cracks in the surface (although there aren't any).

Peace lines and dots on top of Lizard separate slightly, forming some translu7cency at their centre. On top of Peace, Lizard spreads and develops a yellowish outline that contributes to the illusion that the Lizard lines are three dimensional.

I have made a lot of beads with Lizard, but I apparently haven't taken pictures of any of them. If that changes in the next little while, I will come back and update with pics. Lizard is making a fabulous 'earth' colour for the ground in my new mushroom focal design.

Test Results :: Straw Yellow

2011-07-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ Silver Foil, 6 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 7 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 8 - w/ Silver Glass Frit Stringer (encased), 9 - w/ Tuxedo, 10 - w/ Copper Green, 11 - w/ Opal Yellow, 12 - w/ Ivory, 13 - w/ Peace

I love this colour. Effetre Straw Yellow is not very exciting on its own (or even, really, in combination with other colours) but it is a very pretty neutral transparent, and it does wonderful things with silver glass. It is a very soft transparent, so it melts very easily, and it is not prone to bubbling or boiling at all.

Here on top of Straw Yellow, silver leaf melted into the surface sort of disperses and develops faint, blue-ish halos. The addition of the silver has significantly darkened the colour of the Straw Yellow base bead. When the leaf is reduced and encased, it forms a soft, translucent blanket on top of Straw Yellow. In the bead on the right, it is as if the reduction and clear encasement layer have zeroed out the darkness that you see in the bead on the left..

In this bead I used a core of Straw Yellow, wrapped it in silver foil, and then encased the foil with Straw Yellow being careful not to overheat it so that the foil stayed intact under the encasement layer. The reaction between the silver foil and Straw Yellow makes the silver appear to be a rich, coppery hue.

Straw Yellow, like Pale Green Apple, Light Brown Transparent, Kelp and Mojito makes a good base for silver glass. Usually, if a colour will turn silver a coppery-gold colour and will do the stringer thing that you see below, it will be an excellent base colour for silver glass as well in my experience.

This is Straw Yellow frit stringer, made with Double Helix reduction frits (blend of Gaia, Elektra, Nyx, Psyche and Kronos). The bead is encased in Effetre 006 Clear. The result of this is less vibrant than with Pale Green Apple, but is still very effective.

And here it is with Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace.

The only real reaction of note is with Opal Yellow. The Opal Yellow under Straw Yellow has a fair bit of pink blushing, and there is some reaction inside the Straw Yellow stringer lines on the left-hand side of the bead because the lines look very intensely yellow. As we can see, the Opal Yellow is not that colour naturally and Straw Yellow is not similarly concentrated in any of the other test beads.

I got distracted and didn't make any real beads with Straw Yellow, but I'll be back to update this when I eventually do.

Test Results :: Peach

2011-07-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

1 - w/ Silver Leaf, 2 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 3 - w/ Silver Foil, 4 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 5 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit Stringer, 7 - Plain, 8 - Plain (reduced), 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - w/ Opal Yellow, 11 - w/ Ivory, 12 - w/ Peace

Lauscha Peach is a very pale, subdued peach transparent glass. It is a little reactive with silver, although not on the same scale as Light Brown Transparent or Straw Yellow, and has a beautiful consistency. It is not particularly prone to boiling.

Silver leaf melted onto the surface of a Peach bead is not terribly interesting, just looking like random greyish surface discolouration, however when the silver leaf is reduced and encased, it takes on a shiny, ethereal appearance under the encasing layer with a tinge of lavender to it.

When Peach is applied over silver foil, the silver foil turns a rich gold colour.

Peach is an average base colour for silver glass frit. Nothing exceptional happened, but there was no epic fail either.

Here I used frit stringer made from Peach and silver glass reduction frit (Kronos, Psyche, Gaia, Elektra) to encase a core of Peach, and then encased the whole thing with Clear. The resulting striations are interesting, but don't have much colour to them. I got much prettier results with this technique with Effetre Straw Yellow, Effetre Light Brown, Effetre Pale Green Apple and CiM Mojito, but this less colourful result has possible uses as well.

And here is Peach with Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace. Not much to report here in terms of reactions.

I haven't made anything very fun with Peach yet, but I still have a couple of rods left so I will try to get something posted in the next couple of weeks.

Test Results :: Orange Sherbet

2011-07-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

Orange Sherbet is a Vetrofond odd lot, and is so beautiful in rod form that up until recently, I was hoarding it instead of melting any. This has also partially been because I know, after repeated disappointment, that the beautiful colour of the rod never survives the melting and annealing process. Don't get me wrong, I like this extreme tangerine thing that Orange Sherbet actually IS, I just wish that things could be different. It's a little like the way a child feels when they eventually find out there's no Santa Claus -- a sense of having been deceived about something very important and wistful about how the fictional thing was preferable to reality, but still very much into presents and Christmas dinner with all the fixings.

I have two different rod colours of Orange Sherbet, one slightly pinker than the other, but they both turn out the same in the end.

Orange Sherbet rods are not particularly shocky, and they are a pleasure to use because it is a soft colour and is not particularly prone to boiling. It holds up pretty well in rose cane, and doesn't smear as easily as other soft colours like White do.

Silver leaf, melted onto Orange Sherbet, fumes the orange a brownish colour. The silver leaf here also has developed into a sort of crust, turning yellow in patches. When this reaction is encased, it goes a funky purplish gunmetal colour. I sort of want to try this again, being careful to get good, even coverage with the silver.

Similar to what happened when I used silver glass with Rhubarb, it develops colour fairly well on top of Orange Sherbet, but has a dullish look to it, like it's only barely awake.

On top of Tuxedo, Orange Sherbet frazzles, for lack of a better word. Its borders get all frizzy and indistinct it and concentrates itself in the middle. The stringer lines look pretty interesting but the dots of Orange Sherbet on Tuxedo just look sad and pathetic. When Tuxedo is used over Orange Sherbet, it raises halos of Orange Sherbet around itself. It also seems to become a little transparent, especially where I smeared it.

Orange Sherbet with Copper Green is the clear winner out of all these results in terms of 'wow'. Here, the Orange Sherbet looks closest to what I want it to look like. It has a faint pinkish tinge to it which is reminiscent of its pretty in-the-rod colour, and it is not streaky at all. Why isn't it streaky? I have no idea, because it is crazily streaky in all of the other test beads. And let's talk about the Copper Green for a minute, too. Why is it that colour? Copper Green is almost never that colour of dark, greyish green.

On top of Orange Sherbet, in addition to turning a freaky dark grey-teal colour, the Copper Green develops a double outline. The first layer of the outline is a dark line and the second is a faint lightish band, making it look like a three dimensional ridge. When Orange Sherbet is on top of Copper Green, only the dark line is in evidence. If I ever run out of Copper Green and can't get more, I think I'll cry.

Oddly enough, Orange Sherbet and Opal Yellow have a reciprocal dark line reaction. On the Opal Yellow side of the bead, the line that has formed around the Orange Sherbet is a yellowish brown colour. On the Orange Sherbet side of the bead, the line is darker and more distinct.

This is a messy bead, so it might not be obvious that there's not much of a reaction between Ivory and Orange Sherbet. You can see that the Orange Sherbet has lightened up significantly towards the edges of the bead, and I'm not really sure why that happened. It lightened up on the Peace side of the bead below too. It could be partially because it is a thin layer and the base is showing through, but it could also be a striking thing. I just don't know.

Orange Sherbet spreads on and sort of bleeds into Peace. On the Orange Sherbet side of this bead, you can see how the Peace has thinned out around the edges of the dots and stringer lines and coalesced in the centre. A thin translucent line appears in the centre of Peace stringer lines on top of Orange Sherbet.

Here is a fun bead with Orange Sherbet.

Test Results :: Rhubarb

2011-06-30T23:00:00.000-07:00

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may look at the picture below and feel a little 'ping' that something is missing. And, of course, you will be right. There's no test bead with black, and the only reason I can figure out for that is that I must have lost it. I lost my whole set of Evil Queen test beads only to find them a few days later, but having looked high and low for my Rhubarb/Tuxedo bead, I'm afraid it's gone for good. Since it's been at least two months since I made these beads, I figured I'd just post without it. I don't feel like backtracking and I need to move on. Sorry!

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 7 - w/ Copper Green, 8 - w/ Opal Yellow, 9 - w/ Ivory, 10 - w/ Peace

Rhubarb is a Vetrofond odd lot, and like all Vetrofond odd lots it seems to have a lot of variation inside its colour number. The Rhubarb rods that I used to make these beads are an opaque red on the outside and have a core that seems to be Ivory and Green, although that core doesn't really have any obvious showing effect at all when you use the glass. I have a whole other kind of Rhubarb with the same colour number that has a semi-opaque pinkish shell around the opaque red, but I haven't breached that bundle yet. When I get to it, I'll do some comparison between it and these ones. I also have a rod of Rhubarb that is almost entirely the pinkish semi-opaque, and it looks yummy in the rod but I haven't used it yet, either.

I think Vetrofond is on a quest to drive us all nuts. Enormous inconsistency. Hooking us on things like their Ivory and then failing to make more. Rods of glass that pop and separate every 2 inches when you heat them. Refusing to repeat River Rock, Parrot Green, Poppy, Orange Sherbet, Pineapple Sparkle and Key Lime. If I didn't love so many of their colours so much, all of that would be a real dealbreaker.

Anyway, this particular batch of Rhubarb is a very streaky, tomatoey red colour that is not very reminiscent of Rhubarb at all. It has a little colour variation in it, depending on what it is used with, which I'll highlight below as I go through my results. The rods were not very shocky, which was a nice surprise, since most of the rest of the 'cored' odd lots from Vetrofond are a huge pain in the ass.

Silver leaf bunches up on top of Rhubarb and forms little globules of silver. It also fumes the Rhubarb a greyish blue colour. When this effect is encased, it looks a little like I imagine our mountains and lakes look from space in wintertime when all the greenery is asleep, but is not very attractive.

Silver glass develops colour fairly well on top of Rhubarb, but has a dullish look to it, like it's only barely awake. In the bead on the left, some brownish halos developed around the TerraNova2 frit, and in the bead on the right, some yellow edging developed around some of the fritty bits.

On top of Copper Green, Rhubarb experiences some colour variation. You can see that in the left side of this bead, where the Rhubarb is sort of a mottled red/orange/yellow colour. The Rhubarb dots and lines have developed a subtle dark outline. This is a pretty neat effect, and I like it a lot. On the other side of the bead, the Rhubarb looks oddly pinkish and faded, different from how it looks in all of my other test beads, and a brownish line has developed around the Copper Green. On top of Rhubarb, the Copper Green looks more blue than green, but on the left side of the bead, underneath the Rhubarb, it looks green. This is the sort of interesting result that keeps me doing this testing.

Here, the Opal Yellow has struck a little in its lines and dots on the right side of this bead giving a bit of a textural illusion. On the left side of the bead, you can see that the Rhubarb has done a little separating, becoming slightly blotchy. Underneath the Opal Yellow dots and stringer lines, the Rhubarb has a sort of red/orange gradient going on.

There is no noticeable reaction between Rhubarb and Ivory.

On top of Peace, the Rhubarb seems to have thinned out a bit and gone a little more orange. Underneath Peace, it seems to have had a temper tantrum, and coalesced into angry dark red striations. The Peace stringerwork on top of Rhubarb is beautifully crisp and well defined.

Here is a fun bead with Rhubarb, Dark Ivory, silver, Intense Black and Ivory.

Test Results :: Olive

2011-05-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

CiM Olive is the second glass by the name 'Olive' that I have tested now, and the third that I am aware of. We can hope that it's the last one and that other manufacturers, seeing that there are already three (or more) glasses by this name, will choose some other thing when and if they move ahead with plans for another olive green-coloured glass. Don't get me wrong... I welcome any and all colours to the 104 COE palette. Even when they are named the same thing, they are all deliciously different and interesting to play with. It's just confusing to talk about them when one name could reference multiple different actual colours.

Olive is darker and 'greener' than what I would normally think of when picturing olives, and reminds me more of the colour of the frogs we used to catch when I was a kid when my parents would take us camping. For that reason, I would have named this particular glass 'Kermit' or 'Tadpole' or something else frog-related had it been left up to me.

So... all whining about the name aside, CiM Olive is a gorgeous green. It's got a unique texture to it, being very smooth and streaky at the same time. It is also, for lack of a better word, somewhat more gelatinous than the other opaque CiM colours and way less 'grainy' than some of the Effetre greens (e.g. Pea Green, Nile Green, Grass Green). Used in a thin layer over Peace, it lightens in colour significantly. Because it is a little less saturated than some of the other greens, it gives an interesting effect when used as the core of vine twisties and canes, lending a bit of an inner glow. Cane made by using a thin layer of Olive over a thick base of Clear gives an interestingly semi-opaque result.

Silver leaf melted into the surface of Olive leaves a greyish/brownish residue behind. The silver discolours slightly, ranging from grey to a blueish tinted grey to a yellowish/brown. In the bead on the right, you can see that when the silver is subsequently reduced and encased that it seems to form an ethereal film over the Olive, and retains some of the blueishness (new word!) but otherwise does not much change the Olive underneath.

My TerraNova2 frit didn't strike very well in the bead on the left, but I think that was my fault. The thin green halos that have sprung up around it are a bit of a clue that Olive is capable of greater things with silver glass frit than I was able to coax from it in this particular bead. In the bead on the right, the reducing silver glass also has an interesting curdling effect on the Olive where it touches the base colour and has thinned out in weird and wonderful ways.

When used on top of CiM Tuxedo, Olive develops a thin silvery line around itself in dots and stringer work. When Tuxedo is used on top of Olive, a greyish green halo pops up around it. This is a very interesting set of reactions for a couple of reasons.

First, Tuxedo bleeds with a lot of the other greens I've tried it with, so it is very refreshing for Olive to be a green that it does not bleed into. Second, a lot of the colours I have tested with Tuxedo recently have had this silver halo effect, but this is the first time I've gotten this reaction between Tuxedo and a green.

Olive makes Copper Green not want to be green at all. The darkness of the Copper Green here is very out of character, and the interesting brownish mottling in the centre of the bead is an effect I've not seen before. Where I've used Copper Green over Olive, it seems to have caused a little curdling chaos in the Olive underneath.

Opal Yellow and Olive do not have any noticeable reaction apart from (possibly) a minor amount of bleeding of the Olive into the Opal Yellow when Olive us used on top of it. You can make out a faint greenish halo around the Olive dots and stringer lines in the left side of this bead if you click on the picture to see an enlarged version of it.

With Ivory, Olive develops an interesting, irregular brownish dark line reaction. It does this both when Ivory is used on top of it and when it is used on top of Ivory. The reaction when Ivory is used on top of Olive is the more dramatic of the two.

Peace and Olive do not have much of a reaction with one another, but it is very interesting to me how much lighter the Olive looks on top of Peace than it does on top of any other colour. The Peace on the left-hand side of the bead seems to have acquired some of the colour from the Olive without leaving any noticeable evidence of 'bleeding'.

I let one of my friends walk off with what was left of my Olive before I'd made many beads with it, and all I've used it in so far is vine cane. That vine cane is attached to beads I'm not ready to show anyone yet, so I"ll end this here.

Test Results :: Dusty Lilac

2011-05-23T06:00:00.000-07:00

I have tested quite a few of the Lauscha Milky Way colours now, and this is one of my favourites. It has some magic in it somewhere!

Lauscha Dusty Lilac is a pinkish lavender colour, and although it is probably translucent in thin layers, it was not possible for me to keep the translucency of this glass while working it. It is reactive with silver, it does fun things with both Copper Green and Opal Yellow and it is a pretty colour all by itself. I'm a sucker for these purply pinks though. Seashell Swirl and Vetrofond Pink #3 are the other two pink glasses that I can't get enough of.

When silver leaf is melted into the surface of Dusty Lilac, the silver turns a golden colour and sits on top of the surface of the glass in a very definite gold swath with winking silver sparkles in it. It also fumes the colour of the Dusty Lilac to a shade somewhere in the triangulation of brown, yellow and orange.

When the silver is reduced and encased, it looks less yellow -- there is just a faint tinge of yellow in the encased silver. Where the silver touches the Dusty Lilac around its edges, an ethereal blue halo has developed. Also in this bead, the silvered, abused and encased Dusty Lilac looks very vibrantly pink and purple instead of like its natural lavender-pink self.

Dusty Lilac and silver glass are friendly with one another. On the right, I got some colour out of my TerraNova 2, and the striking silver glass frit has not discoloured the bead at all. In a real bead where time has been taken to properly strike the TN2 I feel sure the results would be better.

In the bead on the right, it is interesting how the Dusty Lilac has fumed yellow underneath the reducing silver glass frit, and the frit has done some interesting things on top of it as well, seaparting in places and developing a darker yellow outline.

There is no reaction between Tuxedo and Dusty Lilac, and both colours make nice, even stringer dots and lines on top of each other.

When Dusty Lilac is used on top of Copper Green, it develops a light turquoise outline and seems to keep the Copper Green from doing that army green sheen thing it so loves to do. However, when you use the Copper Green on top of Dusty Lilac, a very bizarre reaction is evident. The Copper Green sort of lazily separates so that it looks teal in the middle and brown around the edges and then it develops an additional whitish outline around the brown and teal. Nifty.

Dusty Lilac spreads and thins out on top of Opal Yellow, which is interesting because Opal Yellow is the softer glass and is the one out of these two that I would expect to spread. On top of Dusty Lilac, Opal Yellow separates into three distinct 'phases' - a translucent lavender line in the middle of the dots and stringer lines surrounded by a more normal shade for opal yellow, and then surrounded by a yellowish brown outline. You can see in the middle of this bead how the Dusty Lilac has fumed the Opal Yellow to a brownish yellow colour as well.

Dusty Lilac is weird and spready on Ivory, too. In this case it seems even odder because it seems to float on top of the Ivory and some of the Ivory colour rises up around it to help our eyes see that illusion. On top of Dusty Lilac, Ivory separates such that a translucent line and dot is visible in the middle of the stringer lines and dots.

And, with Peace, Dusty Lilac reacts similarly to how it reacts with Ivory only much less dramatically. It does not have the same floaty quality when used on top of Peace.

A fun bead with Dusty Lilac:

Test Results :: Neptune

2011-05-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

So... this Neptune stuff. It's a newish handpulled colour from Effetre, also going by the Italian name of Verde Rame Metallico - or Copper Green Metallic, for those of us who do not speak Italian.

Neptune seems to be a name that Frantz Art Glass has created themselves, and while I am not a huge fan of different vendors naming the same colour of glass different things, I think Neptune is a damned good name for this colour and if I owned Effetre I might wish I'd thought of it myself.

Neptune is definitely a colour that some of us will love and some of us will not, however I am firmly in the love camp on this one. I can't resist the glasses that have 'interesting' finishes, and the odd, shiny-yet-matte finish of this glass kills me. It is also full of weirdness which I am attracted to in the same way that ants are attracted to picnics.

Neptune, after you encase it, is not metallic at all. It is a beautiful dark teal colour, somewhat reminiscent of CiM Mermaid without the streakiness. Neptune is a lot freakier than Mermaid though, and seems so super-saturated that I half-expect the rods to leave a greenish stain on anything they touch.

Sadly, Neptune is not so interesting with silver... but then, none of the coppery green colours seem to care about silver much. You can see, however, that in the bead on the left the finish of the Neptune is a little more red than it is in the other beads below, with some fine yellow/green webbing on the surface, and that in the bead where I reduced and encased the silver leaf, it's turned a queer shade of yellow.

Neptune is a good base for silver glass, the colour having developed quite weill in my TerraNova2 frit, but being so shiny itself it doesn't much need any shiny reducing silver glass decoration. The bead on the right just looks a little messy.

Copper Green and Tuxedo don't really react with one another, which is useful information because this is a pretty reactive colour. I think they are attractive together, since the Neptune really shines when paired with something to provide some negative space. It's also interesting, because Tuxedo has tended to bleed with a lot of the other greens I've used it with.

This bead that features Neptune with Copper Green is just sort of ugly. The Copper Green is mostly subsumed by the Neptune, with just a few splotches standing out.

I got the Neptune pretty hot in this bead and was "rewarded" with some random pitting in the Neptune portion of the bead. Neptune bleeds into Opal Yellow in the centre of this bead and at other random points through the Opal Yellow stringer design.

Love this. On top of Ivory, Neptune is very self-contained, very shiny and has a very pronounced darkness at the edges of it. Ivory on top of Neptune is not quite so nice, the Ivory slightly separating and getting sort of 'eaten' by the Neptune, with big brown bites taken out of the stringer lines and dots as the Neptune webs its way around. In the centre of this bead, the Neptune has consumed part of the real estate originally reserved for Ivory with a very pronounced dark brown webbing. This bead makes me really happy.

With Peace, Neptune is more intermittently shiny, and you can see that it has bled into the Peace in the centre of the bead. The Peace dots and stringer lines on top of Neptune seem thinned out and cloudy around the edges.

So, to summarize. This colour rocks. The test beads are one thing, but making real beads with this colour is hugely fun. A small drawback is that, like many handpulled colours, Neptune can be a little shocky. I can live with it.

Fun beads with Neptune:

Test Results :: Nuclear Brownie

2011-05-13T20:57:00.000-07:00

Lauscha Nuclear Brownie is also called Buckhorn With Silver. I am having some trouble understanding these results of mine, because the last time I used this glass it seemed like a much darker colour.

For instance, I made this bead in December 2008 with the exact same batch of Nuclear Brownie as I've made these test beads from (I'm cringing showing it to you, but what the heck - it's not like I'm creating any masterpieces today, either, and I need to show something). The brown colour in this bead is Nuclear Brownie, and it is much, much darker than the Nuclear Brownie in any of these test beads. All I can figure is that this colour must strike darker with repeated heating, cooling and abuse with tools because it took me about 5 times as long to shape a bicone in 2008 as it does today, and it's still not a fast process.

Nuclear Brownie is gorgeous with silver. Silver leaf melted into the surface of this colour creates a gorgeous, wispy spray of silver and really interesting variations in the surface colour of the bead. On the right, in the bead that I reduced and encased, the silver has taken on a shiny iridescence and has also become decidedly pinkish in colour.

In these beads with silver glass, my favourite thing that happened is with the bead on the right and the silver glass reduction frit. (I am currently using a blend with Kronos2, Gaia, Elektra, Triton and Psyche all mixed up in equal proportions) I love the way the fritty bits develop that webbed outline and the way the frit has separated and colour-changed so that it looks like peacock feathers through a kaleidoscope.

Tuxedo is nice and crisp on top of Nuclear Brownie. On the Tuxedo side of the bead you can see how milky the Nuclear Brownie went. No shiny line though as I 've been so prone to getting lately with just about anything and Tuxedo.

The Copper Green side of this bead is a little freaky, with its striations of turquoise amid a muddy grey-green-pink background. The Nuclear Brownie stringer work is very bright in colour and more yellow than the same colour on the other side of the bead, and it has developed almost a white outline around it wherever it touches the copper green. Where the deep striations of Copper Green are, the rich turquoise colour of it are seeping into the Nuclear Brownie.

On the Nuclear Brownie side of the bead, the Copper Green line develops a super-thin double outline around the Copper Green stringerwork. The inner part of that double outline is a brownish purple, and the outer line is a light Ivory colour. This is a very interesting effect indeed.

In all of these three beads (Opal Yellow, Ivory, Peace) the other colour has separated on top of the Nuclear Brownie and in all three cases is a very interesting reaction. However, Nuclear Brownie is not really good stringerwork material and seems to not look quite right no matter what you put it on top of. (Click the pictures to enlarge)

Here are some fun beads with Nuclear Brownie:

Test Results :: Adobe (2nd Batch)

2011-03-31T14:30:00.000-07:00

This second batch of CiM Adobe Limited Run is similar to the first batch, but has enough differences that for me it is not really the same glass, although the colour is very similar.

Compared to the first batch of Adobe, the colour of this second batch is a little lighter and a little cooler. The first batch of Adobe pinkened, darkened and sheened up when reduced, but this one does not. Regardless, I am thrilled that there will be more Adobe in some form or another. When a colour is this appealing, I'd far rather have it be slightly different from batch to batch than not have any of it at all.

This 2nd Batch of Adobe is not as reactive with silver as the first batch was, but silver leaf still fumes Adobe a darker colour of brown. When the silver leaf is reduced and encased, it forms a sort of ethereal blanket over the Adobe.

This batch of Adobe seems a little more silver glass-friendly than the first batch. My TerraNova2 frit doesn't have thick, dirty halos around it the way it did in my test results for the first batch, and it seems to have developed more colour as well.

Tuxedo: When Tuxedo is used on top of this batch of Adobe, the Adobe pops up around it with little 'halos'. The colour of these halos is the same as the colour of the rest of the adobe, but it is interesting nonetheless because of the faint tranlucent rings and lines that result from the reaction. Tuxedo does not seem to bleed into this batch of Adobe the way it did the other one, although I did not super-heat this bead so I may just not have gotten it hot enough.

On top of Tuxedo, the Adobe separates a little and becomes slightly translucent. This is much different than the effect I got with the first batch, because that batch got a silvery line surrounding the dots and lines I made with it on top of Tuxedo but this one definitely does not do that.

Copper Green: Copper Green stays a much lighter colour with this batch of Adobe than it did with the first one, and a faint brown line develops between the two colours that is paler than the brown line that developed between Copper Green and the first batch of Adobe.

Opal Yellow: On top of Opal Yellow, this batch of Adobe seems to float just above the surface of the bead, much like what I got with the first batch. However, Opal Yellow doesn't have nearly the same tendency to spread out on top of this batch as it did the first one.

Ivory: My Ivory got much spreadier (is that a word?) on top of this batch of Adobe than it did on top of the other one, and where my Adobe stringerwork seemed to have a little spiky bleeding to it on top of Ivory with the last batch, that reaction is not evident at all with this one.

Peace: When I tested the first batch of Adobe, I was using Effetre White, but now I am using Peace. So... no useful comparison to make here, and not much reactivity either.

Test Results :: Pink Champagne Unique #1

2011-03-27T06:00:00.001-07:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - Over Silver Foil, 6 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 7 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 8 - w/ Silver Glass Frit Stringer, 9 & 10 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, Peace

"What?", you exclaim indignantly. "I am positive you said up there in the title of this post that this colour was called Pink Champagne Unique #1, which really sort of implied that it would look at least a little bit pink."

Sure, that's true. I did say that and it does... just not under white or flourescent lights. Here is another picture of these test beads taken under the dim incandescents in my kitchen, on my kitchen counter. Sorry for the picture quality... couldn't be helped.

So, depending on the lighting, CiM Pink Champagne Unique #1 looks either quite pink or quite grey. In either case, it has a definite lavender bent to it.

I found this colour pretty easy to work with, and not especially boily/bubbly, although it was difficult not to get at least some microbubbles. I haven't used the regular Pink Champagne yet, so I'm not really sure if the observations I'm making in this post are applicable only to the unique or if they'd hold water for the regular batches of Pink Champagne as well.

When silver leaf is applied to Pink Champagne Unique #1, the silver disperses and forms a sort of webby film on the surface of the glass and causes the glass to discolour to a golden brown colour, which is much more noticeable under white/flourescent lighting. If the silver leaf is subsequently reduced and encased, the silver layer appears thicker, with a faint blue tinge to its edges.

Pink Champagne Unique #2 turns silver to a gold colour when you put it over silver foil and heat it gently enough that the silver stays intact under the encasement. Under incandescent lighting, because the encasement layer looks quite a bit pinker, the result is an odd, superbright orange.

There is nothing especially exciting about using silver glass with Pink Champagne Unique #1. I was sort of disappointed, because I had high hopes for the frit stringer test.

There is not really much to report on in terms of reactions here, although I feel certain that if this colour were more saturated there would be a lot of weirdness.

Copper Green develops a light outline when you use it on top of Pink Champagne Unique #1.

My Ivory dots look sort of mottled on top of this colour, but I'm not sure if that is because of the Pink Champagne Unique #1, or if it's because my most recent batch of Effetre Ivory is just more prone to mottling than the last couple I've had. The Pink Champagne Unique #1 developed a sort of dirty stripe down the middle of some of the stringer lines I made with it on top of Ivory, and in places also developed a faint brownish outline.

Peace separates and gets a translucent line down the middle of stringer lines when used on top of this colour.

And this is a fun bead with Pink Champagne Unique #1. I used it as the base colour in the middle of the bead and also as the encasement layer.

Test Results :: Cornflower

2011-03-23T17:00:00.000-07:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduce d& encased), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 7 - w/ Tuxedo, 8 - w/ Copper Green, 9 - w/ Opal Yellow, 10 - w/ Ivory, 11 - w/ Peace

CiM Cornflower is a rich, vibrant medium blue colour, and quite a bright colour so of course I went into the testing thinking that we weren't going to get along at all. As it turns out, I have a lot of respect for this colour, and as long as I use it in an organic way, the massive brightness of it can't touch me.

On Ming and Cornflower
People have reported that Ming and Cornflower are very similar, and you will see that feedback when you go to the CiM page for Cornflower. However, my experience is that these colours are not the same at all. The only thing they really have in common is that they are both a bright, medium blue.

If you look at my test results for CiM Ming, you will see that in terms of how the two glasses react with other colours, they are very different in every single test that I performed.

Personally, I like them both. I'd be sad if CiM decided to stop making one of them because other people thought they were too similar.

Onwards

On top of Cornflower, Silver Leaf sinks in and makes the Cornflower greener, resulting in a mottled surface that in places looks more akin to Lauscha Steel Blue, in other places has a greenish gold silver haze over top of it, and then, where not much silver stuck to the bead, Cornflower being itself. This reaction is awesome! And then, when you reduce and encase the silver, you get this odd cloudy spray of silver whiteness between the Cornflower and the Clear. The Cornflower here looks more like a navy blue underneath all of the action.

I didn't get much in the way of colour out of my TerraNova2 frit, but as we all know, that's sometimes my own stupid fault. What's interesting about this bead is the light blue halo that's sprung up around the fritty bits. In the bead on the right, I got awesome colour and shine out of my reduced silver glass frit, and love the way reducing the silver glass frit fumed the Cornflower at the ends of the beads to a more navy/greenish hue.

When Cornflower is used over Tuxedo, it develops a shiny outline around dots and stringer lines. When Tuxedo is used over Cornflower, the Cornflower curdles a little and sends a light blue halo up to surround the Tuxedo stringerwork.

There isn't much in the way of a reaction between Cornflower and Copper Green, but the Copper Green on top of Cornflower looks decidedly redder than the Copper Green on the left-hand side of the bead. Also, Copper Green develops its muddy patina when you use it with Cornflower.

There is not much reaction between Cornflower and Opal Yellow. Maybe just the smallest amount of bleeding into the Opal Yellow from the Cornflower and a slight thinning around the edges of the Opal Yellow stringer work on top of the Cornflower.

On top of Ivory, Cornflower looks a little floaty, like it is sitting on top of an invisible, ultra-thin layer of clear glass and separating slightly so that it has a somewhat lighter blue outline to all of the stringer lines and dots. On top of Cornflower, Ivory dots and lines thin out a bit at the edges and take on some of the blue hue from the Cornflower.

Cornflower bleeds into Peace in a gentle way, turning the Peace a light-blue colour in subtle patches. On top of Cornflower, Peace looks somewhat translucent, letting the blue of the Cornflower seep through.

Here is a fun bead with Cornflower.

Test Results :: Sapphire

2011-03-18T06:00:00.000-07:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - Over Clear, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf, 5 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 6 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 7 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 8 - w/ Silver Glass Frit stringer (encased), 9 - w/ Tuxedo, 10 - w/ Copper Green, 11 - w/ Opal Yellow, 12 - w/ Ivory, 13 - w/ Peace

CiM Sapphire is much darker once it's in a bead than it is in the rod. This is Sapphire's first trick -- as you will see, it's a fairly tricky colour. It's a joy to work with though -- I was expecting Sapphire to be a boily colour, since Leaky Pen boils and so do a lot of the Effetre blues. Not so with Sapphire. I found that as long as I didn't park Sapphire in the flame that I got very little bubbling or scumming, and most of the scumming that did appear was not visible in the bead after annealing even though I could have sworn the same beads looked like hell going into the kiln.

Sapphire is a dark blue, slightly on the grey side, which makes it less vibrant than Effetre Ink Blue or Effetre Intense Blue. Over clear, it is still fairly dark -- somewhat deeper in colour than Effetre Medium Blue.

Putting silver on top of Sapphire makes it even darker. The bead on the left here looks almost black, with smudges and sprays of silver wandering over its surface. When this combination is reduced and encased, the Sapphire lightens back up so that you can see through it again and the silver takes on all kinds of attractive blue colour. Pretty.

Sapphire is a brilliant base for silver glass, but doesn't do that fun thing with silver glass frit stringer that I was hoping for. My TerraNova2 frit looks awesome on top of Sapphire, and so does the reduced silver glass frit.

This one made me do a double-take. Why does Sapphire look like an orangey-brown colour on top of Copper Green? This is one of the weirdest things I've seen in a while.

Where I used Sapphire on top of Copper Green, in addition to the odd colour that the Sapphire turns, something funny also happens underneath. The Copper Green does not get its metallic patina, and separates into two different colours of turquoise. On top of Sapphire, the Copper Green develops a turquoise outline and then the insides of the dots and stringer lines look faintly pinkish.

On top of Opal Yellow, Sapphire looks sort of purple, and the Opal Yellow doesn't seem to like being underneath it because it's gone all smeary and developed some pinkish fissures. On top of Sapphire, Opal Yellow seems to lose its yellowness and take on some of the blue from the Sapphire.

On top of Ivory, Sapphire looks faintly greyish, with a purply colour being visible at the edges of the Sapphire lines and dots. On top of Sapphire, the Ivory thins out a little at the edges, but not that noticeably.

On top of Sapphire, Peace separates and looks sort of three-dimensional. You can barely see the Sapphire on top of the Peace in the picture above because of my terrible photography, but there isn't much to report on there in terms of reactions, so it doesn't matter all that much.

I was sure that I made some fun beads with Sapphire, but now I can't figure out definitively which ones they might have been, so nothing to see here! There are some great examples of beads that other people have made with Sapphire on the CiM Sapphire page.

Test Results :: Azure

2011-03-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - Over Clear, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf, 5 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 6 - Over Silver Foil, 7 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 8 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 9 - w/ Silver Glass Frit stringer (encased), 10 & 11 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace

CiM Azure is a brilliant, saturated blue. Over Clear, it lightens up just enough so that you can see through it more easily without losing any of its richness. It seems bluer to me than any of the Aquas (until it's used in a thin layer, that is) and it is beautiful to work with. I didn't have any trouble with this colour boiling or scumming up at all.

Azure is not very exciting with silver, but it is pretty nice with sliver glass and has fascinating reactions with other colours. I'm not really sure if the reactions I encountered are common to all bright, yummy blue glass or if they are unique to Azure, but no doubt I will eventually find out.

On top of Azure, silver leaf sort of sits in wisps on the surface without seeming to do very much, but if the silver is subsequently reduced and encased, it takes on a strange dirty solidity that is a little puzzling. The colour of this odd reaction is silver, but interspersed with gold and pink. Silver Foil can be encased (without reducing it as I did with the leaf in the centre bead) with Azure without changing colour.

On top of Azure, my silver glass frit got some interesting results (although I realize these beads are hideous to look at. I had a bad bead day when I made these, and they touched each other in the kiln and just about every other bad thing that could happen, did happen).

The bead on the left with TerraNova2 frit bloomed fairly nicely, but stayed in the purple ranges. The reducing silver glass frit has acquired an interesting mosaic pattern when used on the surface of Azure, but when used as frit stringer over Azure and then encased, more or less disappears except for the odd bit of streakiness.

Tuxedo: You can't see Azure on top of Tuxedo, which I'd already predicted, but the anal retentive me couldn't let it go. Tuxedo does not exhibit any odd behaviour on top of Azure.

Copper Green: When Azure is used on top of Copper Green, it gets a bizarre double outline of Copper Green around it, the first layer being a light turquoise band surrounding the Azure, and the next layer being a greyish-pink patina. When Copper Green is used on top of Azure, there is no sign of the greyish-pink face of Copper Green, and the dots and stringer lines develop a slightly lighter outline. Because this effect in the Copper Green is so strong, it almost gives the feeling that two separate lines/sets of dots have been drawn on top of one another.

Opal Yellow: Opal Yellow floats up around Azure dots and stringer lines in a lighter yellow halo. On top of Azure, Opal Yellow separates in much the same way Copper Green does, only less dramatically.

Ivory: On top of Ivory, Azure turns a deep, brownish teal colour with a brown outline. It also seems to do something to the Ivory underneath it, because there are fine lines in the Ivory in my test bead that are emphasized by the way the reaction seems to create lighter paths through the Azure dots and lines. On top of Azure, Ivory develops a mottled brown outline.

Peace: This reaction is really cool. When you put Azure on top of Peace, the Peace floats up around it in a bright white halo. This is sort of similar to what happens with Opal Yellow, but with the Peace the reaction has more contrast, and the Azure, with its white outline, seems to float on top of the Peace base. On top of Azure, Peace exhibits the same outlining as I mentioned for Copper Green and Opal Yellow, almost as dramatically in its own way as the Copper Green on Azure. The Peace looks faintly translucent and blueish around the edges, with a more solid line/dot in the middle of the stringer lines/dots.

Here's a fun bead with Azure.

Test Results :: Rainforest

2011-03-14T07:30:00.000-07:00

CiM Rainforest, depending on how you use it, ranges from a medium teal semi-opaque to a dark green opaque with blue overtones and some really interesting behaviour.

I was talking to someone a few weeks ago about this new colour, and the words they said to me about it were, "I'm not going to order any Rainforest - it looks just like Mermaid, and I already have a lot of Mermaid."

Well, I guess this colour and Mermaid can look approximately the same hue of teal, depending on how much the Rainforest has been struck, but that's really where the similarity ends. Where Mermaid is stiff, pasty and streaky (and beautiful in its own way), Rainforest is soft and buttery, and because it is a semi-opaque, has a sort of inner glow to it. Rainforest also has much more interesting reactions with other colours than Mermaid does.

Reducing Rainforest results in a darker colour, and over-reducing it results in an unattractive dark blotchiness.

On top of Rainforest, silver leaf melted into the surface sort of disperses into tiny little droplets and more or less disappears from view. When this non-reaction is reduced and encased, it looks like a dirty force field cloaking the Rainforest under the clear glass.

I didn't get great colour out of my TerraNova2 frit on top of Rainforest, but my reduced silver glass frit looks freaky, webby and yummy on top of it.

Tuxedo: There is no obvious reaction between Tuxedo and Rainforest. On top of Rainforest, Tuxedo dots and lines stay nice and crisp. On top of Tuxedo, Rainforest is barely visible due to its semi-opacity.

Copper Green: On top of Rainforest, Copper Green separates, with a darker turquoise line/dots coalescing in the centre of the stringer lines/dots. Underneath Copper Green, Rainforest webs a little, developing fine darker lines. When Rainforest is used on top of Copper Green, the Copper Green separates into light and dark turquoise again, with the lighter colour next to the Rainforest. Some odd, mottled, brownish 'smut' has also shown up on the light turquoise part of the separated Copper Green in this bead.

Opal Yellow: On top of Rainforest, Opal Yellow separates so that a fine, translucent line/dot is visible in the centre of the stringer lines/dots. The real weirdness happens when you put Rainforest on top of Opal Yellow. The Opal Yellow curdles, light yellow halos springing up around the Rainforest, and the Rainforest thins out and webs on top of it.

Ivory: Rainforest turns Ivory brown, but in a different, webby sort of way from a lot of other greens/turquoises. On top of Rainforest, the Ivory separates so that it has a fine translucent line/dot in the middle of dots/lines and the edges darken. The appearance of the Ivory over Rainforest is mottled and aged. On top of Ivory, Rainforest looks greener and browner, and it causes a frizzy brown webbing through the Ivory base glass.

Peace: The reaction between Peace and Rainforest is very subtle. Peace separates on top of Rainforest, and when Rainforest is used on top of it, it curdles gently. This is similar to what happens between Rainforest and Opal Yellow, only much less dramatic.

In both of these beads the Rainforest has struck to a very deep green. These are not very attractive beads, but that is not Rainforest's fault.

Test Results :: Poison Apple

2011-03-12T06:00:00.000-08:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 7 - w/ Silver Glass Frit Stringer (encased), 8 - w/ Tuxedo, 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - w/ Opal Yellow, 11 - w/ Ivory, 12 - w/ Peace

I tried this colour as a challenge to myself, because my fear of very bright colours is still very much alive and well. As it turns out, CiM Poison Apple is awesome.

It doesn't have a lot of spectacular reactions, but just the fact that it (and I love this about CiM Kryptonite as well) is one of those colours that basically gets along with everyone else in the colour sandbox makes it a really valuable tool. Most greens either react like a turquoise and have a dark line reaction with Ivory, or behave like Ivory and turn black when used with silver. It is always exciting to find a colour that doesn't do either of these things; especially one that is green or turquoise.

Melting silver leaf into the surface of Poison Apple disrupts the surface of the Poison Apple and turns it sort of curdly and veiny, like little crystals have formed just under the surface of it. Reducing and encasing this reaction makes the Poison Apple appear considerably lighter, and the silver looks sort of light and snowy with a subtle dark line surrounding it under the clear in the bead on the right.

Poison Apple is not a strong contender in the 'best base for silver glass' category, but silver glass doesn't hate it, either.

This is a fun experiment I tried. I dipped a gather of Poison Apple into reducing silver glass frit a couple of times and used the resulting frit stringer to encase a base of Poison Apple and then covered it with Effetre 006 Clear. The streakiness is pretty fun, although I prefer the effect I get when I do this with certain transparent colours (e.g. Light Brown Transparent, Pale Green Apple, Mojito)

Nothing exciting to see here. Just some translucency to the Poison Apple when used on top of Tuxedo, which is normal since it's a semi-opaque colour.

Poison Apple has made my Copper Green take on that reddish shiny patina, and the Copper Green lines on top of Poison Apple look curiously precise, like they've developed a fine, darker outline.

Poison Apple curdles Opal Yellow - you can see underneath the Poison Apple dots and lines that the Opal Yellow is floating up in halos around the stringer work. On top of Poison Apple, Opal Yellow separates a little and gets a fine, translucent line in the centre of the dots and lines. The Opal Yellow looks particularly yellow in the middle of this bead, where it touches the Poison Apple.

On top of Poison Apple, Ivory stringer lines seem to float a little above the surface, and like Opal Yellow when used with Poison Apple, separate and develop a fine, translucent centre line. On top of Ivory, Poison Apple just looks sort of translucent and green.

I have started using Peace as my test white to try it out, so a lot of posts (but not all of them because of the convoluted order I'm posting things in) from here on out use Peace instead of White as the test white. The reaction here between Peace and Poison Apple is pretty much identical to the reaction between Ivory and Poison Apple.

Here are some fun beads with Poison Apple. The twisties used on all of these beads had a base of Poison Apple, with 104 Raku, Copper Green and Triton. The base colour of the heart bead, and the colour used for the mustard-coloured dots is Effetre Yellow Ochre (aka Mustard).

Test Results :: Steel Blue

2011-03-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

Lauscha Steel Blue has to be one of the most interesting opaque colours I've tried. I love Lauscha Cocoa and Lauscha Olive as well, but the hue of Steel Blue does something to me. All three of these are interesting to work with -- stiff while you are melting them, but spreading wildly on top of other glasses, translucence on top of some colours, and fun with silver glass.

The addition of silver is a transformative experience for Steel Blue, making it look completely unlike itself. Here, in the bead on the left you can see that the silver has turned gold, and wisps and webs its way over the surface of the bead. You can also see, in that same bead, how the Steel Blue itself has gone super-dark, except in a couple of areas where the silver has blown a royal blue blush through it. In the bead on the right, the silver leaf was reduced and encased, and all of the visible Steel Blue looks more of a royal blue colour than Steel Blue's typical, deeper hue. Also in that bead, the silver has taken on a dull greyish-lavender colour.

Steel Blue makes a very interesting base colour for silver glass. My TerraNova2 frit did all kinds of pretty blue and purple things on top of Steel Blue, and the reducing silver glass frit just went sort of crazy, and turned the visible surface of the Steel Blue base a kind of oily teal colour. Nifty. I particularly like the way the reducing silver glass frit has bloomed on top of the Steel Blue.

There is no noticeable reaction between Steel Blue and Tuxedo.

I love colours that make Copper Green do this. A lighter, turquoise line springs up around Copper Green wherever it touches Steel Blue. Also, the Steel Blue stringer lines and dots spread a bit on top of Copper Green and have more translucency than you'd expect. Some magical ingredient in th Steel Blue prevents Copper Green from getting that shiny, metallic patina on it, too. Other colours that spring to mind that are this much fun with Copper Green include Lauscha Cocoa, Lauscha Faded Rose, CiM Charcoal, CiM Ming (in it's own wacky way), REI Mystic Grey-Blue, Lauscha Olive and CiM Slytherin, although that's hardly a definitive list. What do all of these colours have in common? Good question. Apart from how much they love Copper Green, I have no idea.

Opal Yellow is seriously yellow with Steel Blue. And curdly when used underneath it.

On top of Steel Blue, Ivory gets a fine translucent line in the middle of stringer lines and translucent pinpricks in the centre of dots. On top of Ivory, Steel Blue spreads out, a lot, and feathers its colour out into the Ivory base. This is almost identical to the reactions I got with Lauscha Olive and Lauscha Cocoa when I used them with Ivory.

Nothing interesting to report with regard to White reactions except that when you use White on top of Steel Blue, be prepared for the White to look more blue than white, because the Steel Blue will bleed up through it and change its colour.

Here is a fun bead made with Steel Blue. I've been using Steel Blue a lot in twisties and other organics, and I think I have a few other pictures I can include once I get the rest of my beads photographed.

Test Results :: Butter Pecan Unique #5

2011-03-01T06:20:00.000-08:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 7 - w/ Raku, 8 - w/ Tuxedo, 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - 2/ Opal Yellow, 11 - w/ Ivory, 12 - w/ White, 13 - w/ Olive

CiM Butter Pecan Unique #5 is officially one of my favourite colours, so I hope there's still some left when I allow myself to order glass for the first time this year. This colour is versatile and interesting, and makes a brilliant base colour for organics. I like it better than Butter Pecan Unique #4, which I posted about last October.

When you reduce Butter Pecan Unique #5, the colour of it warms up a bit and the surface goes faintly shiny. This is evident in the little crystal that I reduced as well as in the lentil I made with reducing silver glass frit. This colour, like Butter Pecan Unique #4, is very, very soft and drippy when you get it really hot. For me, this means that if I'm going to make a pressed lentil with it, I want a core of Clear underneath the Butter Pecan Unique #5 or I squoosh the glass too much and end up with knobby bits at the end of my bead. Yuck. This is totally a heat control thing, and I know it, but coring the bead with Clear helps me avoid this problem.

Silver leaf is gorgeous on top of Butter Pecan Unique #5, crystallizing and forming a golden crust while fuming the surface of the bead to a rich brown. Reduced and encased, this reaction is a vivid royal blue interspersed with silver. Butter Pecan Unique #4 did not turn my silver blue this way, and silver leaf sits on top of Butter Pecan Unique #4 with more of a flat, shiny finish.

Butter Pecan Unique #5 is not a star with silver glass either, which is the wording I used to describe how I felt about Butter Pecan Unique #4 and silver glass. However, I did find that I sort of like how Butter Pecan Unique #5 looks with 104 Raku.

One thing sort of interesting and worth a bit of a note is how the Butter Pecan Unique #5 went sort of satiny in the bead with the reducing silver glass frit after it had been reduced. You can see in the picture, above, the way the light plays off of the Butter Pecan Unique #5 that has been fumed by the silver glass. The other interesting thing is how the Raku has made the Butter Pecan Unique #5 sort of rise up and separate from itself around the Raku stringer in the bead on the far right (above).

Tuxedo bleeds into Butter Pecan Unique #5 in the middle of this test bead, and creates a strange blueish purple streakiness. The Butter Pecan #5 has sort of risen around the Tuxedo stringer work in places, and the colour of the Butter Pecan #5 side of this bead seems almost tea-stained. On top of Tuxedo, Butter Pecan Unique #5 develops a shiny outline to its dots and stringer lines.

On top of Butter Pecan Unique #5, Copper Green develops a dark outline and a shiny, dark patina. When Butter Pecan Unique #5 is used on top of Copper Green, there is no reaction to speak of. I really find this odd, because my expectation is that if the colours are reactive, they will behave oddly under both circumstances (as the base AND as decoration) but that was totally not the case here.

In a very similar way to what I noticed with Butter Pecan Unique #4, Butter Pecan Unique #5 and Opal Yellow have an odd relationship. On top of Opal Yellow, Butter Pecan Unique #5 develops a dark line around the dots and stringer lines. On top of Butter Pecan Unique #5, Opal Yellow looks sort of chalky, floaty and dirty.

There's nothing too exciting to report on the Ivory and White fronts, although the Ivory dots in the picture on the left seem sort of floaty on top of the Butter Pecan Unique #5.

Like Butter Pecan Unique #4, some serious separation and curdling happens when it is used on top of Lauscha Olive. This reaction is milder than the one with the #4 unique though, because the green of the Olive hasn't permeated the Butter Pecan Unique #5 and migrated into the centre of the dots.

And here are some fun beads with Butter Pecan Unique #5. I have some serious love for this colour.

Test Results :: Latte Macchiato

2011-02-23T06:00:00.000-08:00

Lauscha Latte Macchiato is sort of unlike the other Milky Way colours I have tested in terms of how it reacts with other colours. It ranges in colour from a soft peach to a yellow, depending on how much it is struck and the colour it is used with. Annealed, it is more like Thüringen Herb than it is like the Milky Way pinks.

Rods of Latte Macchiato are sort of shocky and splintery, so you need to be careful to heat it slowly. It also looks completely different going into the kiln than it does coming out, which is a little disorienting. Before annealing, this colour looks very translucent and peachy, but post-annealing, it is far more opaque, and displays colours in the range I mentioned above.

I achieved some interesting effects with Latte Macchiato, and while it is not among my favourite Lauscha colours, it is definitely appealing and worthy of further study.

Here, I've put silver leaf over the bead on the left. The silver has dispersed, and has fumed the surface of the bead with a brown haze. In the bead on the right, the reduced and encased silver has turned a peachy colour. This is similar to the reactions I got with Thüringen Herb.

On top of Latte Macchiato, I had a hard time getting decent colour out of my TerraNova2 frit, but I really like what happened with the reducing silver glass frit in the bead on the right. The frit has bloomed and separated and fumed the bead a little to a yellowish tan colour.

Here, I made frit stringer with my reducing silver glass frit blend and Latte Macchiato. I like this streaky effect a lot, particularly where the unfritted Latte Macchiato has struck to tan.

There is no noticeable reaction between Tuxedo and Latte Macchiato. No bleeding and no weirdness. The Latte Macchiato looks paler against Tuxedo than it does with the other colours I tested it with.

I expected Copper Green to separate on top of Latte Macchiato, and for the Latte Macchiato to help the Copper Green not sheen up the way the other Milky Way pinks did, but instead I got a reaction that is much more reminiscent of how Copper Green behaved with Thüringen Herb. The Copper Green has developed an army green patina, and has bled into the Latte Macchiato stringer design on the left-hand side of the bead lending it some mottled turquoise streakiness. The Latte Macchiato on the right-hand side of the bead looks more opaque and a little dirtier than it does in the other test beads.

On top of Latte Macchiato, Opal Yellow separates and develops a thin tranlucent line down the centre of the stringer lines I drew. On top of Opal Yelow, Latte Macchiato looks sort of diffuse and mustardy. The Latte Macchiato on the right-hand side of this bead looks deeper and peachier than it does on the other test beads.

There isn't really anything all that interesting about Latte Macchiato with Ivory or Latte Macchiato with White. The Latte Machiato sort of disappears on top of those colours, and the Ivory/White lines and dots are crisp and smooth.

Here are some other beads made with Latte Macchiato. I may add to these because I still have a little bit of this colour left.

Test Results :: Desert Pink Unique #2

2011-02-21T06:00:00.001-08:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 7 - As a Floral (over Olive), 8 - w/ Tuxedo, 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - w/ Opal Yellow, 11 - w/ Ivory, 12 - w/ White, 13 - On Lauscha Olive

I was expecting to be really fond of CiM Desert Pink #2, because I really liked regular Desert Pink. I haven't tried Desert Pink Unique #1. On the whole, I do really like Desert Pink Unique #2 because of its reactions with silver and the way it looks with Copper Green. I should probably get some more of this colour before it sells out the way all of the uniques eventually do and there is no more of it to be had.

The colour of Desert Pink Unique #2 is a little warmer and a little darker than regular Desert Pink. It is more reactive with silver than the original Desert Pink as well. In a thin layer, Desert Pink #2 is very translucent. I haven't included an enlarged picture of Bead #7 (above) but you can see that the flower petals are so translucent that they almost vanish in that bead.

In the bead on the left, the Desert Pink Unique #2 has fumed a dark, rich brown from the application of silver leaf. When this effect is reduced and encased, the silver really shines up under the Clear and develops a bright, ethereal blue halo. I like this effect a lot.

In both of these cases, the reaction is a lot like what happened with regular Desert Pink, but more intense.

Desert Pink Unique #2 does not score huge points in the silver glass department, but the reduced silver glass does look very interesting on top of it in the bead on the right, and there are some hints of colour on the bead on the left that indicates that if I'd been a little gentler with the striking of that bead I may have gotten better results.

When placed on top of Tuxedo, the Desert Pink Unique #2 develops a fine, shiny outline. I've mentioned this a couple of times now, but a lot of colours seem to have this reaction with Tuxedo. Regular Desert Pink, however, was not one of them. The Tuxedo on top of Desert Pink Unique #2 doesn't have any noticeable reaction, but you can see in the middle of the bead where the two colours meet that there is a fair amount of Tuxedo bleed there.

Desert Pink Unique #2, when placed on top of Copper Green, helps the Copper Green to not develop that shiny patina. However, Copper Green on top of Desert Pink Unique #2 does sheen up. Why? Who knows... this glass chemistry thing is easy to observe, but more difficult to predict and diagnose.

I want to say something smart about these two beads, but I sort of shot myself in the foot by doing something stupid when I made them. Unfortunately, I got my Opal Yellow and Ivory stringers mixed up and managed to completely bungle this, putting Ivory stringer on my Pink & Opal Yellow bead and putting Opal Yellow stringer on my Pink & Ivory bead. Grrr.

Since there are no reactions I want to comment on, let's just move on to the next bead.

There is no real reaction between Desert Pink Unique #2 and White, but you can see how translucent the Desert Pink #2 is where I used it on White, because it's sort of hard to make it out.

Putting Olive on top of Desert Pink Unique #2 makes a curdled halo of Desert Pink Unique #2 pop up around the Olive stringer lines and dots. Also, the Olive thins out a bit on top of the Desert Pink #2 and seems lighter and more translucent. On top of Olive, mostly Desert Pink #2 just seems to disappear, but the Olive is uncharacteristically streaky underneath it.

And here is a fun bead with Desert Pink #2. This bead is a base of Desert Pink #2, with silver leaf, TerraNova2 frit, A twistie made with Copper Green, Raku and Steel Blue and a bit of Opal Yellow and Mermaid dottage add some additional colour.

Test Results :: Appletini

2011-02-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - Over Silver Foil, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf, 5 w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 6 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 7 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 8 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (pulled into stringer, encased), 9 & 10 - w/ Tuxedo, Peace, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory

CiM Appletini is a LOT like the handpulled Effetre Pale Emerald, except it is perhaps a little more saturated (seriously, not much though) than that colour and it is a little stiffer. Like Pale Emerald, Appletini does not change the colour of silver when used to encase it, and is a fairly stable, minimally reactive colour.

The consistency of Appletini is a lot nicer than a lot of the other CiM transparents that I've tried. It is a bit less prone to bubbling than Mojito, making it similar to Maple in terms of how nice it is to use. You still have to be a little careful with Appletini, but you sort of have to be trying to boil it, unlike what happens with, say, Larkspur.

As I mentioned, this colour will not turn silver yellow-brown when it is used over silver foil. On top of Appletini, silver leaf sort of dissipates, and then gets a little brown in the areas where it is more concentrated. When this combination is reduced and encased, the colour of the Appletini yellows slightly and the silver leaf looks sort of ethereal and wispy.

I got fairly nice results with my silver glass using it with Appletini. My TerraNova2 purpled and blued up nicely, and the silver glass reduction frit looks very shiny, if a little too static. My frit stringer bead didn't do the fun things I was hoping for, but it does have an appealing wispiness to it. This just isn't a very reactive colour, but sometimes that's a good thing.

Here we have Appletini with Tuxedo, Peace, Copper Green, Opal Yellow and Ivory. There is not much to see here in terms of reactions, but there are a few things worth noting.

Peace: On top of Appletini, Peace separates so that it has a translucent line in the middle of stringer lines and translucent dots in the middle of dots. This reaction is not as strong between these two colours as I've seen it with other combinations, and it's an interesting effect.

Copper Green: On top of Copper Green, Appletini serves mainly to lighten and make the Copper Green look a little greener. Copper Green on top of Appletini separates so that a dark line/dot forms in the middle of the stringerwork.

Opal Yellow: Inexplicably, when used on top of Opal Yellow, Appletini looks sort of greyish/purplish. It also makes the opal yellow raise up in a halo around it.

And finally, I discovered (completely irrelevantly) that I shouildn't use Peace beside Tuxedo if I'm going to continue to make these amalgamated test beads because the Tuxedo bleeding into the Peace distracts me from being able to see if there's anything interesting going on right next to it.

I can cheat a little with the opaques and semi-opaques and encase a clear core to conserve colour, but with transparents, I sort of have to make solid beads to test with in order to preserve the saturation of the test colour. Also, when I test transparents, I make more beads than I do when I test opaques. As a result, these beads took a fair bit more Appletini than my Atlantis beads took Atlantis and I don't have anything to show you in terms of fun beads with this colour.

Test Results :: Orchid

2011-02-17T06:00:00.000-08:00

Do these test beads remind you of anything? If not, they should, because at first glance, they are very, very similar to the test results I got with Faded Rose that were posted a short while back. However, there are some key differences, which I will point out as we go here.

With unencased silver leaf added to the surface of an Orchid bead, the result is an interesting mottled colour that ranges from orange to green in the surface colour. The silver itself wisps up on top of the Orchid. When this reaction is reduced and then encased, the Orchid re-pinks and the silver presents as a snowy, cloudy layer with lavender clouds on its edges.

I had moderate success with my TerraNova2 frit with this colour, and the reducing silver glass frit blend that I used looks pretty darned interesting on top of Orchid. With TerraNova2, the base of my Orchid bead stayed pink, but with the reducing silver glass, my Orchid turned orangey-yellow. These results are similar to what I experienced with Faded Rose.

There is no reaction to speak of between Orchid and Tuxedo (note there is no silvery line when using Orchid on Tuxedo) but on top of Orchid, Tuxedo thins out a little and looks more translucent than I'm used to seeing it. Again, these results are similar to what I experienced with Faded Rose, except for the translucency of the Tuxedo, which has only happened on top of Orchid.

The relationship between Orchid and Copper Green seems kind've complicated. Where I used Copper Green over Orchid, it seems to have empinkened the Orchid quite a lot, and has created a very, very faint transparent film which emanates from the Copper Green. In the centre of the bead where the two colours meet, there is an odd ivory patch that looks like all of the colour has been sucked out of the Copper Green. And then where the Orchid is over the Copper Green, the Copper Green seems really conflicted, ranging from a patina-coated army green to a raging turquoise. This is worth experimenting with, since it'd be nice to know the reason for so much variation. Here is where the Faded Rose and Orchid test results start to differ, since this is not the same reaction I got with Faded Rose and Copper Green at all.

Opal Yellow, like Copper Green, makes Orchid look pinker. On top of Opal Yellow, Orchid looks like a pretty dusty rose colour, but under Opal Yellow, it looks more bubblegummy. On top of Orchid, Opal Yellow lines look like they have a subtle, faintly darker line around them. Faded Rose did not behave this way with Opal Yellow at all -- in fact, the results here are so different, I will need to invent completely separate mental categories for these two Milky Way colours.

Ivory on top of Orchid goes sort of wonky, spreading a bit and developing a transparent, crack-like line in the middle of dots and stringer lines. On the Ivory side of the bead here, the Ivory has curdled and formed what almost looks like a translucent crack around the bead. The Orchid is not very visible on top of Ivory. Faded Rose did not do this with Ivory, so if you are looking for this reaction, it's Orchid you'll want.

The reaction between White and Orchid is quite similar to the reaction between Ivory and Orchid, only it's more subtle. The transparent, crack-like lines/dots in the stringer work are less pronounced, and there is no evidence of curdling on the left-hand side of the bead.

Here is a fun bead made with Orchid. I used a lot of Orchid in twisties as well, and as the base colour for a couple of bicones. Sadly, I can no longer remember exactly which twisties or bicones, so all we are left with is this bead.

Test Results :: Atlantis

2011-02-15T06:00:00.000-08:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 7 & 8 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Peace, Opal Yellow, Ivory

The new CiM Atlantis is a medium turquoise semi-opaque, similar to Effetre Medium Turquoise Alabastro, but a little more vibrant, a little more reactive, maybe a little darker and much less irritating to work with. Atlantis seems to darken in colour with repeated striking.

Atlantis and silver have an interesting relationship. On top of Atlantis, silver leaf webs and bubbles and turns a golden colour. When this combination is reduced and encased, the yellowing is more pronounced, and the webbing effect is magnified. The area between the Atlantis and the silver, under the clear, looks green.

I'm not really sure about Atlantis and silver glass because I didn't make many beads with it, but I sort of like the way my reduction frit bloomed and grew on top of Atlantis. I didn't get much colour out of my TerraNova2 frit in the bead on the left, but in one of the fun beads at the end of this post you can see I had a little more success.

And I know, this looks like cheating. From left to right on both beads we have Tuxedo, Copper Green, Peace, Opal Yellow and Ivory.

Tuxedo: On top of Tuxedo, Atlantis separates and forms a dark line in the centre of stringer lines and a dark dot in the centre of dots. On top of Atlantis, Tuxedo doesn't do much.

Copper Green: On top of Copper Green, Atlantis sort of dissipates and causes odd turquoise halos in the Copper Green underneath. What you can see of the remaining copper green looks dark and blotchy. On top of Atlantis, Copper Green separates so that it has a dark line/dot in the middle of the stringerwork, and underneath that stringerwork, a fine dark webbing has appeared in the Atlantis.

Peace: There is no noticeable reaction between Peace and Atlantis when Atlantis is used on top of Peace except for a subtle curdling effect in the Peace that is not unlike how the Opal Yellow behaves with Atlantis but is much less pronounced. Atlantis spreads a little on top of Peace, too. Peace on top of Atlantis separates so that the dots/lines have a dark centre.

Opal Yellow: Atlantis and Opal Yellow are crazy together in the same way I remember Ming and Opal Yellow being crazy together. Under the Opal Yellow, the Atlantis has crazed with tiny fine, dark lines. As a result, the Opal Yellow stringer lines and dots also have this odd crazing, and the Opal Yellow separates so that the dots/lines have a dark centre. Under Atlantis, Opal Yellow develops a pronounced curdling effect, with transparent 'cracks' springing up in the Opal Yellow all around the Atlantis dots and stringer lines. Atlantis also sort of spreads and disintegrates on top of Opal Yellow.

Ivory: Ack! This is an interesting reaction for sure. When Atlantis is used on top of Ivory, a fine crazing of brown, bubbly-looking webbing springs out from it and the Atlantis looks darker and tealer than with the other colours. When Ivory is used on top of Atlantis, it looks brown with black webbing, and the Atlantis is crazed underneath.

Here are some fun beads with Atlantis.

Test Results :: Sepia Unique #2

2011-02-13T06:00:00.000-08:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - Over Silver Foil, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf, 5 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 6 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 7 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 8 - w/ Silver Glass Frit Stringer (encased), 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - w/ Opal Yellow, 11 - w/ Ivory, 12 - w/ White

I think that CiM Sepia Unique #2 might be the first CiM colour that I've tried that I really don't like. At all.

This colour is so prone to bubbling that no matter where I worked it in the flame or how patient I tried to be, it was filled with tiny bubbles. I was a little disappointed, because I was sort of excited about the Sepia family of colours after experimenting with Sepia Unique #1, but this version of Sepia doesn't have nearly as much in common with that one as I'd hoped. It's also sort of a bland, blueish/pinkish grey colour that just leaves me cold.

I do like the gentle, golden tan colour that it takes on with silver though.

The only real bright point in my testing of Sepia Unique #2 was this pretty, beer-hued brown tone that it acquires when used with silver. In the bead on the left, you can see that the Sepia Unique #2 has turned the silver that pretty amber colour. In the centre bead, the silver has turned the bead more of a Guinness brown, and has balled up on top of it and in places turned slightly blueish. In the bead on the right, I reduced and encased the silver leaf, giving me both the pretty tan colour and an ethereal blue-purple around the silver.

Sepia Unique #2 is nicer as a base for reduction colours than it is as a base for striking silver glass colours. It doesn't, however, do anything nice at all when used with reduction frit and pulled out into stringer. I did get good colours out of my TerraNova2, but they aren't that evident in the picture. Under silver glass seems to be the best way to use this colour, since afterwards it will be well-covered.

Sepia Unique #2 isn't a very reactive colour, and even the softer opaques (e.g. White, Opal Yellow) don't seem to spread on top of it much.

As with some of the other colours I haven't been super-fond of, once I'd made these test beads, I didn't have much desire to explore Sepia Unique #2 any further. If you discover that it's actually a great colour and that I am missing out, please let me know and maybe I'll give it another shot.

Test Results :: Faded Rose

2011-02-10T06:00:00.000-08:00

Faded Rose is the first of a few Lauscha Milky Way colours that I tried last fall and quite liked. I have no idea how to keep these Milky Way colours opalescent, but that doesn't matter very much since I'm getting interesting results with them the opaque way.

Like Thüringen Herb, Faded Rose has an interesting relationship with silver and silver glass, and is beautifully reactive. The colour of it seems to range from a light, pinky peach to a darker, more purplish pink, depending on how much it is struck and the colour(s) it is used with. It also can acquire some yellow tones, as I'll discuss below.

The reaction between Faded Rose and silver leaf is not anything like what I got when I did my testing of Thüringen Herb. On top of Faded Rose, silver leaf webs and beads up in interesting, lace-like patterns. Reduced and under clear, this lace-like pattern with its dots and whorls is still very much in evidence, although softer. The colour of the Faded Rose under silver leaf is a murkier, dark tan-rose. When the reaction is encased, it looks more like a soft pink.

With TerraNova2 frit, the colour of the Faded Rose is not much changed, although it is clear that one side of the bead has struck more here than the other. The right side of the bead is a little pinker, and I think it got a little more heat. In the bead on the right, you can see that reducing silver glass frit is very interesting on top of Faded Rose, and that the combination of the silver and the reduction has blushed the Faded Rose to an odd yellowish-orange colour.

There is no reaction to speak of between Tuxedo and Faded Rose, but the Faded Rose looks more purple when it is used with Tuxedo.

Like with Tuxedo, Faded Rose has a more purply-pink hue when it is used with Copper Green. There is also a very fun reaction between the Faded Rose and the Copper Green, which is a light turquoise outline that occurs between the two colours. Copper Green does not seem to sheen up when used with Faded Rose, either, which is happy.

On top of Faded Rose, Opal Yellow dots go sort of soft in the middle, and look like the centres of them have collapsed. The stringer lines get a faint, clear line down their centres as well. When Faded Rose is used over Opal Yellow, it curdles the surface, with an Opal Yellow halo rising up to surround the Faded Rose dots and stringer lines.

There is not a lot of reaction to speak of between Ivory and Faded Rose, which is nice, because a lot of pinks do not get along with Ivory at all. On top of Faded Rose, the Ivory lines and dots are nice and crisp. On top of Ivory, Faded Rose kind've gets lost and the Ivory goes a little funny and translucent in patches.

On top of Faded Rose, White separates and develops a clear line down its centre. Faded Rose is not very strong on top of White.

Faded Rose (and all of the other Milky Way colours I've tried, too) make a really gorgeous base colour for organics. This bicone has a base of Faded Rose. I made a nicer one, too, but broke it getting it off the mandrel.

Test Results :: Mermaid Unique #1

2011-02-06T11:20:00.000-08:00

This is trippy, this blogging thing, because you can look back at what you did a year ago (or more, I suppose, if you've blogged for more than a year) and see what your beads were like, what you were focusing on, and in the case of this blog post, the results from some other testing you did that you now want to reference. Fun!

In this case, I was looking back to my test results with CiM Mermaid to see the differences between Mermaid and this newer colour, CiM Mermaid Unique #1. I posted my Mermaid results in December 2009, so the format of the post is much different from this one, and my beads have improved quite a bit since then, so that is also evident when you look at the two sets of results. I should go back at some point and re-do my Mermaid testing, but I have a lot of other colours to get through first.

Mermaid Unique #1 is both darker and bluer than original Mermaid. It is also less streaky, and does not go red when you reduce it the way original Mermaid does. Silver glass is GORGEOUS on Mermaid Unique #1. This is another one of the CiM unique lots that sold out so quickly that it made my head spin, so there isn't any more left. I only ever had a few rods of it -- just enough to tease me and get me all wound up about it.

Silver on Mermaid Unique #1 turns sort of greenish. In the bead on the left, the silver seems to have migrated towards the centre of the bead and webbed out a little. In the bead on the right, the colour of the reduced and encased silver leaf seems mottled with a greenish colour, pink and a yellowish orange competing for space. When I used silver with Mermaid, the silver seemed to discolour the Mermaid and yellow it a bit, but I didn't see this effect with Mermaid Unique #1.

I got gorgeous colour out of my TerraNova2 frit on top of Mermaid Unique #1, and the reduced silver glass got interesting colour too, although I like the TN2 bead much better.

Tuxedo on top of Mermaid Unique #1 bleeds a little, and looks all smeary. On top of Tuxedo, Mermaid Unique #1 developed a shiny, silvery outline. A lot of colours seem to do this on top of Tuxedo, I'm noticing. This reaction did not happen between Effetre Black and Mermaid.

Something in the Mermaid Unique #1 makes Copper Green sheen up with a pinkish grey patina. This isn't unattractive, but the colour doesn't really work well with the Mermaid Unique #1. This didn't seem to happen between Mermaid and Copper Green, although my Copper Green batch might be slightly different now than it was then.

On top of Opal Yellow, Mermaid Unique #1 gets a faintly darker line and dot in the middle of the stringer lines and dots. Mermaid Unique #1 bleeds into Opal Yellow, so you can see a petroleum green-coloured stain seeping into the Opal Yellow from the Mermaid Unique #1 side of the bead.

I think I'm using a different batch of Effetre Ivory now than when I tested Mermaid, and that might account for the CRAZY marbling that was caused in the middle of this bead. It also might be that Mermaid Unique #1 is more reactive with Ivory than regular Mermaid is. Either way, this reaction is way cool, and I like the dark line reaction between the Ivory and Mermaid Unique #1 too. The dark line reaction is more pronounced in this bead than in the test bead I made with Ivory and Mermaid.

Like with Opal Yellow, Mermaid Unique #1 bleeds into White and gets a concentration line/dot in the centre of the stringer lines and dots placed over top of it.

Here are some fun beads with Mermaid Unique #1. So sad there won't be any more.

Test Results :: Adobe

2011-02-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

1 - Plain (reduced), 2 - Plain, 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 7 - w/ Tuxedo, 8 - w/ Copper Green, 9 - w/ Opal Yellow, 10 - w/ Ivory, 11 - w/ White

It's surprising that I was even able to melt any CiM Adobe Limited Run, since all I've done with my Butter Pecan Unique #3 is gently lift it out of the box, pet it lovingly and then put it away again... over and over. This colour reminds me a lot of my Butter Pecan #3 in rod form, but since I haven't actually used any of that colour yet it's hard to say for sure.

My favourite combinations with Adobe so far have to be when it's under Copper Green or over Steel Blue. Adobe etches beautifully, too. I love the soft, medium peachy brown tone of this colour and I'm sad that there doesn't seem to be any more left for sale anywhere.

I put these on the mandrel in the wrong order, which is why the reduced one is left of the plain, unreduced one. Reducing Adobe turns it a slightly pinker, duller version of itself and makes it faintly shiny.

Silver leaf on top of Adobe turns a bronzey colour and fumes the Adobe to a rich brown. When the silver leaf is reduced and encased, it turns quite blue under the Clear. The silvered Adobe is a little lighter once its been encased, but not much.

On top of Adobe, silver glass isn't really that interesting. I got decent colour (for me) out of both the striking and reducing silver glass frit, but you can see on the left the dirty grey halo that surrounds the fritty bits, and in the bead on the right, reducing the Adobe resulted in it taking on a slightly dirty sheen, as it did above in the disc spacer. I can imagine circumstances where this is a desirable effect, but I'm not sure I like it much.

It's not very evident in the picture, but the Adobe has faint, shiny thin lines around it on the side where the Adobe lines and dots are on top of the Tuxedo. The Tuxedo has bled over to the Adobe side a bit, making it look sort of dirty.

With Adobe, Copper Green takes on a darker persona. The Copper Green dots and lines also have a subtle brown outline to them, making them stand out slightly from the rest of the bead. The Adobe lines and dots on top of the Copper Green do not seem to do that at all, and the Adobe on top of the Copper Green looks much lighter than it did anywhere else I used it in these test beads. These colour reactions are funny.

Opal Yellow spreads like crazy on top of Adobe, although I think I helped it along by being sort of inept with my bead roller and mushing the bead a bit. The Opal Yellow also has the odd look of 'floating' on top of the Adobe. Adobe on top of Opal Yellow isn't as interesting, but the two colours are sort of pretty together, or at least they would be with an accent colour to tie them together.

Ivory spreads on top of Adobe, too, but not as much. And on top of Ivory, Adobe bleeds a little. You can see thin little prickles poking out from the Adobe stringerwork. There's a bit of a reaction where the two colours meet, almost like they're afraid to touch each other.

White also spreads on top of Adobe. I must have been tired when I made this bead because the stringerwork is unusually erratic, even for me. :P

And here are the fun beads with Adobe. I may still be able to squeeze one or two more out since I've got one rod of this left and am forcing myself to use up all of my odds and ends before moving on to the new palette I've got planned.

Test Results :: Adamantium Unique #1

2011-01-31T18:42:00.000-08:00

Let me just start off by saying that these are not the pictures I've been holding my breath for as I get my photography issues under control, but that they are better than some I've been taking and I've decided to just go with it.

CiM Adamantium Unique #1, like Adamantium, is a smooth, creamy dark grey-brown. It's less dark than its cousin, and more greyish. I love brown way more than the average person does, and this one scores high points with me because it plays nice with other colours, isn't red at all and has some fun reactions with silver.

Adamantium #1 with silver reacts very similarly to how Adamantium reacts with silver. When left unexposed on the surface, it forms a yellowish crust that blushes to an orangey colour in places. When reduced and encased, it forms a sold silver layer which tinges blue at the edges. I used leaf with these beads, and foil with the test beads I posted last January for Adamantium, resulting in a little less crusting and bumpiness but essentially the same reaction.

This colour is also like Adamantium in that it is a nice base for striking silver glass. The effect is subtle, because of the grey darkness of the base, but you can see on the left where I got some gorgeous blue and purple from the TerraNova2 frit. The reduction frit in the bead on the right didn't photograph very well, and it hasn't done anything particularly exciting anyway.

When I tested Adamantium, I was using Effetre Black. I am sort of excited about the silvery, shiny line that crops up around the Adamantium #1 when its used with Tuxedo -- and intensely curious about whether or not the same effect would come between Adamantium and Tuxedo, or between Adamantium #1 and Effetre Black. These go on the endless list of things to try. Neat, right?

Adamantium #1 does not behave with Copper Green in the way that I expected it to after testing Adamantium. My Copper Green, here, has an odd murkiness to it that I did not anticipate, and the Adamantium #1 on the Copper Green looks sort of washed out compared to how it looks in the other beads. I spent some time worrying that there was a problem with my torch before I realized the other beads looked much more normal.

I am aggravated by a lot of my earlier colour posts because I had not yet come up with the process I'm now using to test the beads, so again, my basis for comparison is sort of screwed up. I didn't test Adamantium with Opal Yellow, and I haven't tried that combination lately, so I don't have anything to compare this bead to. However, Adamantium #1 looks dark and competent on top of Opal Yellow and the two colours seem fairly tight with each other, with not much bleeding or fraying of the edges of the lines and dots at all. On top of Adamantium #1, Opal Yellow spreads a little.

Adamantium #1 does not seem to bleed into Ivory the way its parent Adamantium does. The lines aren't super-crisp, but they also don't have as much spiky bleed as I saw in my test beads with Adamantium. In the centre of the bead where the two colours meet, a dark line seems to separate the Ivory and Adamantium #1. My Ivory dots and lines spread a little bit, but not as much as Opal Yellow did.

And blast it all! I didn't test Adamantium with White either, so I have no idea if this complete lack of any reaction whatsoever is also common to that combination. Grrr. Oddly, the White dots and lines did not spread much at all -- less than either Ivory or Opal Yellow did.

Here are some fun beads with Adamantium #1. I'm a fan of this colour, and love it just as much as I loved Adamantium-proper.

Test Results :: Charcoal

2010-10-29T20:43:00.000-07:00

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - Over Clear, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf, 5 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced and encased), 6 - w/ Reduced Silver Glass Frit, 7 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 8 - As a floral (over White), 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - w/ Opal Yellow, 11 - w/ Ivory, 12 - w/ White, 13 - w/ Raku

General Impressions
It is really hard to tell CiM Charcoal rods apart from Black if stuff gets mixed up. In fact, during its time in my working box, I have lost a rod of Charcoal and I think it has covertly combined itself with my bundle of Tuxedo, which will no doubt screw me right up down the road. Grrr. The four other rods I have are all subtly transparent letting just the tiniest amount of light through them, but in spite of my careful and repeated examination of all of my Tuxedo rods, I can't find that missing rod of Charcoal and it seems to be a goner.

Charcoal had some weird white spots on the rods that smoked in the flame, but this didn't result in anything weird being evident in the finished beads. It looks green when it's hot, especially in thin layers, which is really strange. Holly says that it looks green cooled down too, but I have to admit that I just don't see it. Maybe just a little on top of Opal Yellow?

Charcoal is much softer than I thought it was going to be. It's wonderful to encase with, and doesn't bubble while working. I like this colour. A LOT.

Alone, Charcoal is a pretty dark grey. It looks black, really... you can't see through it at all. Over Clear, it lightens up a little, but if you look at the lentil below you can only barely see the mandrel line through the centre of the bead, so it's still a very dark colour.

In a thin layer over White, Charcoal lightens up much more, and is a pleasant dark grey colour. Ignore the odd orange bits in the bead above... those seem to be Charcoal reacting to my camera flash because they aren't present in the bead when it's right in front of you.

Reactions
Lots to see here! This is a really fun, reactive colour with some new things to bring to the table that I haven't encountered yet in my colour tour.

In the bead on the left, I melted silver leaf onto the surface of the Charcoal. That simple step has resulted in a variegated blue finish that is pretty cool... I have had silver turn blue and green on top of other colours (CiM Mink comes to mind) but never this colour of blue before.

In the bead on the right, I reduced and encased some silver leaf on top of Charcoal, under Effetre 006 Clear. The result is that shiny silver blanket I so often get, but accompanied by vibrant blue staining on either side of the silver. Awesome.

Silver Glass loves Charcoal, and Charcoal totally seems to love it back. These pictures are sort of dark, but even with my crummy photography, you can still easily see how awesome both the reduced silver glass frit (on the left) and the TerraNova2 frit (on the right) look on top of Charcoal. This glass has shot up to the top of my wish list in terms of ordering more.

I got weird colour out of Raku on top of Charcoal. Instead of the washed out brownish blue and brownish green I usually get, I got reds, pinks, blues and yellows. Neat.

On top of Charcoal, Copper Green separates so that it is lighter on the outside than it is in the middle of the dots and stringer lines I applied. Charcoal also seems to help Copper Green stay beautiful and unsheened with that silvery grey stuff.

When I put Charcoal on top of the Copper Green, the Copper Green got sort of striated and odd-looking and a lighter line formed around the Charcoal lines and dots.

In the middle of the bead, a lot of the darker colour in the Copper Green seems to have fled away from where the Copper Green and Charcoal meet.

Opal Yellow seems to separate a little when used on top of Charcoal, and on top of Opal Yellow the Charcoal takes on a greenish hue. It also seemed to spread a little.

Charcoal spreads a little on top of Ivory, too. It's a little strange because I'm used to transparents being denser and not really all that prone to spreading on top of the softer opaque colours. Charcoal also looks a little more blue on top of Ivory, especially when you compare it to how it looks on top of Opal Yellow above.

Ivory lines on top of Charcoal look crisp and beautiful and get just the faintest amount of separation that makes the edges look really well established in my stringer lines and dot work.

White and Charcoal don't really have much of a reaction and I got lazy here in the bead on the right.

I made a pretty cool clear-encased bead with Charcoal and reduced silver glass frit, and I meant to take a picture of it, but someone bought it from me while I was having lunch at the Fraser Valley Bead Show in Langley last weekend. I've remade it, so here it is with a friend.

Test Results :: Butter Pecan Unique #4

2010-10-25T12:03:00.000-07:00

CiM Butter Pecan #4 is more interesting than I thought it would be after my initial foray into this new collection of CiM Uniques. I posted in a very preliminary way about this colour (among others) here.

This version of Butter Pecan is really, really soft. So drippy in fact that it rivals White and Opal Yellow for drippiness. I still haven't tested the original Butter Pecan, so I'm not sure if this is typical of all of the colours in the Butter Pecan lineup or not. Also, two of the three rods of Butter Pecan #4 that I had were unpleasantly shocky even though they were very thin. One of the rods was so shocky that it was nearly impossible to work with, which is why I haven't made my customary oval test beads for this colour and won't have any fun beads to share at the bottom of this post.

Fortunately, not all of the rods are that shocky because I have had a few rods that were not shocky at all. Just proceed with caution, and introduce gently to the flame until you know what kind of rod you've got in your hand.

I struggled a bit filling my Crystal press (as usual) and had to put multiple layers of glass on these first beads. The result? Strange variations in the surface colour. So, Butter Pecan #4 does not meet smoothly when you add additional glass. I thought that it would since it's not a very streaky colour, but I often misanticipate these things.

Reducing Butter Pecan #4 blushes the colour a little, turning it a little more pink and a little more grey.

Reactions
Butter Pecan #4 is awesome fun with silver.

In the bead on the left, I applied silver leaf and melted it in. The result is a variegated silver and gold effect, and a bead that has fumed very brown in places.

In the bead on the right, I applied my silver leaf, melted it in, reduced it and then encased it with Effetre 006 Clear. The silver under the Clear is bright and shiny, and while you can still see some of the brown fuming right around the edges of the silver and in a gentle, warm way on the right-hand side of the bead, for the most part the Butter Pecan in this bead looks a little closer to the natural colour than the bead on the left does.

Butter Pecan #4 is not a big star with silver glass frit. I didn't manage to really strike my TerraNova2 Frit on this colour, although I was careful to try not to overstrike it after my humiliating experience with Porcelain. Around the edges of the TerraNova2 frit, you can see a faint brown stain on the surface of the Butter Pecan #4.

In the bead on the right, my silver glass frit didn't really acquire much in the way of shine and just looks sort of blah sitting on top of the bead. The Butter Pecan has more fumed brown on this bead, and I suspect that is because of the reduction.

With Tuxedo, Butter Pecan #4 looks like a much cooler colour and takes on a pinkish sheen. Butter Pecan #4 dots on top of Tuxedo get a concentric ring around the edge, and a very thin lines that is only subtly shiny shows up around the very edge of the Butter Pecan #4, like a little mirrored border.

Butter Pecan #4 barely reacts with Copper Green. You can see, around the Butter Pecan #4 dots, a faint greyish-brown line around the butter pecan, but it almost escapes notice. Butter Pecan #4 does not appear to be one of those colours that keeps away the grey sheen of of our friend Copper Green.

On top of Opal Yellow, Butter Pecan #4 develops a darker pink outline. Opal Yellow seems to float just on top of the Butter Pecan #4.

With White and Ivory, Butter Pecan #4 doesn't really do much of note. I had a dirty-looking spot on the Ivory/ButterPecan #4 bead, but that's pretty much it.

But, the star of this reaction show are these two beads that I made with Lauscha Olive.

On top of Butter Pecan #4, I got reasonable colour out of my Raku, The Lauscha Olive dots I put on the Butter Pecan #4 spread a little, and made the Butter Pecan #4 rise up in halos around it, creating a more dramatic petal effect in my flowers. On top of Lauscha Olive, Butter Pecan #4 dots develop strange green ellipses in their centres.

And that's all! I like this colour enough after testing it that even the odd shocky rod won't be enough to scare me off. I think it will make a fabulous base for the kinds of beads I love to make. I can't wait to test the Butter Pecan #5.