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December 26, 2009

Test Results :: Anise White

UGH.

1 - w/ Black, 2 - w/ Dark Violet, 3 - w/ Copper Green, 4 - w/ Ivory, 5 - w/ Striking Color frit, 6 - w/ Triton, 7 - w/ Silver leaf - reduced & encased, 8 - w/ Silver leaf, 9 - As a floral - Copper Green core, 10 - Reduced, 11 - Plain

I'm having a little trouble figuring out what to say about Anise White because it's not an offensive colour after its been melted, but I have real hatred for it.  If it wasn't so completely anger-inducing to work with I might even prefer it to regular white, but since it does deeply piss me off, I'm never using it again.

The problem with Anise White isn't that it's shocky.  The problem is that it is so shocky that it's unusable.  You can hold a thin rod of it just beside your flame, gently heating it, and have it all shoot off like deadly popcorn, "POP!  POP!  POP!"  in rapid succession.  I went to the studio with a little more than six rods of Anise White.  I made the beads you see above, and then finally gave up in frustration and threw a rod and a half of it into a waste bin.  Everything in between was in pieces all over my work table.

I had glass in my face, glass up my sleeve and glass all over the damn place.  I will put up with a lot from glass, but this was just a little much.  I think I'll have a permanent scar on my left forearm, and predict that it will burn vengefully whenever Anise White is nearby.

General Impressions
If only it was workable (and who knows... annealing the rods may well help), it might be fun to play with it some more and compare it to regular White or CiM Peace.  I haven't done these kinds of experiments with regular White, so I don't even know if the results are similar.  I should do that, but I'm not using White right now so I can't.

Even if Anise White was workable, though, it still wouldn't have a lot of draw for me.  I'm more of an Ivory person.


Colour Density
In a thin layer, Anise White is fairly translucent, and would be a good choice for making ghost-like florals or trying to create wispy whiteness in a bead.  It might be interesting to use it with a white that is more opaque in a floral design.  (Bead #9)


Reduction
Reducing Anise White turns it a greyer/pinker version of itself.  (Bead #2)


Reactions
When Anise White is paired with silver, the silver fumes the surface of the bead to a caramel colour which is  attractive.  (Bead #8, Bead #6)

I also like that when the silver is subsequently encased, it hasn't been taken over by a reaction between the silver and the Anise White.  (Bead #7) You'll see an example where this doesn't happen so nicely when I post the results for CiM Tamarind Unique.

Anise White is silver-friendly.  I don't think it's a first-tier choice as a base colour for silver glass, but it's definitely one that works.  Triton turns green rather than blue on top of Anise White, and seems to separate with the fine, shiny line in the middle. (Bead #6) This seems like the exact opposite of what I saw in my testing of CiM Great Bluedini.  Please excuse the fingerprint... I really need to get better at not photographing those.



The only other thing really worth mentioning is that Black and Dark Violet bleed into Anise White in a sort of attractive way.  (Bead #1, #2)

As I mentioned, I don't have any "real" beads to show you that use this colour.  Just melting enough of this colour to make the test beads pictured above nearly drove me nuts.

7 comments:

  1. Melanie, I'm gobsmacked by your blog and your testing and results! You are amazing to be doing all this. I just love your longer beads that you rake so the colors swirl around. You are just top notch in my book!!

    Hugs, Nancy in Vermont

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  2. Thanks Nancy! I find it really helps me stay on track to write it all down, and once it's all written down anyway, I might as well share it.

    I'm really enjoying the testing, and I hope the information helps people.

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  3. Melanie, when are ya gonna start selling? If you are and I'm just a dope and don't know where to look, point my nose in that direction! You are doing great and I can't tell ya how much I love the lentils you have been doing from Sherry's class. Hmmmm, an earring set would be cute!! ;)

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  4. Hi Gayle! I guess I'm starting this year. I have some beads in a show in January, and I'm going to be scrambling to make enough beads to do a three day show in Vancouver in March.

    Thanks for the nice compliments! I think earrings made from my beads would probably rip your ears off though.

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  5. Cool beads. I didn't find anice white shocky but it did do some wierd things. A bead with a red, white and blue millefiori went all translucent grey, on the surface, and a two partners I made at the same time with the same glasses did not. I wish I could have reproduced that effect.It doesn't play well with Effetre pastel white. CIM peace does pretty much the same thing with silver and silver glass, and looks slightly translucent as well, so I suspect the formulation is similar.

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  6. I read all these comments about how shocky Anise white is, and was prepared for an adventure when I sallied forth with the supply I bought. Not a pop or a ping was had! Beautiful to work with, I loved it. I wonder if the shockiness was batch related? Anyway, thanks for sharing your experiments with us, I look forward to playing some more.

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  7. Anise White is famous for its shockiness, so I am surprised but thrilled to know that there is at least one batch out there without this problem!

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