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December 21, 2009

Test Results :: Dark Violet

1 - Plain, 2 - w/ Silver leaf, 3 - w/ Khaos frit, 4 - w/ Triton, 5 - w/ Ivory, 6 - w/ Black, 7 - w/ Copper Green, 8 - Encased, 9 - w/ Silver leaf, reduced & encased, 10 - as a floral, Copper Green core.

This colour doesn't fill me with joy, but I can't exactly hate it, either.  Effetre Dark Violet is just a fancy name for purple.  It's really, really purple.  It's also really streaky and I don't find it very consistent.  These aren't necessarily terrible things - I like a lot of glass colours that are streaky and unpredictable, but I think what it comes down to, for me, is that when I look at these beads (with the exception of #4 and maybe #10) I feel like I can taste Hubba Bubba grape bubblegum.

I haven't been able to chew grape bubblegum since I was seven years old.  I still remember why - I went to a sleepover birthday party, and we stayed up super-late playing monopoly or some other board game and listening to songs like 'Monster Mash' on the RECORD PLAYER (god, this is making me feel old) and we all covertly went to bed chewing our gum as a form of secret 7-year old rebellion.

Fortunately, no one died in the night choking on their gum, but what I did find out (and why I can't stand the smell or taste of the gum to this day) is that Hubba Bubba only has a certain 'mouth life', and that if you chew it for too long, it turns to strange, stringy slime in your mouth.

*shudder*

Anyway, back to Dark Violet.  Dark Violet seems to be a relatively stable colour that doesn't let too many colours get in its way, but it did do some strange things.

Striking
In these beads (Bead #1, #2, #3), I think I must not have kept the ends quite as hot as the centre, and the ends seem to have struck so that they look almost as though they have a bit of brown sludge on them.  If I was doing something sculptural, I might think this is kind've cool... as it is, I will take it as a friendly reminder to be as careful with small beads as I am with large ones in terms of even heat distribution.


Apart from that, Dark Violet seems not to be all that interested in striking, either in a neutral flame or a reduction flame, although in Bead #9, putting silver leaf over Dark Violet, reducing and then encasing it resulted in a sort of interesting silvery, snowy blanket on the Dark Violet.

Reactions
I made the bead with the Khaos frit (Bead #3) before I made the bead with Triton (Bead #4) and I was muttering curses as I tried to strike the Khaos frit on this bead.  Khaos frit eludes me at the best of times, and on this purple there was just no way it was going to cooperate.  I've had this exact problem with CiM Poi as well, perhaps for exactly the same reason.  I tossed the little traitor bead into the kiln and debated "forgetting" to test Dark Violet at all before stiffening my spine and forcing myself to make Bead #4.

I was still tense from my battle with Khaos, so when I tried to make my test lentil with Triton dots, I really badly overfilled the lentil press and made a huge mess.  Determined to polish all of the little purple turds, regardless of how futile it felt, I let this bead morph into a rounded barrel shape and reduced it before putting it away.


Imagine my surprise when I pulled the beads out of the kiln and the purple one with Triton was actually a pretty nice bead. On Dark Violet, after being super-heated, maltreated and reduced, Triton is awesome.  It spreads and makes a bit of a rainbow, and goes all kinds of iridescent.  Who knew.


I also kind've like Dark Violet with Ivory.  It spreads a little over the Ivory and develops a dark line in the centre.  The Ivory does the opposite, going a little darker around the edges and more translucent/lighter in the middle.  I can see how this might be kind've fun to play with.  (Bead #5)

Apart from those little kernels, the only other thing I really learned about Effetre Dark Violet is that when you put dots of it over Clear, all of the dark purple colour flees into the middle of the dot.  I wonder if Dark Violet is acrophobic?

The last challenge of this colour test was to try to dig up some non-test beads that contain Dark Violet for you to see.  I've used up almost six rods of it in the last four weeks, but I seem to have mostly been hiding it as a base colour.

Here's a couple:

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