Test Results :: Avocado

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain - reduced, 3 - Plain - encased, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf, 5 - w/ Silver leaf - reduced & encased, 6 - w/ Khaos frit, 7 - w/ Double Helix frit blend (Gaia, Nyx, Elektra), 8 - w/ Ivory, 9 - w/ Black, 10 - w/ Copper Green

Effetre Avocado.  Nice colour!  It reminds me quite a bit of the Tamarind Unique I tested, with a few notable exceptions.  I didn't realize I was going to like this colour as much as I do because lots of other people have told me that they don't like it at all.  Well I have a plan that will fix that... they should just send it all to me!  I'll send them whatever Dark Violet and Anise White I can scare up in return.

I just had a conversation with Holly outside, and told her I was blogging about a colour called Avocado. She asked me if it was the colour of the inside of an avocado, or if it was the colour of the skin of an avocado, but the answer, of course, is neither. If anything, it's the colour of the inside of an avocado after you've forgotten you bought it and left it on the counter for too many days.  Rotten avocado is no good to eat, but so far, I'm enjoying making beads with it.

The other interesting thing about Avocado is that I have three different-looking varieties of it. I have one lot that is more or less the same colour in the rod as you see in the beads, above. I also have a lighter coloured rod that is a little silvery on the outside, and then, really strangely, some rods that look like a beiger version of Dark Ivory that have a rough feel to them.

I'm currently only using the brown ones and the silvery ones and so far they are more or less the same colour when melted. I'm not sure if I will get to the rough ones on this pass through my stash, but here's a picture of all three of the glasses I have whose labels claimed that they were Avocado.

Reduction
Reducing Avocado reddens it up a bit, turning it into more of a terracotta colour that I think is appealing, however it darkens and reds up this way when repeatedly struck in a neutral flame as well, so it may not be the reducing flame that is responsible for this.  (Bead #2)

Under Clear
Avocado looks exactly the same under clear encasement as it does all alone. Lots of colours look lighter when they're encased, but Avocado isn't one of them. (Bead #3 & #5)  I am afraid to encase Avocado very heavily.  Both of the encased beads I've made so far are fine, but they are pretty thinly encased. It feels like a colour that will crack, like Coral or Silver Pink, if too much Clear is wrapped around it.

Of course, you shouldn't let my paranoia stop you from trying it.  I really should have tested it myself, but until summer comes and I am able to make more than a dozen or so beads per week, I'm having trouble forcing myself to waste glass and time on things that I feel pretty certain just won't work. 

Reactions
I was surprised that Avocado wasn't more reactive with silver. Pleasantly surprised, because I think it means I can safely use Avocado as a base colour for my crazy organic silver-laden bicones and lentils.

The silver stayed more or less intact, lies on the surface in a sort of interesting way and didn't go all black the way Tamarind Unique did when I reduced it with silver on it.  (Beads #4 & #5)

I used Khaos frit for the striking silver glass test, and the results weren't the stupidest or most boring that I've yet had, but they aren't making me dance around either.  (Bead #6)

What I love, though, is the fun and interesting things that the reduction frit blend (Gaia, Nyx, Elektra) did on the Avocado. The frit got a silvery light border around its edges and really shines.  (Bead #7)

Ivory and Black don't really do much in the way of reactions with Avocado, but Copper Green looks really dark and a little shiny when used with it. (Bead #10) Like, really dark.  I've never seen Copper Green look this dark before and still look like itself. Usually, when Copper Green darkens, it does so with a disgusting grey scumminess that you can't see much of the colour through.

General Impressions
Avocado is a nice, stable colour with a rich, earthy feel to it that I am happy to use in my organic designs.  It is a pretty soft colour, maybe a 3 or 4 on a scale where Opal Yellow is a 1 and Black is a 10.  I made some silvered Avocado stringer, and I won't bother doing that again because the silver just sits on top of it.  It's really not like Ivory at all in that way or any other... Ivory greedily eats the silver up and excretes magic webbing, but Avocado can apparently take it or leave it.

Here's a bead with Avocado.  I'll add a few more pics to this post as I make more.