Test Results :: Red Copper Green

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain - reduced, 3 - w/ Silver leaf, 4 - w/ Silver leaf - reduced, 5 - w/ Silver leaf - reduced & encased, 6 - w/ Terra frit, 7 - w/ Double Helix frit blend - reduced (Gaia, Nyx, Elektra), 8 - As a floral, 9 - w/ Dark Violet, 10 - w/ Black, 11 - w/ Ivory

I don't even know if it's possible for me to have a favourite colour, there are so many gorgeous colours out there. But if it -is- possible, Effetre Red Copper Green could possibly be it.

There are lots of colours these days that can be more than one colour at a time. Many of the specialty silver glasses are like that. But what I didn't even know I was looking for was a colour that is more than one colour at a time without requiring any extra work or stress from me at all the way those colours do.

Red Copper Green is misleadingly named because it is neither really red nor really green -- to me, it's more of a Magenta Turquoise. I guess whoever named the rods named them based on what they look like BEFORE you melt them, not what they look like AFTER you melt them. I only really care what happens after I melt a colour so I've been calling it Magenta Turquoise in my head for weeks.

General Impressions
I used to really love Copper Green, but now that I've met his cousin, I have lost interest a bit. Red Copper Green is more interesting, and it's a lot easier to work with. Anyone with repeated Copper Green encounters knows how sparky it is and how prone to pitting. Well, I didn't experience either of those nasty things with any of my Red Copper Green.

Alone, Red Copper Green is a streaky, soft Magenta/Turquoise mottle colour. (Bead #1) It's gorgeous with neutral colours like Ivory, and it has some affinity for silver and silver glass. Whether or not you reduce it, after working it for a while, Red Copper Green gets a light silvery sheen not unlike the dark gunge you get when you use regular Copper Green or Dark Turquoise, but in a much softer, shinier way.

I used it alone in a floral, and the mottle is really pretty in a petal. I expected it to look silly, but it's actually pretty nice. (Bead #8)

The second flower is a little harder to explain. It is also Red Copper Green, but it was created a little differently.  Firstly, it's over a base of Light Brown Transparent, and secondly, it was heated longer. Either Red Copper Green is a bit of a striker, or the metals in the Light Brown Transparent really did a number on it.  Or both. I am leaning towards it being the metal content of the base colour, which I'll talk about more when we get to the Reactions section.

Reduction
Reducing Red Copper Green turns it a dark, shiny magenta.  I don't like the colour you get when you reduce regular Copper Green, but I sort of like this.   (Bead #2)

I put some silver leaf on Bead #5 and then reduced and encased it, and I'm not impressed. The silver turned yellow, which I can't really think of a use for aesthetically, and the Red Copper Green got a little darker and stripier, but not in a way that I feel like I need.

Reactions
I put silver leaf on two Red Copper Green spacers and then reduced one of them, and frankly, apart from the silver on the one I reduced being just a little more yellow, there's not a lot of difference. However, just look at the colour that the Red Copper Green turned the silver. It's gorgeous, and yes, predictably, I am in love again.

These spacers are really dark, but I didn't make any conscious effort to strike them.  This is the main reason why I think that high metal content in an adjoining colour is the main cause of Red Copper Green darkening in colour.  If you look at the big picture at the top of the screen, you can see that every single one of the beads where the Red Copper Green significantly darkened, it was in a bead with high metal content colours or additives.

Red Copper Green also behaved really interestingly with Terra frit.  (Bead #6)  Around the edges of the Terra frit, there's a turquoise outline, which seems to be the metal that forms the red part of Red Copper Green fleeing away from the edges of the silver glass.  Towards the left side of the picture, the Red Copper Green even seems to be turning purple.  Wild.

This didn't happen so much with the other silver glass bead I made, so it might be something specific to the opaque 'strikers'... or maybe even something only Terra does. Clearly I won't know the answer to that until I play with it a little more, so it's a good thing I have a few rods left to experiment with before I run out of it completely.

I didn't get much strike out of the Terra, and I'm going to blame myself. But since I think I've sucked at it in equal measure for every bead I've made, I'm going to say that I think Red Copper Green is probably not a bad base for silver glass, but that if what you want is vibrant rainbow colours, there are probably better bases to use.

With Black, Red Copper Green seems to just lose its mind completely and writhe all over the place. It's gone all funky and curdled and patchy. I've seen regular Copper Green do this with TerraNova2. I wonder if Red Copper Green will too?

And with Ivory, Red Copper Green behaves very similarly to how regular Copper Green behaves with it.  The dark line that forms between the colours is a little finer than I remember the line between Ivory and Copper Green being, and of course, regular Copper Green doesn't get the magenta blushing.

Did I mention I'm in love?

Here are a couple of beads made with Red Copper Green: