Test Results :: Pajama Blue

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain - reduced, 3 - w/ Silver foil, 4 - w/ Silver foil - reduced & encased, 5 - w/ Khaos frit, 6 - w/ Silver glass frit (Gaia, Elektra2, Nyx) - reduced, 7 - as a floral, 8 - w/ Tuxedo, 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - w/ Ivory

Vetrofond Pajama Blue is a soft baby blue that is a little more muted in tone than Effetre Light Sky Blue.  I prefer more muted hues, so this made me pretty happy.  It isn't magical with silver glass, but I am finding that it makes a good base for organics because it is generally silver friendly and the way it subtly reduces to diffuse pink/red is really interesting.

I realized last week that it is better to put the pictures ahead of the text in each paragraph, so I've started doing it that way.  If I develop a compulsive need to make them all that way consistently, you might notice some changes in my previous test result entries.

General Impressions
Pajama Blue is a litle stiffer than Effetre Light Sky Blue, which I prefer -- the soupier a colour is, the less likely I am to have success shaping it.  It behaves almost identically with other colours to what you would expect Light Turquoise or Copper Green to do, and the soft, muted blue colour of it is really pretty.  The colour is faintly streaky, which I also enjoy.

Reduction

When you reduce Pajama Blue, it develops a soft, diffuse, red/pink reduction film.   (Bead #2)  I like that the reduction creates such a soft effect... it's much more subtle and attractive than what happens when you reduce turquoises.

Reactions

Silver doesn't do much to change the colour of Pajama Blue (or anything else at all really) while it's sitting on top of it. And if you look at Bead #3, you can see that the silver has stayed more in place and is forming a smooth layer over the Pajama Blue.  In Bead #4, I think my Clear caused some of the yellowing, but similarly to how I felt when I did this test with Red Copper Green, the results leave me certain I don't need to ever reduce silver and encase it over this colour again.

This is a little different than what I've seen in colours like Seashell Swirl, where the silver balled up and left brown remains everywhere or Tamarind Unique #1 which seemed to make it crust up on the surface of the glass. I need to explore the net differences between those two silver reactions at some point, but in the meantime I'm also contemplating this third sort of behaviour.  I think it means that Pajama Blue will make a good base for organics, and possibly not the best base for silver glass.

You can see in Bead #5 that I still haven't solved my Khaos problem, but frankly, I don't think the base colour was giving me a lot of help here. The reduced silver glass frit bead (Bead #6) didn't even really come out looking all that great, and those have been consistently attractive in my other colour tests. Even Dark Violet did more interesting things with my reduced silver glass frit than Pajama Blue did.

I don't know if it will do this with Effetre or Vetrofond Black, but Tuxedo bleeds into Pajama Blue and the bleed is a sort of electric blue-purple in colour. (Bead #8) It's really cool, although I still haven't managed to think of an instance where I'd want to make it happen on purpose.

And isn't this interesting... I didn't expect Pajama Blue and Copper Green to have a reaction, but they totally did. (Bead #9) Where I put the Copper Green over Pajama Blue, it separated and you can see how it is lighter around the outside and darker in the middle. Where the Pajama Blue is on top of the Copper Green, you can see the Copper Green has developed a darker turquoise outline around it.  I think it's also worth noticing that although I didn't do anything special to it, this Copper Green bead doesn't have dark silvery stuff all over it the way a lot of my other Copper Green test beads do.

And finally, with Ivory, Pajama Blue develops a dark line in the same way that all blues and turquoises seem to.  The difference with Pajama Blue is that the line is more grey than it is black, and spreads a little.  I rather like the softness of it.

I only had a chance to make one 'fun bead' with Pajama Blue, but I'll post more as they pop out of the kiln.