Test Results :: Butter Pecan Unique #5

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 7 - w/ Raku, 8 - w/ Tuxedo, 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - 2/ Opal Yellow, 11 - w/ Ivory, 12 - w/ White, 13 - w/ Olive

CiM Butter Pecan Unique #5 is officially one of my favourite colours, so I hope there's still some left when I allow myself to order glass for the first time this year.  This colour is versatile and interesting, and makes a brilliant base colour for organics.  I like it better than Butter Pecan Unique #4, which I posted about last October.

When you reduce Butter Pecan Unique #5, the colour of it warms up a bit and the surface goes faintly shiny. This is evident in the little crystal that I reduced as well as in the lentil I made with reducing silver glass frit. This colour, like Butter Pecan Unique #4, is very, very soft and drippy when you get it really hot.  For me, this means that if I'm going to make a pressed lentil with it, I want a core of Clear underneath the Butter Pecan Unique #5 or I squoosh the glass too much and end up with knobby bits at the end of my bead.  Yuck.  This is totally a heat control thing, and I know it, but coring the bead with Clear helps me avoid this problem.

Silver leaf is gorgeous on top of Butter Pecan Unique #5, crystallizing and forming a golden crust while fuming the surface of the bead to a rich brown.  Reduced and encased, this reaction is a vivid royal blue interspersed with silver.  Butter Pecan Unique #4 did not turn my silver blue this way, and silver leaf sits on top of Butter Pecan Unique #4 with more of a flat, shiny finish.

 

Butter Pecan Unique #5 is not a star with silver glass either, which is the wording I used to describe how I felt about Butter Pecan Unique #4 and silver glass.  However, I did find that I sort of like how Butter Pecan Unique #5 looks with 104 Raku.

One thing sort of interesting and worth a bit of a note is how the Butter Pecan Unique #5 went sort of satiny in the bead with the reducing silver glass frit after it had been reduced.  You can see in the picture, above, the way the light plays off of the Butter Pecan Unique #5 that has been fumed by the silver glass.  The other interesting thing is how the Raku has made the Butter Pecan Unique #5 sort of rise up and separate from itself around the Raku stringer in the bead on the far right (above).

Tuxedo bleeds into Butter Pecan Unique #5 in the middle of this test bead, and creates a strange blueish purple streakiness. The Butter Pecan #5 has sort of risen around the Tuxedo stringer work in places, and the colour of the Butter Pecan #5 side of this bead seems almost tea-stained. On top of Tuxedo, Butter Pecan Unique #5 develops a shiny outline to its dots and stringer lines.

On top of Butter Pecan Unique #5, Copper Green develops a dark outline and a shiny, dark patina.  When Butter Pecan Unique #5 is used on top of Copper Green, there is no reaction to speak of.  I really find this odd, because my expectation is that if the colours are reactive, they will behave oddly under both circumstances (as the base AND as decoration) but that was totally not the case here.

In a very similar way to what I noticed with Butter Pecan Unique #4, Butter Pecan Unique #5 and Opal Yellow have an odd relationship.  On top of Opal Yellow, Butter Pecan Unique #5 develops a dark line around the dots and stringer lines.  On top of Butter Pecan Unique #5, Opal Yellow looks sort of chalky, floaty and dirty.

 

There's nothing too exciting to report on the Ivory and White fronts, although the Ivory dots in the picture on the left seem sort of floaty on top of the Butter Pecan Unique #5.

Like Butter Pecan Unique #4, some serious separation and curdling happens when it is used on top of Lauscha Olive.  This reaction is milder than the one with the #4 unique though, because the green of the Olive hasn't permeated the Butter Pecan Unique #5 and migrated into the centre of the dots.

And here are some fun beads with Butter Pecan Unique #5.  I have some serious love for this colour.