Test Results :: Auburn

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (encased), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 6 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 7 - Over Ivory in a Floral, 8 & 9 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace

CiM Auburn is a dark, rich, "barely transparent" transparent red. It is similar in colour to Valentine (maybe just a touch darker), and equally difficult to photograph, because it is much redder than the pictures really show. On the CiM website, Auburn is listed as a brown, but it is not brown at all - it is very decidedly red.

When I say that CiM Auburn is '"barely transparent", what I mean is that it is so saturated that it looks just like an opaque when you use it alone. For one reason or another, I didn't try using Auburn over Clear, so I'm not sure how much lighter it would appear that way. I do know that it thins out nicely over white, looking quite a bit lighter.

Silver darkens / greys the colour of Auburn. On top of Auburn, the silver leaf has spread out and misted a little, but has also turned a bit greyish brown. When the silver leaf is reduced and encased, it just sort of looks like a dirty, webby crust over the Auburn. Blech.

Reducing silver glass is nicer on top of Auburn than striking silver glass is. My silver glass frit blend in the bead on the left came out fine. The frit didn't spread or turn the Auburn iridescent or do any of the other super-fun things, but it held its colour well and the reduction flame made it shiny. It's quite different though, from my results with Valentine and Marashino, where the frit spread out quite a bit more and doesn't have such a strong blue colour to it. It's also quite different from how the exact same frit behaved on Obsidian. Glass is so interesting.

In the bead on the right, my TerraNova2 frit got some nice colour, but the colour is so obscured by the blackening of the frit's edges that it is not very evident and a little disappointing. There's hope for using larger swaths of striking silver glass on top of Auburn, but the frit seems to be a no-go.

I'm not sure what's going on with my latest batch of Tuxedo. Whereas previous batches have been pretty stable with Copper Green, this one seems to really like to bleed into it. You can see some heavy blueness where the Tuxedo and Copper Green meet in this bead, and the Copper Green is behaving oddly, too. Not sure if that's all Tuxedo or if the Auburn has something to do with it, but it is strange.

Auburn and Copper Green have a dark line reaction, but that reaction is only really evident when Copper Green is used on top of Auburn. In addition to the dark line, it has also made the Copper Green separate so that it is lighter around the edges. I like it when there is more than one reaction between two colours - very interesting!

Auburn seems to make Opal Yellow curdle - there is one place on this bead (look towards the top) where the Opal Yellow is coming apart. In the bead on the right, where I've used Opal Yellow over Auburn, The Opal Yellow has developed brownish orange rings around itself, which has to be my favourite reaction out of this bunch. Well, maybe it's tied with the Copper Green dark line/separating thing.

Both Ivory and Peace separate when used on top of Auburn.

I have a hard time using red, so I don't have any other beads to show this week. I still have almost a whole rod of Auburn left and if I can think of something creative to do with it, I'll come back and put a pic in.