Test Results :: Spring Willow

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

Effetre Spring Willow is a bright, cheerful light yellow-green colour. Its working properties are very similar to those of Effetre Okey Dokey Artichoky, a colour that is no longer available but that I love just as much. Where Okey Dokey Artichoky was more of a blueish green, Spring Willow is more on the Chartreuse side.

Like Okey Dokey Artichoky, Spring Willow is transparent when it's hot. However, after it cools down, it is decidedly opaque. It is a little streaky, and can also strike to a sort of brownish/yellow colour in a patchy way.

When Spring Willow is reduced, it develops a patchy, brownish surface colouration.

Spring Willow fumes a little yellowish/brownish when silver leaf is applied to its surface. The silver leaf also goes a little brown, and lays flat on the surfgace without balling up and disappearing the way it does on some other colours.

When the silver leaf is reduced and encased, it does two strange things. First of all, the colour of the silver lightens right up to a blueish silver. Secondly, the Spring Willow turns pink. I have no explanation for this at all, but isn't it cool?

Putting silver glass on Spring Willow isn't a great way to use up those colours you paid $80+ per pound for. The reduction colours get sort of blotchy and weird-looking (and kind've clash with the colour of Spring Willow) and I didn't have a lot of success getting my TerraNova2 frit to strike.

Note: Apparently some people like what happens when you reduce silver glass on Spring Willow and the associated fuming reactions, so you might want to try it yourself to see. I'm not one of those people, but you might be!

mmmm... reactions.

On top of Tuxedo, Spring Willow looks very translucent, and looks more blueish grey than green. This isn't a reaction per se, but it is interesting.

Copper Green, Opal Yellow and Peace all separate on top of Spring Willow.

When Spring Willow is used on top of Copper Green, the Copper Green takes on an intense turquoise appearance, and doesn't get that odd greyish hazing on its surface.

Opal Yellow makes Spring Willow turn an orangey-yellow colour. When the Spring Willow is on top of Opal Yellow, the Opal Yellow pops up around it in cheerful yellow halos.

When you put Ivory on top of Spring Willow, it develops a dark line reaction that is fairly dramatic - it develops in a shaded ring sort of configuration, meaning that you get three colours instead of just the typical two. You can see in the left-most bead above that the dots and stringer lines have a clean Ivory area in the centre, surrounded by a darker brownish aura, finally all surrounded by a dark brown line. Neat!

When you put Spring Willow on top of Ivory it stops looking light green and looks more like a turquoise. The colour it turns is a mottled greyish green-blue, and it develops a jaggedy dark line reaction with the Ivory underneath.

Again, I don't have anything fun to share made out of Spring Willow because of my annoying kiln problems. Hopefully I will have some new beads to share soon.

Test Results :: Emerald City

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

CiM Emerald City is a new limited run colour, and is a saturated dark emerald green transparent. It is a little on the reactive side, as we will see, and is a brilliant base colour for striking silver glass. In thin layers, it is a little brighter than I generally like, but that isn't going to stop me from loving it.

Green is my favourite colour, so I might be a bit biased, but this particular Creation is Messy limited run is exceptionally beautiful to me. It is far more saturated and a little more on the blue side than Effetre Dark Emerald, and it is significantly deeper, richer and more saturated than CiM Oz.

This colour melts like a dream, doesn't boil or pit or spark. I experienced a little shockiness when introducing a used rod of Emerald City to the flame, but an unmelted rod was not shocky at all, and I experienced no shocking at all once the pre-melted end was reheated. It was refreshing after the scorching experience I had with Effetre Dark Grass Green (another of my favourites) since that colour likes to splinter and little hot bits of it like to fly back and land on my hands. Emerald City didn't do that to me.

Here is Emerald City, au naturel. The plain spacers are so dark you can only just see through them when you hold them up to the light. The colour is very dense. In the bead on the right, I layered Emerald City over a core of Effetre clear so that we could see the colour better.

When silver leaf is melted into the surface of Emerald City, it disperses into a fine spray of fine silver webbing. In the bead on the right, when I reduced and encased the silver, it turned into more of a greyish blanket with tattered edges.

Here we have Emerald City with my reducing silver glass frit blend on the left. My silver glass got really nice shine on top of Emerald City, and the frit got interesting outlines around the edges. This tells me that Emerald City would probably be prettier with reduction stringer dots and lines than it is with the frit, however the effect is still neat.

In the bead on the right, my TerraNova2 frit really took off. I love how much colour I got out of the TerraNova2 on top of this colour with exactly the same amount of effort I usually put into it. Some colours are just better at helping silver glass strike than others, and Emerald City is a big winner in this department.

Emerald City causes separation reactions in Opal Yellow, Peace and Copper Green.

There is a brown line reaction between Emerald City and Ivory. When Ivory is used on top of Emerald City, the brown line sticks to the edges of the Ivory glass, however because Emerald City is a transparent, you can see the brownish reaction both around and underneath the Emerald City in the bead on the right. This is the same reaction you get when you use Light Teal or Light Aqua (or any other blue-green transparent) on top of Ivory.

I don't have any additional beads to show with Emerald City because there is either something wrong with my kiln or something wrong with the power feeding to my garage, because I couldn't get my kiln to ramp up and stay at garaging temperature last weekend. Yay... another problem to solve!

Test Results :: Sedona

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

Effetre Sedona is a temperamental, dusky pink that has occasional tendencies towards lavender. It is a blotchy, organic, beautiful colour.

Sedona has a tendency to devitrify. Like Effetre Purple (Evil Devitrifying Purple, or EDP), the secret to staying free of the devit is to get the bead glowing hot and then not heat it again. It's the incremental heating and cooling that are a real problem for these colours. I learned from Kimberly Affleck that you can also kill the devit on Sedona by lightly reducing the bead in a dragon's breath flame, which is a strong, no-oxygen flame, but I'm a wuss and I don't like turning my torch that high, so I rarely bother. I sort of like the devit, so I'm figuring out ways to make it work for me.

Try making a bead with Sedona and letting it get a really disgusting amount of devitrification. To maximize the amount of devitrification, gently re-heat and cool the Sedona bead at least five times. Then, when you think you've probably made the absolute ugliest thing ever, encase it completely with Light Aqua, melt in the encasement layer and then stick it in the kiln. Let me know what you think.

Sedona in its natural state ranges anywhere from a deep dusty rose, to a hot pink, to a pinkish lavender. You never quite know what you're going to get with Sedona. When you reduce Sedona, it turns a shiny dark purple.

Where I have added silver leaf to the Sedona, it has developed oily-looking black webbing, and has also blushed a strange orangey pink colour. Around the edges, it has yellowed. When the silver leaf is reduced and encased, a lot more yellow is evident, as well as a livid lavender colour.

Adding reducing silver glass frit to Sedona and then reducing it is not a very attractive path to go down. The silver glass frit turns a dead mustardy colour, and all around it the Sedona reduces to a dark purple. Ugh. On the other hand, Sedona is brilliant as a base for striking silver glass, if you don't mind how the Sedona gets a little orange around the frit. My TerraNova2 frit here has bloomed beautifully.

Sedona is one of the more reactive colours I've tested, and the reactions are almost identical to those I got with EDP. Copper Green, Opal Yellow and Peace all separate on top of Sedona. When Sedona is used on top of Copper Green, Opal Yellow and Peace, the base colour rises up around the Sedona in halos.

There is a reciprocal orangey reaction between Opal Yellow and Sedona - Opal Yellow on top of Sedona looks a richer, deeper yellow than usual, with a tint of Orange. Sedona on top of Opal Yellow seems to spread a little and take on an orangey hue. This reminds me of the reaction between Opal Yellow and Rubino Oro.

Ivory blackens when used with Sedona, developing a webby dark line reaction. When the Ivory is used on top of Sedona, The reaction is densely contained within the Ivory stringer dots and lines, but when Sedona is used on top of Ivory, the reaction is much less localized, and spreads like wildfire.

On top of both Tuxedo and Ivory, Sedona looks far more purple than it does pink.

Here are some fun beads with Sedona.

  

Test Results :: Rose Tea

1 - Over Silver Foil, 2 - w/ Silver Leaf, 3 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 4 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - Plain, 7 - Plain (reduced), 8 - Over Clear, 9 & 10 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory & Peace

CiM Rose Tea is a new limited run colour from Creation is Messy that sort of reminds me of an older Limited Run called Dusk. It's a little pinker than Dusk, but it is silver and silver-glass friendly in the same way, without the tendency to boil and bubble that Dusk had.

Rose Tea is a soft, pinkish lavender colour that looks the same colour under natural light that it does under white light. It doesn't colour-shift, which is nice for those of us who photograph our work. It is moderately reactive, and seems to be a good catalyst colour for striking silver glass.

Rose Tea does not change the colour of Silver Foil significantly when used over it. You can see in the left-most bead above that there is one streak of goldish colour developing over the silver, but that it has mostly stayed a uniform shade of pinkish lavender. In the centre bead, I have melted Silver Leaf into the surface, which has resulted in a strange 'galaxy' feel - the silver has gone a goldish colour and seems to have caused a blueish reaction in the glass around it. When the silver was reduced and encased,  it made the Rose Tea take on a blueish-pinkish haze with a sort of golden halo. Weird.

Reducing silver glass on top of Rose Tea is sort of interesting - the Rose Tea takes on a sort of oilslick appearance. But the frit itself goes a lackluster matte colour, so it's not all that attractive. In the bead on the right, I got a very encouraging and interesting strike response from the TerraNova2 Frit.

Over Rose Tea, Tuxedo seems to thin out and look more transparent than I am used to. Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace all separate slightly over Rose Tea.

Rose Tea is one of those colours that keeps Copper Green looking like a rich turquoise. There is no hazing up, pinkening or otherwise yucky thing happening in the Copper Green when Rose Tea is used on top of it.

A light turquoise line pops up around the Rose Tea when it is used on top of Copper Green.

A lighter yellow halo pops up around Rose Tea when it is used on top of Opal Yellow.

Unfortunately, I didn't make very many beads with Rose Tea. Nevertheless, here is one sort of murky lentil. I'm not really sure what possessed me to decorate it with Mosaic Green stringer or add those Light Teal dots, but I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time. The only reason I'm showing you this is because the striking silver glass twisties did some neat things with the Rose Tea underneath them.