Test Results :: Tardis

CiM Tardis (CiM552) is a gorgeous semi-opaque blue glass. In thin layers and if you don't strike it in the flame, it stays wonderfully translucent. My rods of this colour had great workability, not shocking, bubbling, or scumming in the flame.

Here, in the rightmost bead, you can see the Tardis beginning to opacify after giving it an extra blast of heat in a reduction flame. The reduction quality of the flame isn't important for this - repeated heating and cooling of this colour in a neutral flame has the same effect.

Here is Tardis with some other blues for reference. It's pictured with CiM Chalcedony, CiM Poseidon, Effetre Dark Periwinkle, Effetre Laguna, and CiM Electric Avenue. Ideally, I would have included a picture of CiM Atlantis in this picture to show how much bluer Tardis is than Atlantis, but I didn't have any so you'll have to just take my word for it.

CiM Tardis is most similar in colour to CiM Electric Avenue, but is somewhat more muted and a touch deeper in colour than CiM Electric Avenue. It also retains its translucency a little easier/better than Electric Avenue, although it, too, can opacify with repeated heating and cooling.

Silver dissipates on the surface of CiM Tardis. When the silver is reduced and encased, you can see that it has coated the bead in a uniform layer and takes on a snowy, bluish glow.

My reducing silver glass frit turned Tardis green, which was interesting but not at all what I was expecting. Because blue-on-blue is as interesting as a polar bear in a snowstorm, there's not much else to say about that bead.  My striking silver glass got off to a decent striking start on top of Tardis, which means to me that Tardis would be a decent (but not awesome) base for striking silver glass.

Tardis awesomely does not have negative blackening reactions with Ivory. Since many blues and greens do yucky things with Ivory, I always feel lucky when I find one that doesn't.

Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace all separate on top of Tardis.  In the rightmost bead, you can see that the Tardis inundates the Opal Yellow dots and stringer lines, making the edges look battered and intermittently pale blue. This happens to a lesser extent with Ivory and Peace.

Here are some other beads with CiM Tardis:

Test Results :: Olive (Reichenbach)

Reichenbach Olive (RL4203) is a very pretty medium green. It's an opaque colour in that you can't see through it when you use it in thick layers, but I think it would be more accurate to call this colour an "opal" because it is definitely transparent when pulled thin, and has a sort of glow to it even when used in solid, self-coloured beads.

This is a little odd, but it seems like maybe Olive gets lighter when you strike it. I am used to striking colours darkening with repeated heating and cooling, but this one seems to do the opposite. This only happened in the beads where I restruck the colour in a reduction flame, so maybe it only happens in a propane-rich environment.

Here is Olive with a bunch of lighter colours, and then with it's closest colour cousin, CiM Shrubbery. Unlike many 104 CoE greens, Olive is not even a little bit streaky. This is nice if you're going for a more solid-looking green and not looking for an organic effect.

Silver on top of Olive doesn't change its basic greenness at all. When the silver is reduced and encased on top of Olive, its edges turn blue.

I got pretty colour out of both my reducing silver glass and my TerraNova2 frit on top of this Olive.

Here, you can really see how Olive thins out to translucency when applied in a thin layer.

Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace all separate on top of Olive.  Out of these, only Opal Yellow separates when Olive is used on top of it.

When Olive is used on top of Copper Green, a thin outline of a lighter turquoise is visible around the Olive stringer lines and dots.

Here is an Olive goddess bead. I want to make some additional beads with this colour because I still have some, but they aren't ready yet. I'll come back and update this post with them after they're made.

Test Results :: Canoe

CiM Canoe is a gorgeous, tawny striking brown. People who make sculptural animal beads are going to go nuts for this colour, since it is decidedly lion-coloured. It's also really well-suited to organic bead designs, because it's fabulously reactive without any of those reactions causing unpleasant blackening and muckiness.

This colour is a striking colour. These spacers were made at the same time, but the rightmost one got an extra blast of heat in a reduction flame before being popped into the kiln, resulting in a darker, warmer colour.

Here is Canoe with Kugler Beadmaking 104 Silver Petrol (previously known as ASK Silver Rattan), CiM Pumpkin Unique #1, ASK Caramel Apple (now known as Iris Savanne), Kugler Silver Brown (previously known as ASK Silver Cinnamon), and CiM Stone Ground.

ASK Silver Brown, in this picture, looks almost the same colour as Canoe, but I don't think that Canoe, even with the addition of silver, strikes to as dark a colour as Silver Brown does. Canoe is substantially browner and darker than Stone Ground.

The addition of silver darkens the colour of Canoe. When I reduced and encased silver leaf with Zephyr on top of Canoe, my bead cracked. The crack is an incompatibility crack, occurring both lengthwise and across the bead hole. So, encase this colour with caution, and maybe not with Zephyr and silver.

Oh my, this colour is gorgeous with silver glass. My silver glass reduction frit bloomed like crazy on top of this colour, engulfing the Canoe between the fritty bits. I also got beautiful colour from my TerraNova2 frit, which spread like crazy on top of this colour.

I had hoped that, since this colour was so much like the ASK browns both in the rod and in small beads, that it would have similar reactions. It doesn't, which is a bit sad since our last Kugler Beadmaking 104 vendor here in North America has recently decided to discontinue their sales of 104 CoE glass entirely. However, this colour is very interestingly reactive in its own right.

When Tuxedo is used on top of this colour, the Canoe rises up in halos around the Tuxedo stringerwork.

Canoe and Copper Green have a mutual separation thing -- it separates on top of Copper Green, asnd Copper Green separates on top of it. In both cases, a faint brownish line forms around the colour that is on top.

Canoe and Opal Yellow also mutually separate when used on top of one another. Where Canoe is on Opal Yellow, the separation is almost violent, looking fissure-like in the middle of the stringer lines. Opal Yellow separates a bit more gently, and spreads like crazy on top of Canoe.

On top of Ivory, Canoe looks darker than it does on top of other colours, and a dark line froms around its dots and stringer lines. The Ivory also bleeds into it, feathering at the edges of the Canoe decoration. Ivory separates on top of Canoe, and becomes surrounded by a dark Canoe halo.

Peace spreads on top of Canoe, but does not otherwise react with it.

Here is an organic bead made using Canoe both as the base colour and as part of the surface decoration.

Test Results :: Pearl Pink

Reichenbach Pearl Pink (RL0601) is a streaky pink that seems to contain some each of translucent pink, transparent pink, and clear glasses. It's smooth and easy to melt, and it doesn't boil or devitrify easily, although you can get it to bubble if you work at overheating it.

I don't see this in the other beads that I struck/reduced, but the rightmost bead here looks like it changed a bit in colour after reducing it. The pink looks a bit warmer and maybe a touch darker.

Silver turns this colour a brownish orange, and you can see that reaction around the edges of the silver crust on these beads. When the silver is reduced and encased, it looks almost the same as when it is on the surface, although the effects are magnified and the brownish orange fume is a little less prominent.

Silver Glass loves this colour. I got pretty blues and greens and a pretty wispiness from the reducing silver glass frit, and great colour from my TerraNova2 frit on top of Pearl Pink. Like with silver, there's also some orangey brown fume around the silver glass.

On top of Pearl Pink, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace all separate and Tuxedo looks quite blue, although I have been noticing that my current batch of Tuxedo is a bit more transparent than the last batch I had.

When Pearl Pink is used as stringer, the stringerwork has pink streaks in it. With Copper Green, a dark turquoise line forms around the dots and stringer lines because of the Copper Green separating.  Through Pearl Pink, Opal Yellow takes on a brighter, more orange hue.

Pearl Pink doesn't do nasty things to Ivory, which is awesome. Another pink that we can use with Ivory. Yay!

Here are some additional beads made with Pearl Pink:

Test Results :: Pachyderm

CiM Pachyderm is a warm, light beige opaque colour. It's lovely with silver, and moderately reactive with other colours.

Pachyderm is reputed to be a striking colour, but I did not get a range of different tones from it. Here, you can see that these beads are the same colour, even though the rightmost one has been reheated in a reduction flame. Possibly a more aggressive reheating would be necessary to get a colour change in striking.

The colours shown here with Pachyderm are Effetre Sage, Effetre Avocado, CiM African Gray, CiM Koala, and Effetre Sediment. I chose these colours because their rod colours weren't all that different from Pachyderm's before I melted them.  Pachyderm is pinker than all of these other colours, and lighter than all but African Gray. Out of the ones I chose, it is closest to African Gray, although that colour lacks the pinkish cast that Pachyderm has.

Silver on top of this colour makes the colour darken to a much richer brown. When the silver is reduced and encased, it turns blue.

Pachyderm is a very nice base colour for silver glass, both the reducing kind and the striking kind. It fumed brown around my reducing silver glass frit in a beautifully dramatic way, and I got great colour out of my TerraNova2 frit on top of this colour.

This colour has a lot of interesting reaction potential.

Pachyderm separates on top of Tuxedo. When Tuxedo is used on top of Pachyderm, the Pachyderm rises up around it in halos.

Pachyderm has a reciprocal dark line reaction with Copper Green. This dark line is not black like what happens with Ivory - it's more of a darker version of its unaltered self. Pachyderm also separates on top of Copper Green, and Copper Green separates very dramatically on top of Pachyderm.

On top of Opal Yellow, Pachyderm separates and seems to strike to a warmer brown colour.  When Opal Yellow is used on top of Pachyderm, it spreads like crazy, and also separates slightly.

Pachyderm separates on top of Ivory.  Ivory separates on top of Pachyderm, and also spreads quite dramatically.

Here's a goddess bead made from Pachyderm swirled with my Candy Floss frit blend.

Test Results :: Light Pink (Bubblegum)

Effetre Light Pink (EFF260) is another colour that I am pretty late in trying. I've never been all that into pink, but like just about everything else in my life over the last few years, that seems to have changed.

The batch of Light Pink that I have tested here is a sort of famous one called Bubblegum. I'm not sure how similar or different to this one other batches of Light Pink have been. Sometimes a new batch of glass is given a special name for an important technical or aesthetic reason because it works differently or is a markedly different colour, but sometimes this happens by mistake (the glass looks different in the rod but is identical to a previous batch once melted) or as a marketing ploy. It's impossible for me to know for sure how 'special' this batch was without doing some further testing and investigation.

Light Pink doesn't change colour when you reduce it, and doesn't acquire any sort of special surface finish.

Here, you can see this colour with some other colours in the same hue group. It's lighter and cooler than both CiM Desert Pink and Gelly's Sty, pinker than Vetrofond Light Pink, and both pinker and substantially darker than Effetre White Rose and Silver Pink.

Light Pink turns yellow when you put silver on it. When the silver is reduced and encased, the yellowing of the base colour remains but the silver turns whitish.

Reducing silver glass on top of Light Pink fumes the Light Pink a brownish yellow colour. Light Pink makes an indifferent base colour for striking silver glass.

Light Pink separates on top of Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, and Ivory.  Ivory and Opal Yellow both separate on top of Light Pink.

When Tuxedo is used on top of Light Pink, the Light Pink rises up around it in halos.

When Ivory is used on top of Light Pink, a visual fissure shows at the edges of the dots and stringer lines, giving the stringerwork a 3-dimensional look.

Here are some other beads made using Light Pink of the Bubblegum variety:

Test Results :: Peridot

CiM Peridot is a pale spring green colour, and is like a paler version of CiM Mojito, and somewhat less yellow. It's a bit less reactive than Mojito, and is a pretty, unique addition to the 104 colour palette.

Here, you can see that Peridot doesn't change when you reduce it. In the leftmost beads, I got a fair number of scummy bubbles. Peridot does tend to scum and bubble when it gets hot, so it's important to work it on the cooler side.

Like other colours in this hue group, Peridot is quite reactive with silver. You can see in the leftmost bead that silver turned this colour an interesting colour of brown when used on the surface. When the silver was reduced and encased, that brownness is not in evidence and the silver seems to have dispersed itself uniformly all over the surface, forming a snowy blanket under the clear encasement layer.

Peridot turns silver a pretty golden colour when you use it to encase silver foil.

Peridot is a pretty base for reducing silver glass frit.  Peridot makes an average base colour for striking silver glass and does the fun silver glass frit stringer thing that I like to do with reactive transparents in a streaky blue way.

With other colours, Peridot is not particularly reactive. It's definitely not one of the colours that helps keep Copper Green clean,