Test Results :: Lilac

Reichenbach Lilac (RL6221) is a medium to dark purple that has blue overtones. It is a little less purple and a little less bright than its close cousin Purple Rose, but has better workability since it doesn't boil, pit, and devitrify the way that colour can. It's very, very streaky.

In the leftmost bead here, you can see how crazily streaky this colour is, with the streaks looking both bluer and darker than the rest of the bead. When this colour is reduced, it goes dark and slightly shiny.

Adding silver to Lilac turns it a weird greenish yellow colour. When the silver is reduced and encased, it turns white with a faint blush of blue here and there. Any Lilac still visible through the silver continues to look greenish yellow.

Lilac rocks silver glass. Around my reducing silver glass, it's gone brownish and shiny, and even reddish in places, and it has developed really cool delineation around the fritty bits. The frit itself in the leftmost bead has developed colour and shine really well. In the rightmost bead, you can see that I also got very pretty colours from the TerraNova2 frit.

Lilac separates Copper Green, Opal Yellow, and Peace. It develops a reciprocal dark line reaction with Ivory, and it spreads and goes somewhat translucent when used over White and Opal Yellow. It separates on top of Tuxedo.

Here are some other beads made with Lilac:

Test Results :: Opal Orange

Reichenbach Opal Orange (RL6214) is a not-quite-but-almost-opaque bright orange. Used on top of other colours in a single layer, the resulting dots and lines have good opacity, but if you reheat this colour, the very topmost layer gets a slight translucency that is quite interesting.

Here, you can see that Opal Orange is a bit of a striker. The bead that I reduced (on the right) is a deeper orange than the one that did not receive the additional heat exposure.

Silver fumes Opal Orange to a darker hue. On top of Opal Orange, silver leaf takes on a golden-iron appearance. The bead on the right where I reduced and encased the silver is a snowy white with touches of blue under the clear layer.

On top of Opal Orange, my silver glass frit seemed to migrate a bit towards the bead's centre in both tests. My reducing silver glass frit looks darker on top of this colour than on others I've used the same blend on. I got nice colours from TerraNova2 frit on top of this colour.

The only real reaction I observed in these beads was the dark line that formed between Copper Green and Opal Orange, and a very slight amount of separation in it on top of Tuxedo.

Here are some beads made with Opal Orange:

Test Results :: Venus

CiM Venus (CiM911) is meant to be a transparent coral, and I can see on the CiM page that some people had that experience with it, but for me this colour ended up a light peach rather than a coral and lost its pink blush while I was working it. Since I tend to work a little on the hot side, I'm guessing it is the blasty heat that kills the pink.

I found Venus quite difficult to work with. While I tend to struggle with a lot of the light transparent colours, this one was a real monster for me, bubbling no matter how high in the flame I tried to work with it. So, heat it slowly and carefully, and maybe you will have better luck than I did.

Silver leaf fumed blue for me on top of Venus, and when I encased Silver Foil with Venus it turned gold. Reducing and encasing silver leaf on top of Venus didn't yield anything particularly interesting - the silver turned a greyish colour with hints of blue here and there where there was a break in silver coverage.

I found Venus to be an unexpectedly nice base colour for silver glass. My reducing silver glass got all ethereal and billowy on top of this colour, and I got a pleasing starting strike from my TerraNova2 frit. My reduction frit stringer test was also moderately successful, with lots of swirling blues and turquoises.

Venus is not very reactive with other colours, although Copper Green and Opal Yellow both separate on top of it.

It does a similar thing over Copper Green to what I observed with Dark Lavender, really picking up any red streaks in the CG and showing quite deeply coloured on top of it. This is a fun effect that isn't really a reaction, and I am pondering ways to exploit it. I wonder if flowers made with Copper Green petals overdotted with Dark Lavender or Venus would be pretty?

I didn't have much interest in making additional beads with Venus after the way it misbehaved on me, but I still have almost a full rod and may revisit it in the next few weeks. If so, I'll come back and update with pictures.

Test Results :: Jelly Bean

CiM Jelly Bean (CiM461) is similar in hue to Chartreuse tending just a little greener, but worked up a bit differently for me, streaking and bubbling more.

Reducing Jelly Bean doesn't change its colour or opacity.

On top of Jelly Bean, silver spreads and veins, looking lacy and beigeish.

My encased silver test bead cracked (right) and I'm not sure what to think about that. The crack is along the mandrel line so it is quite possibly thermal rather than any kind of compatibility problem, but if I ever have more Jelly Bean I will approach encasing it with a bit of caution.

I really love what my reducing silver glass frit did on top of Jelly Bean. Even though the results in these beads look very different from the results that I got with Chartreuse, the thing that the two glasses have in common is that the silver glass has done fun things with both of them.

Copper Green separates on top of Jelly Bean, and so do Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace. Ivory, Opal Yellow, and Peace separate underneath Jelly Bean too, rising up around its stringer lines and dots in fluffy halos.

Here are some other beads made with Jelly Bean.

Test Results :: Dark Lavender

Effetre Dark Lavender (EFF081) is only slightly "darker" than its close cousin Pale Lavender. Because it is a colour-changer like many other lavender glass colours, it can look either blue-ish or pink-ish depending on the light. This means that depending on the kind of light bulbs you have at your torch and in your photography setup, your pictures can end up looking quite different from the finished beads, and the colour of this glass might look quite different while you're working it.

Here's what happens when I turn off my photo lights. Neat colour-shiftiness, right?  Now go ahead and imagine the other pictures in both lights, because I am not doing this for all of them. The rest of the pictures are all either blow-ups from the main set photo or were taken under the same lights as the main set photo.

Here you can see that reducing Dark Lavender (right bead) doesn't change the colour. You can also see that I got a little bubbly scum in this colour while I was using it. This is just an unfortunate bead because on the whole I find this colour nice to work with and bubble-free.

Here is Dark Lavender with some of the other, similar colours that are available. It is noticeably (in this light) bluer than the new CiM Enchanted. I've pictured it here with CiM Pink Champagne, CiM Enchanted, Effetre Rosata Extralux, Effetre Pale Amethyst, and Effetre Pale Lavender Blue.

Silver Leaf on top of Dark Lavender turns golden in colour. I was hoping that I'd get pretty gold in my silver foil bead (centre) as well when I encased it with Dark Lavender, but I didn't so much get that. There is a faint yellowish hint here and there, but the silver foil mostly stayed silver under Dark Lavender. In the bead where I reduced and encased the silver leaf, the silver shows up as a whiteish layer under the clear that is fumed faintly blue at its edges.

Here you can see that Dark Lavender makes an average base colour for silver glass. My silver glass frit stringer test was a bit of a bust. There's some pretty wispiness in the bead, but it's pretty sparse.

On top of White and Ivory, you can really see how pale this Dark Lavender is.

The only one of these colours that it acted funny with is Copper Green. Copper Green on top of Dark Lavender separates and turns reddish at its edges. I am at a loss to explain what happened in the Dark Lavender though... I had to double-check to make sure I hadn't somehow polluted this picture by somehow conflating the different light-type photos in my editing software. I don't have the faintest clue why the Dark Lavender has gotten veiny and pinkish in patches both over and around the Copper Green, but I like it!

Here are some little earring pairs made with Dark Lavender.