Test Results :: Chrysalis

CiM Chrysalis (CiM462)  is a very pretty, almost-opaque robin's egg blue. 

When Chrysalis is reduced, it loses some of its vibrancy. You can see that in the rightmost bead, the colour is subtly greyed out and muted.

Silver webs and turns a golden colour on top of Chrysalis. When the silver is reduced and encased, it turns whiteish.

It's amazing how different the same reducing silver glass frit blend can look, depending on what colour you put under it. If you look at my other recent blog posts, you'll notice that the frit looks much greener on top of this colour, and that there is a yellowish blush around the fritty bits that I don't see with a lot of other colours. Not that this result was particularly attractive to me, but it is certainly different. My TerraNova2 frit did not develop colour well on top of Chrysalis.

Chrysalis is very reactive with other colours. It separated on top of Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, and Ivory. And maybe Peace - it's hard to see because both colours are so light. Peace, Ivory, Opal Yellow, and Copper Green all separated on top of Chrysalis.

The other interesting thing is the blotchiness that Chrysalis seems to cause both when used on top of other colours, curdling them, and when used underneath other colours, curdling itself.

Here are some fun beads made with Chrysalis.

Test Results :: Harvest

CiM Harvest (CiM217) is a pretty medium orange. I found that Harvest boiled a little while I was using it, but not seriously enough that it affected the surface finish or colour of the finished beads, so if you are using it and it foams up on you a bit, just carry on.

Like Phoenix, Harvest is a bit of a striker. Repeated heating and cooling turn it a more uniform, darker orange than you would get working it cool and without multiple reheatings.

Here, you can see that Harvest is lighter and a little more on the yellow side than CiM Phoenix, but substantially less yellow than the also-new CiM Monarch. The other colours I compared it with here were CiM Sunset (it's a little less vibrant than Sunset), and Effetre Light and Dark Zucca. It's lighter and more yellow than those Effetre colours as well.

On top of Harvest, silver leaf crusts up and gets a coppery sheen in places. When the silver is reduced and encased, it turns blue. This is consistent with the results I see for a lot of reds and oranges.

On top of Harvest, silver glass frit develops colour well, and it also gets brownish rings arount the fritty bits, which can be a cool effect.

On top of Harvest, Ivory separates. Harvest and Copper Green develop a reciprocal dark line reaction.

Test Results :: Multicolor

Reichenbach Multicolor (RL6209) has changed a little since the first time I used it, indicating to me that it might not be all that consistent from batch to batch. This most recent supply that I got is much easier to strike and a little darker than the last batch of this colour that I tried.

This colour is less saturated hue-wise than Multicolor Dark, more reactive with other colours (the reactions are similar, just more intesnse), and I found it a bit slower to strike.

Multicolor is fairly stiff, making it nice to work with sculpturally, although its striking nature means that you need to be careful to keep even heat or you end up with a sort of blotchy result.

Making a simple spacer from multicolor, I got very pretty, variegated greens and blues. When I reduced a Multicolor bead, I got a shiny gunmetal purple.

When silver leaf is melted into the surface of Multicolor, it looks a uniform light teal colour, except for where there are gaps in the silver layer. When the silver is reduced and encased, it looks more yellowish, and the multicolor peeking through the gaps, instead of looking blue, looks a reddish purple colour.

Multicolor is very reactive with other colours.  It separates Copper Green, Opal Yellow, and Peace, and forms a serious dark line reaction with Ivory.

Here are some other beads made with Reichenbach Multicolor:

Here in the goddess bead, you can see that in the places where I reheated the surface with some concentrated heat (nipple and belly button areas), I got a very strong strike to purple.

Test Results :: Enchanted

CiM Enchanted (CiM626) is a pale lavender-pink transparent. I found this colour a little boily/scummy, but not as troubling in that respect as the new CiM Venus, which I reviewed a few weeks ago.

I found that Enchanted did not change colour when reduced (leftmost bead) and that it does have a bit of a tendency to boil and create bubbles. Working it cool helps to avoid this.

Here is Enchanted both under my photo lamps and in natural light. You can see that it looks darker and pinker in natural light. All of the photos in this post (apart from the darker frame of this one) are all taken from the studio-lit photo.

Here is Enchanted with Effetre Rosata Extralux, Pale Amethyst, Dark Lavender, and Pale Lavender Blue, and with CiM Pink Champagne. Enchanted is pinker than Effetre Dark Lavender in this studio-lit photo, but is around the same shade of pinkish lavender in natural light.

Enchanted is quite a bit more reactive with silver than Dark Lavender, which I found interesting since I thought they would work up similarly. Enchanted seems to fume a deeper rose colour with the addition of silver, and encasing silver foil with Enchanted will turn the silver foil golden. Effetre Dark Lavender did not substantially alter the colour of silver and didn't change colour itself when used with it.

The leftmost bead where I used my reduction frit blend turned out sort of pretty, with the fritty bits developing diverse blues and purples, but they did that without getting any nifty outline and without developing much of a sheen. The other two beads did nothing worth discussing.

And while Enchanted is fairly reactive with silver, it's not very reactive with these other colours I tested it with. Apart from some separation of Copper Green and Ivory when they're used on top of Enchanted, I didn't observe much in this way.

I didn't make any other beads with Enchanted yet, but if I do, I'll come back and update this with pictures. On the whole, I thought this colour was pretty, but I prefer the price, consistency, and workability of Effetre Dark Lavender. I'd choose this one instead only if I were planning to also work with fine silver and wanted the reactions.