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July 30, 2018

Test Results :: Camouflage


CiM Camouflage (CiM464) is a medium. green opaque glass. It's quite streaky, separating on itself in lacelike patterns, and this behaviour seems to be aggravated by the addition of silver, becoming more pronounced. It reacts with Ivory, and my experiment with encasing it met with some cracking failure. My rods of this colour were extremely shocky, and I didn't enjoy using them at all. I only tried three, though, so that should probably not be taken as indicative of the whole batch's behaviour.


Here, I've shot Camouflage and Amphibian spacers, side by side. You can see that Camouflage is darker and greener than Amphibian, which has a softer, slightly bluer and greyer hue.


In the leftmost bead here, you can see the strange crazing lines that this colour developed. The beads are both single-colour but I probably added to the larger one multiple times from the same source rod. I don't think the lines developed along the additions, though, the way we see with some colours.


The bead on the left in this picture has silver leaf added to it, and the crazing of the surface is much more pronounced than it was in the spacer bead. When this kind of crazing or reticulation happens in other colours (like Dark Ivory, for instance) we call it 'curdling', but for some reason I am having trouble associating that word with something this colour.

In the rightmost bead, you can see that my reduced and encased silver leaf developed a yellowish cast under the clear. You can also see some unfortunate cracks that seem like they are incompatibility. I encased here with Effetre 006 Clear.

I sometimes have this problem with greens after I've added silver to them and encase, but then I'll try to encase another bead the same size and shape without the silver but with the same clear and get a better, crack-free result. I am not a chemist, but my working theory is that the silver changes the CoE or viscosity of either the colour or the clear (or both) in just the right amount to cause this problem.


In the bead on the left, I got some pretty colours from my reduction frit, and there is interesting fuming on the base bead underneath it. My TerraNova2 frit got a nice starting strike, but no magic happened.


Camouflage seems to separate on top of every other colour - it's not a very cohesive colour.

It develops a gentle brown line reaction with Ivory, both when over or under it. In addition to the brownish outline, when Ivory is used on top of Camouflage, it separates quite dramatically.

Using more reactive colours over Camouflage like Copper Green or Opal Yellow seemed to exacerbate its separation/crazing.

Here are some additional beads made with Camouflage.



July 22, 2018

Test Results :: Dark Red Brown


Effetre Dark Red Brown (EFF452) is a very dark, brown, opaque colour. It is not terribly reactive, and lightens up considerably when used in thin layers.


Dark Red Brown doesn't change colour when you reduce it.


Dark Red Brown behaviour with silver is consistent with what I've experienced with both other Browns and other Reds. Silver develops a greyish crust on top of Dark Red Brown, and when that silver crust is reduced and encased, it turns blue.


Dark Red Brown makes a fairly effective base colour for silver glass. You can see in the left bead here that my blue reducing silver glass got nice colour and interesting outlines on top of this colour. It's less evident from the picture that I got nice colour from the TerraNova2 frit because the whole bead is so dark, but the frit did get a nice starting strike.


Dark Red Brown is definitely not a colour that helps Copper Green stay green. My Copper Green with this colour has a distinctly ungreen reddish greyness about it.

Ivory, Opal Yellow, and Copper Green all separated on top of Dark Red Brown. Peace didn't.

Dark Red Brown is a very saturated, deep colour but you can see that it lightens up substantially when used in thin layers on top of much lighter colours like Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace.

Here are some other beads that contain Dark Red Brown.