Test Results :: Bayou

CiM Bayou (CiM469) is a beautifully reactive, light to medium grey opaque colour. On CiM's website, you will find it described as grey-green or as having a hint of green, but my experience of this colour is that it is grey. I didn't see any greenish tones in it at all until I tried it with silver.

Bayou is a bit of a striker, going a touch browner and a touch darker when I reduced it.

Silver leaf on top of Bayou makes it blush a greenish yellow colour. When the silver is reduced and encased, it looks white.

Bayou is a very interesting base colour for silver glass. I love the starting strike I got in my TerraNova2 frit with this colour.

Tuxedo makes Bayou rise up around it in little separation halos.

Bayou separates on top of Copper Green and Opal Yellow.

Ivory and Bayou have a mutual dark line reaction. On top of Ivory, Bayou both separates and develops a dark line against the Ivory. Putting Bayou on top of Ivory made it look darker and bluer.

Here are some other beads that contain Bayou:

Test Results :: Oracle Black

Double Helix Oracle Black is an interesting addition to our black glass options. It is a little freaky to work with, because when you pull it out into stringer it looks blue, not black and it continues to look blue while you are working with it in thin layers but it changes back to black in the kiln.

This colour is a magical base colour for silver and silver glass, and has some very interesting reactions with other colours, but it is not useful for stringerwork because it loses cohesion pretty quickly when it is heated and bleeds into other colours.

Nothing happens to Oracle Black when you reduce it.

Here I decided to test Oracle Black in comparison to CiM Hades and Reichenbach Deep Black to see how it performed as stringer.  The base colour of both beads is Oracle White.

Making the bead on the left, I heated it what I consider a 'normal' amount (your normal may vary) and then gave the rightmost bead what I would consider to be a 'ridiculous' amount of heat.  As you can see, Reichenbach Deep Black stayed together in both situations, but the Hades and Oracle Black both came apart. The Hades spread less and more evenly than the Oracle Black, which in the bead on the right looks like a black and blue smear.  Even in the bead where I thought my heat was 'normal' the Hades and Oracle Black did not entirely stay together.

This means that Deep Black is still my go-to black for when I need the black to behave itself, but as you will see Oracle Black has its own set of superpowers, so I imagine I'll be needing some more of it as well.

The leftmost bead here has silver leaf over Oracle Black, and has turned a mottled blue. It's a very interesting change, and I imagine that there are fun ways to exploit this effect. Reducing and encasing the silver makes it less beautiful, but it remains interesting and silvery under the clear.

In both of these beads, I got very nice reactions from the silver glass. The reducing silver glass got fun curdled edges around it and transmitted some of its silvery haze onto the Oracle Black. In the rightmost bead, I got a nicer-than-usual starting strike from my TerraNova2 frit making me think this colour might be a good catalyst for striking silver glass.

So I spent some time talking about how Oracle Black loses cohesion in that Oracle White example above, but if you look at the bead on the right you can see that it held itself together well on top of these other colours. On top of Copper Green it developed a very odd purple border, but that border is a faint greyish shadow on top of Ivory, Opal Yellow, and Peace.

However, absolutely bonkers things happened when I put Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace on top of Oracle Black.  The edges of my Copper Green got a little frayed by the Oracle Black base, but click into the image above and get a good look at the edges of the other three colours.

Opal Yellow looks like its edges are curdling, Ivory has a pale, mottled border, and the Peace is positively bizarre, developing a wide pale blue outline around all the stringer dots and lines.  I am imagining that some fun could be have with exploiting these reactions in a more intentional way, and I am very curious to see how Oracle Black behaves when used to handmix other colours from it.

I made a couple of other beads with Oracle Black, but unfortunately cannot figure out at this point which ones they were, so I will have to get some more and come back to update this post.

Test Results :: Your Majesty

CiM Your Majesty is a rich, deep purple transparent colour.

Reducing Your Majesty does not change its colour.

Probably a better comparison here would have been if I had used Dark Amethyst, but you can see here that Your Majesty is deeper in hue than Medium Amethyst by a fair bit.

In this picture, you can see that Your Majesty probably falls somewhere between Medium Amethyst and Dark Amethyst in terms of its darkness.

I have not yet tested many of the Effetre purples, so I am not sure how common this reaction is. In the rightmost bead here, I got a dramatic blue blush from my reduced and encased silver and its lightening and blueing affect on the Your Majesty is really pretty.

Your Majesty is not magical with silver glass, but it seems to make a decent base colour.

Your Majesty is not very reactive. On top of Your Majesty my Ivory stringer lines and dots got fuzzy edges, but that's the only thing I noticed here of significance.

Here are some other beads made with Your Majesty.

Test Results :: Anole

Today is my 10th anniversary!  10 years ago, I posted my first glass review and then look what happened.  I hope you enjoy this one and the ones that will inevitably follow.  I don't know whether or not I have 10 more years of this in me, but I guess it's possible! :D

 

CiM Anole (CiM480) is a pretty, light green semi-opaque colour that stays translucent as you work it. It's the same hue as Elixir, only with less translucency.

I was not expecting it to be, but Anole is a bit sensitive to overreduction. Reducing it here made it darker and yellower than the other Anole beads.

Silver disperses over the surface of Anole in little veins, and then springs forth with a largely uninteresting white blankety effect when it is encased, without any blue blushing, translucency, or iridescence to make it interesting.

I got pretty colour from my reducing silver glass frit against this colour, even if my TerraNova2 frit was slow to strike on top of it. These reactions were a bit of a let-down though after my results with Elixir. I think I'm noticing that the misty opals have some silver glass-influencing power in them that colours like Anole lack.

Ivory and Copper Green both separate on top of Anole, but apart from that I didn't notice much in terms of reactions in these beads.

Here are some beads made with Anole.

Test Results :: Lemonade

CiM Lemonade (CiM318) is a pale ivory semi-opaque colour. I had the same kind of unluck with it at first that I had with Egg White, and wish it was less prone to streaking and boiling. I did look on CiM's page though, and see that other people (probably ones who work cooler than I do) had much better luck with it.

The best results I got with Lemonade came when I covered it in silver glass. Also, it separates Copper Green, and I love that effect a lot.

Here you can see how ham-handed my initial approach to Lemonade was. This colour scums and boils very easily, and I work sort of hot, so I got a lot of scumming in my test beads.

Silver disappears on top of Lemonade, and when it is reduced and encased it sits like a solid whitish blanket under the clear.

Lemonade makes a pretty base colour for reducing silver glass frit on top of.

Copper Green separates on top of Lemonade, and Ivory thins out and almost disappears on top of it. The Copper Green thing is cool, the Ivory thing is a bit odd. I don't think I've seen this effect before.

When I used Lemonade on top of Copper Green, the edges of the stringer work curdled.

I don't seem to have any pictures of other beads made with Lemonade, but if I find some or make more, I"ll come back and update this.

Test Results :: Little Boy Blue

CiM Little Boy Blue (CiM561) us a gorgeous blue-grey opaque. It's butter-smooth, and reminds me a lot of Dirty Martini and Lapis in terms of how nice it is to work with. I'm sad to see that it is already sold out, but I hope that hearing how nice we all think it is might inspire CiM to make more of it for us.

Little Boy Blue does not change colour when you reduce it.

On top of Little Boy Blue, silver disappears. Until you reduce and encase it, and then it sits like a cloudy, silvery blanket under the clear layer. This is the exact opposite of what happens between silver and Dirty Martini, so I guess here is where those colours' similarities end.

Reducing silver glass frit is pretty on top of Little Boy Blue, and it really stands out as an excellent base of striking silver glass frit. I got beautiful colour  from my TerraNova2 here, and beautiful separation haloes around all the little fritty bits.

Little Boy Blue separates on top of Tuxedo, but it is not very reactive with other colours. Copper Green stays very grey on top of it.

Here is a pair of beads made with Little Boy Blue. I'll come back and publish some more when I have them.

Test Results :: Medium Blue

Effetre Medium Blue is a medium blue colour when used in concentration, but is very pale when used in fine layers. It's a good base colour for silver glass, and it has interesting reactions with silver but is not terribly reactive with other colours.

Medium blue does not change when you reduce it.

Silver goes yellowish on top of Medium Blue, but when you reduce it it goes all blue and cloudy.

My reducing silver glass looks a bit dull on top of Medium Blue, but it also has good delineation. I got a great starting strike from my TerraNova2 frit on top of this colour, so I'll flag this as one of the colours that's nice under striking silver glass.

Medium Blue is not a very reactive colour. I was pleasantly surprised that it didn't react with Ivory.

If you look closely at the bead where I've used Ivory and Opal Yellow on top of Medium Blue, you can see an interesting thinning of the colour around the edges of the stringerwork. I think it might be fun to use this effect in little dot beads, so I know what I'll be doing with the rest of my Medium Blue.

Here are some other beads made with Medium Blue:

Test Results :: Oracle742.pst

Oracle742.pst is a very pale pink opaque glass. In certain combination with other colours, and given some extra heat, that pink can darken into a medium mauve colour. This colour is well-behaved for the most part, but can get fizzy and boily when you use it in fine stringers.

This colour does not change when it is reduced.

I got some interesting orange/yellow tones from silver on top of this colour, but that blush of colour faded when I reduced and encased the silver.

The silver glass frit fumed Oracle742.pst a yellowish colour, and I got a reasonably good starting strike from my TerraNova2 frit on top of this colour.

On top of this colour, Tuxedo loses its integrity a little bit and bleeds a bluish halo into the Oracle742.pst.  Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace all spread excessively on top of this colour and it is very interesting to note that where you can see flashes of it between Opal Yellow and Ivory dots and lines, the colour of it is a more vivid pink than it is on its own.

On top of Ivory and Opal Yellow, this colour separates fairly dramatically into a lighter and darker version of itself. There is also separation in Oracle742.pst on top of both Tuxedo and Copper Green. On Tuxedo, this effect lends it a faint translucency, but the weirdest thing is the bright turquoise that appears around it on top of Copper Green.

Here are some more interesting beads containing Oracle742.pst.

The pale pink lines and dots in this bead are Oracle742.pst, but the little wavy pale pink bands with dark pink centres are also Oracle742.pst. I'm not sure how the colour gets darker, but I suspect it has something to do with reacting with the other things around it.

Interesting side note... I am not able to try this because I don't have any more of this colour but when I added a little Grass Green Opaque to Vetrofond Light Pink, I got a dark purple colour. I wonder what this colour would do with some green added to it?