Test Results :: Oracle746.pst

Double Helix Oracle746.pst is a very pale green opaque colour. It's very well-behaved, and I quite like it as a cooler base colour.

This colour does not change when you reduce it.

Oracle746pst is quite reactive with silver. You can see in the leftmost bead that the silver all turned brown on top of it. Reducing and encasing the silver gets rid of the brown, instead making the silver silvery again under the clear in a gentle, mother-of-pearl way with hints of blue and pink.

I was expecting, because of the strong reactions with silver, for this glass to foster colour in my striking silver glass a bit more, but I was wrong. My reduced silver glass frit fumed this colour a bright yellow.

I would not call this colour reactive with other colours, either.  It is, however, prone to separate. You can see here how it has done that under Tuxedo and on top of basically everything.  Ivory both spread like mad on top of it.

Here are some other beads that include Oracle746pst.

Test Results :: Green Cave

Effetre Green Cave (EFF856) is a gorgeous, medium-dark green glass that some people seem to have been able to make turn blue with selective reheating. I haven't experimented much with that, but it's clear that nothing I did while making these test beads evoked blueness from it.

Reducing Green Cave seemed to make it a little darker. It's not very clear if this was because of the reduction flame or if this is a striking colour - I'd need to experiment with it a bit more before I could be sure.

Here are, side by side, the two different tonalities I have of Green Cave. I prefer the one on the left, but honestly I love both of them. It's so rare to have a dark green that doesn't do nasty things to Ivory, and I am going to enjoy every last crumb of it.

Green Cave reacts like Ivory when silver is added to it, which makes me wonder what silvered Green Cave stringer would be like. In the bead on the left you can see how the silver crusted up and looks misty and blue in places. When the silver is reduced and encased, it's less attractive, showing patches of brownish green and losing any lustre it had before the reduction/encasement.

Like Ivory, Green Cave makes a really interesting base colour for silver glass. My reduction frit got all kinds of interesting borders and fading, and I got dark outlines around my TerraNova2 frit and lots of initial, interesting colour. Like Ivory, Green Cave is very soft glass and the TerraNova2 frit migrated towards the centre of the bead as I was heating and shaping it.

Tuxedo makes Green Cave separate into lighter and darker versions of itself, both  when used on top of and underneath it.

Copper Green separates on top of Green Cave and develops a dark outline. When the Green Cave is on top of Copper Green, it also separates and gets a dark outline.

Opal Yellow gets a dark border with Green Cave, but only when the Opal Yellow is on top.

Ivory spreads out on top of Green Cave and the Green Cave separates underneath it.On top of Ivory, Green Cave separates but doesn't spread at all. If anything, the Green Cave lines look narrower on top of Ivory than on top of the other colours I tested it with.

Here are some other beads that include Green Cave.

Test Results :: Weeping Willow

CiM Weeping Willow (CiM467) is a pretty medium grey-green opaque colour. I love the more muted colours, so this is right up my alley.

When I reduced Weeping Willow, its greyness increased a little.

Silver crusts up and turns golden in places on top of Weeping Willow. When it is reduced and encased, the yellow is pronounced golden streaks over the grey-blue of the encased silver.

I got pretty colour from my reduction frit on top of Weeping Willow, but not much of a starting strike from the TerraNova2 frit.

Like many other greens, Weeping Willow develops a reciprocal dark line reaction with Ivory.

Weeping Willow, also like many other greens, is a very streaky colour and separated on top of all of the colours I used it with.

Copper Green separates on top of Weeping Willow.

Here are some other beads with Weeping Willow.

Test Results :: Petroleum Green

Effetre Petroleum Green (EFF218) is a pretty teal green opaque colour. I had never really used it before I made these beads and some things about it really surprised me.

The things that I found surprising about this colour will maybe not come as surprises to you. For one thing, this colour is very, very streaky. You can see streaks in it when you make simple spacers, and it separates like mad on top of just about everything. It's also very soft -- much softer than using other opaque teals like CiM Mermaid and Effetre Marine Green will prepare you to expect.

I expected Petroleum Green to turn red when I reduced it, but it didn't.

Silver isn't very interesting on top of Petroleum Green until you reduce and encase it and it turns a bright mustard colour. Petroleum Green has this yellow-with-silver-under-clear thing in common with Copper Green, Light Teal, Light Aqua, and Celadon.

Unfortunately, encasing the reduced silver will crack your bead. If you've made beads before with Petroleum Green and silver and then encased your beads with Effetre Super Clear only to find they cracked... well... me too.

Silver Glass is interesting on top of Petroleum Green. Because the Petroleum Green is so very soft, it rises up and swallows frit pretty easily, which is why you might be wondering why I didn't put more frit on the leftmost bead. It is a decent base for striking silver glass colours - my TerraNova2 frit got a very nice starting strike.

As I mentioned already, Petroleum Green separates on top of everyhing. It also gets a creeping brown reaction line with Ivory that is not very uniform.

Opal Yellow and Copper Green both separate on top of this colour.

Here are some beads made with Petroleum Green.

Test Results :: Cotswold Blue

CiM Cotswold Blue (CiM554) is a medium teal opaque. It's a bit reactive with Ivory, but is otherwise fairly well behaved. My rods of Cotswold Blue were mildly shocky, but I liked it enough anyway to order a full pound of it, so I clearly didn't mind it all that much.

Cotswold Blue doesn't change colour when you reduce it.

Silver leaf on top of Cotswold Blue largely disappears, beading up in tiny little silver granules on the surface. When the silver is reduced an encased, it turns an odd mustardy colour.

The Cotswold Blue bead with silver on it cracked. You can't see the cracking in the photo very well, but it cracked on a diagonal under the clear. More and more, I am realizing that these darker teal blue colours (Petroleum Green, Rainforest, and this one among others) encase just fine until you add silver, but that the addition of silver somehow tips the crack balance. I'm not sure why this is the case, but am glad that I'm finding a pattern that will make this problem easy to avoid.

Cotswold Blue is a very pretty base colour for striking silver glass, and I got nice colours from my TerraNova2 frit on top of it. Its colour isn't really conducive to hosting the reducing silver glass colours since it is so similar, but you can see that there was some interesting spreading behaviour in that frit in the leftmost bead above, too.

Copper Green, Ivory, and Opal Yellow all separate on top of Cotswold Blue. Cotswold Blue is such a streaky colour that it separates on top of everything.

The only real reactions of note here were:

• Ivory and Cotswold Blue form a mutual dark line reaction
• The edges where Peace and Cotswold Blue meet get sort of fuzzy and translucent. You can see this in both beads.

Here are some other beads that include Cotswold Blue:

Test Results :: Caramel

Reichenbach Caramel (RL7205) is a medium, pinkish brown opaque colour. It's a reactive colour, and is translucent when used in thin layers on top of other colours. This means that it goes a bit blotchy and see-through when you use it on top of very dark colours, and it fades out and looks yellower than itself when it's used on top of very pale colours.

It's browner than Flamingo, but it has many of the same kinds of reactions with other colours.

Here you can see the colour variation of Caramel. It can't decide if it's brown or pink. And then, when you reduce it, it can't decide whether it's purple or blue.

Silver leaf turns Caramel a yellowish colour. Reducing and encasing the silver just makes for a yellowish grey layer under your clear, which it seems wise to avoid.

I got pretty colour and reaction outlines from my reducing silver glass frit on top of this colour. I also got a very nice, almost-magical starting strike from my TerraNova2 frit. So, this colour seems to make a very pretty base colour for silver glass.

So, that whiteish outline that developed around the Copper Green in the leftmost bead is new for me. Or at least I thought it was until I looked back at my Flamingo test results and saw that Copper Green did this with that colour as well.

On top of Caramel, Opal Yellow separates.  

Ivory and Caramel develop a reciprocal (and quite intense) black line reaction which, because of Caramel's translucence in thin layers, means that the Caramel develops a strange, brown blotchiness on top of Ivory.

Here are some pictures of beads that contain Caramel.

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.