Test Results :: Ink Blue

1 - Plain, 2 - Reduced, 3 - Over Clear, 4 - Over Silver Foil (Over Tuxedo), 5 - w/ Silver Leaf, 6 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 7 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 8 - w/ Silver Glass Frit Blend (reduced), 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - w/ Opal Yellow, 11 - w/ Ivory, 12 - w/ White

General Impressions
Effetre Ink Blue is a gorgeous, saturated blue with an indigo bent to it. It is not particularly reactive, and I have really enjoyed my time with it. Only four rods left, and then I'm on to different things.

Regular Ink Blue is quite a lot more saturated than the Pale Ink Blue I tested back in February. I'm not really sure which I prefer -- I like the rich saturation of this 'regular' version of Ink Blue, but I also enjoyed the slightly more muted, paler version.  I am looking forward to giving the Violet Ink Blue a spin sometime in the next few months.

Fun Usage Tips
One of my favourite things to do with Ink Blue is use it to make encased goldstone stringer. It's perfect for that because it adds some visual interest to the goldstone, and doesn't react with either the goldstone or with the colours you subsequently use the stringer on.

Something else I like to do with Ink Blue is to use it to make encased cane, for more or less the same reason. It allows you to add an extra bit of depth to another colour, and also prevent that colour from reacting with the other ones you're using. I especially enjoyed this with Poi, because Poi is really soft and spready and a bit reactive, so encasing it with Ink Blue turned it into a much more manageable, but still beautiful, version of itself.  

There are pictures of both of these ways of using Ink Blue in the 'fun beads' section at the end of this post.

Reactions

In the first bead on the left, you can see that Ink Blue does not alter the colour of silver foil when you encase with it. The reactions that Ink Blue has with silver are identical to the reactions that Pale Ink Blue has with silver. The silver just sort of crusts up and stays on the surface. If you reduce and encase the silver, it changes the colour of the Ink Blue to a lighter and brighter, milky blue.

This is not the best picture, but I got some pretty decent colour out of the TerraNova2 frit on top of Ink  Blue.  The reduction frit blend didn't do as many fun things. I am using different silver glasses in the bottomless frit blend I keep chucking random stuff into, but I've gotten the reaction I got with Pale Ink Blue with my current blend when combined with other base colours (most recently on Slytherin, which I've yet to post) so it's not that the frit blend just wont do it... it just didn't seem to want to do it with Ink Blue. Maybe I did something wrong, but I've made so many of these test beads now that I'm pretty confident in my consistency.

This batch of Ink Blue (at least in this test) did not react with Copper Green in the same way that it's cousin Pale Ink Blue did.

I have not yet figured out the mystery behind why Copper Green sometimes develops a silver sheen on it and why it sometimes doesn't, but in all of the beads I've made with Ink Blue, that effect seems to absent itself. With Pale Ink Blue, on the other hand, the silvery sheen was readily apparent.

Isn't this interesting. Over White, Ink Blue looks like a medium, slightly indigo shade of blue. Over Ivory, it looks slightly more purple, and then over Opal Yellow, it looks kind've greyed out and very purple indeed. These beads were all made with the same Ink Blue stringer. I'm sure that it's just the base colour shining though, because there doesn't seem to be much of a reaction in any of the three cases, but it's neat nonetheless. There is a little feathering/fraying of the edges of Ink Blue when you put it over Ivory. This is consistent with my results for Pale Ink Blue as well.

Here are some of the fun beads I've made with Ink Blue.