Test Results :: Olive (Creation is Messy)

CiM Olive is the second glass by the name 'Olive' that I have tested now, and the third that I am aware of.  We can hope that it's the last one and that other manufacturers, seeing that there are already three (or more) glasses by this name, will choose some other thing when and if they move ahead with plans for another olive green-coloured glass.  Don't get me wrong... I welcome any and all colours to the 104 COE palette.  Even when they are named the same thing, they are all deliciously different and interesting to play with.  It's just confusing to talk about them when one name could reference multiple different actual colours.

Olive is darker and 'greener' than what I would normally think of when picturing olives, and reminds me more of the colour of the frogs we used to catch when I was a kid when my parents would take us camping.  For that reason, I would have named this particular glass 'Kermit' or 'Tadpole' or something else frog-related had it been left up to me.

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

So... all whining about the name aside, CiM Olive is a gorgeous green.  It's got a unique texture to it, being very smooth and streaky at the same time. It is also, for lack of a better word, somewhat more gelatinous than the other opaque CiM colours and way less 'grainy' than some of the Effetre greens (e.g. Pea Green, Nile Green, Grass Green).  Used in a thin layer over Peace, it lightens in colour significantly.  Because it is a little less saturated than some of the other greens, it gives an interesting effect when used as the core of vine twisties and canes, lending a bit of an inner glow. Cane made by using a thin layer of Olive over a thick base of Clear gives an interestingly semi-opaque result.

Silver leaf melted into the surface of Olive leaves a greyish/brownish residue behind. The silver discolours slightly, ranging from grey to a blueish tinted grey to a yellowish/brown. In the bead on the right, you can see that when the silver is subsequently reduced and encased that it seems to form an ethereal film over the Olive, and retains some of the blueishness (new word!) but otherwise does not much change the Olive underneath.

My TerraNova2 frit didn't strike very well in the bead on the left, but I think that was my fault.  The thin green halos that have sprung up around it are a bit of a clue that Olive is capable of greater things with silver glass frit than I was able to coax from it in this particular bead.  In the bead on the right, the reducing silver glass also has an interesting curdling effect on the Olive where it touches the base colour and has thinned out in weird and wonderful ways.

When used on top of CiM Tuxedo, Olive develops a thin silvery line around itself in dots and stringer work.  When Tuxedo is used on top of Olive, a greyish green halo pops up around it.  This is a very interesting set of reactions for a couple of reasons.

First, Tuxedo bleeds with a lot of the other greens I've tried it with, so it is very refreshing for Olive to be a green that it does not bleed into. Second, a lot of the colours I have tested with Tuxedo recently have had this silver halo effect, but this is the first time I've gotten this reaction between Tuxedo and a green.

Olive makes Copper Green not want to be green at all.  The darkness of the Copper Green here is very out of character, and the interesting brownish mottling in the centre of the bead is an effect I've not seen before.  Where I've used Copper Green over Olive, it seems to have caused a little curdling chaos in the Olive underneath.

Opal Yellow and Olive do not have any noticeable reaction apart from (possibly) a minor amount of bleeding of the Olive into the Opal Yellow when Olive us used on top of it.  You can make out a faint greenish halo around the Olive dots and stringer lines in the left side of this bead if you click on the picture to see an enlarged version of it.

With Ivory, Olive develops an interesting, irregular brownish dark line reaction.  It does this both when Ivory is used on top of it and when it is used on top of Ivory.  The reaction when Ivory is used on top of Olive is the more dramatic of the two.

Peace and Olive do not have much of a reaction with one another, but it is very interesting to me how much lighter the Olive looks on top of Peace than it does on top of any other colour. The Peace on the left-hand side of the bead seems to have acquired some of the colour from the Olive without leaving any noticeable evidence of 'bleeding'.

I let one of my friends walk off with what was left of my Olive before I'd made many beads with it, and all I've used it in so far is vine cane.  That vine cane is attached to beads I'm not ready to show anyone yet, so I"ll end this here.

Test Results :: Dusty Lilac

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

I have tested quite a few of the Lauscha Milky Way colours now, and this is one of my favourites.  It has some magic in it somewhere!

Lauscha Dusty Lilac is a pinkish lavender colour, and although it is probably translucent in thin layers, it was not possible for me to keep the translucency of this glass while working it.  It is reactive with silver, it does fun things with both Copper Green and Opal Yellow and it is a pretty colour all by itself.  I'm a sucker for these purply pinks though.  Seashell Swirl and Vetrofond Pink #3 are the other two pink glasses that I can't get enough of.

When silver leaf is melted into the surface of Dusty Lilac, the silver turns a golden colour and sits on top of the surface of the glass in a very definite gold swath with winking silver sparkles in it. It also fumes the colour of the Dusty Lilac to a shade somewhere in the triangulation of brown, yellow and orange.

When the silver is reduced and encased, it looks less yellow -- there is just a faint tinge of yellow in the encased silver. Where the silver touches the Dusty Lilac around its edges, an ethereal blue halo has developed. Also in this bead, the silvered, abused and encased Dusty Lilac looks very vibrantly pink and purple instead of like its natural lavender-pink self.

Dusty Lilac and silver glass are friendly with one another.  On the right, I got some colour out of my TerraNova 2, and the striking silver glass frit has not discoloured the bead at all.  In a real bead where time has been taken to properly strike the TN2 I feel sure the results would be better. 

In the bead on the right, it is interesting how the Dusty Lilac has fumed yellow underneath the reducing silver glass frit, and the frit has done some interesting things on top of it as well, seaparting in places and developing a darker yellow outline.

There is no reaction between Tuxedo and Dusty Lilac, and both colours make nice, even stringer dots and lines on top of each other.

When Dusty Lilac is used on top of Copper Green, it develops a light turquoise outline and seems to keep the Copper Green from doing that army green sheen thing it so loves to do.  However, when you use the Copper Green on top of Dusty Lilac, a very bizarre reaction is evident.  The Copper Green sort of lazily separates so that it looks teal in the middle and brown around the edges and then it develops an additional whitish outline around the brown and teal.  Nifty.

Dusty Lilac spreads and thins out on top of Opal Yellow, which is interesting because Opal Yellow is the softer glass and is the one out of these two that I would expect to spread.  On top of Dusty Lilac, Opal Yellow separates into three distinct 'phases' - a translucent lavender line in the middle of the dots and stringer lines surrounded by a more normal shade for opal yellow, and then surrounded by a yellowish brown outline.  You can see in the middle of this bead how the Dusty Lilac has fumed the Opal Yellow to a brownish yellow colour as well.

Dusty Lilac is weird and spready on Ivory, too.  In this case it seems even odder because it seems to float on top of the Ivory and some of the Ivory colour rises up around it to help our eyes see that illusion.  On top of Dusty Lilac, Ivory separates such that a translucent line and dot is visible in the middle of the stringer lines and dots.

And, with Peace, Dusty Lilac reacts similarly to how it reacts with Ivory only much less dramatically.  It does not have the same floaty quality when used on top of Peace.

A fun bead with Dusty Lilac:

Test Results :: Neptune

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

So... this Neptune stuff.  It's a newish handpulled colour from Effetre, also going by the Italian name of Verde Rame Metallico - or Copper Green Metallic, for those of us who do not speak Italian.

Neptune seems to be a name that Frantz Art Glass has created themselves, and while I am not a huge fan of different vendors naming the same colour of glass different things, I think Neptune is a damned good name for this colour and if I owned Effetre I might wish I'd thought of it myself.

Neptune is definitely a colour that some of us will love and some of us will not, however I am firmly in the love camp on this one.  I can't resist the glasses that have 'interesting' finishes, and the odd, shiny-yet-matte finish of this glass kills me.  It is also full of weirdness which I am attracted to in the same way that ants are attracted to picnics.

Neptune, after you encase it, is not metallic at all.  It is a beautiful dark teal colour, somewhat reminiscent of CiM Mermaid without the streakiness.  Neptune is a lot freakier than Mermaid though, and seems so super-saturated that I half-expect the rods to leave a greenish stain on anything they touch.

Sadly, Neptune is not so interesting with silver... but then, none of the coppery green colours seem to care about silver much.  You can see, however, that in the bead on the left the finish of the Neptune is a little more red than it is in the other beads below, with some fine yellow/green webbing on the surface, and that in the bead where I reduced and encased the silver leaf, it's turned a queer shade of yellow.

Neptune is a good base for silver glass, the colour having developed quite weill in my TerraNova2 frit, but being so shiny itself it doesn't much need any shiny reducing silver glass decoration.  The bead on the right just looks a little messy.

Copper Green and Tuxedo don't really react with one another, which is useful information because this is a pretty reactive colour.  I think they are attractive together, since the Neptune really shines when paired with something to provide some negative space.  It's also interesting, because Tuxedo has tended to bleed with a lot of the other greens I've used it with.

This bead that features Neptune with Copper Green is just sort of ugly.  The Copper Green is mostly subsumed by the Neptune, with just a few splotches standing out.

I got the Neptune pretty hot in this bead and was "rewarded" with some random pitting in the Neptune portion of the bead.  Neptune bleeds into Opal Yellow in the centre of this bead and at other random points through the Opal Yellow stringer design.

Love this.  On top of Ivory, Neptune is very self-contained, very shiny and has a very pronounced darkness at the edges of it.  Ivory on top of Neptune is not quite so nice, the Ivory slightly separating and getting sort of 'eaten' by the Neptune, with big brown bites taken out of the stringer lines and dots as the Neptune webs its way around.  In the centre of this bead, the Neptune has consumed part of the real estate originally reserved for Ivory with a very pronounced dark brown webbing.  This bead makes me really happy.

With Peace, Neptune is more intermittently shiny, and you can see that it has bled into the Peace in the centre of the bead.  The Peace dots and stringer lines on top of Neptune seem thinned out and cloudy around the edges.

So, to summarize.  This colour rocks.  The test beads are one thing, but making real beads with this colour is hugely fun.  A small drawback is that, like many handpulled colours, Neptune can be a little shocky.  I can live with it.

Fun beads with Neptune:

 

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Test Results :: Nuclear Brownie

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

Lauscha Nuclear Brownie is also called Buckhorn With Silver. I am having some trouble understanding these results of mine, because the last time I used this glass it seemed like a much darker colour.

For instance, I made this bead in December 2008 with the exact same batch of Nuclear Brownie as I've made these test beads from (I'm cringing showing it to you, but what the heck - it's not like I'm creating any masterpieces today, either, and I need to show something).  The brown colour in this bead is Nuclear Brownie, and it is much, much darker than the Nuclear Brownie in any of these test beads.  All I can figure is that this colour must strike darker with repeated heating, cooling and abuse with tools because it took me about 5 times as long to shape a bicone in 2008 as it does today, and it's still not a fast process.

Nuclear Brownie is gorgeous with silver.  Silver leaf melted into the surface of this colour creates a gorgeous, wispy spray of silver and really interesting variations in the surface colour of the bead.  On the right, in the bead that I reduced and encased, the silver has taken on a shiny iridescence and has also become decidedly pinkish in colour.

In these beads with silver glass, my favourite thing that happened is with the bead on the right and the silver glass reduction frit.  (I am currently using a blend with Kronos2, Gaia, Elektra, Triton and Psyche all mixed up in equal proportions)  I love the way the fritty bits develop that webbed outline and the way the frit has separated and colour-changed so that it looks like peacock feathers through a kaleidoscope.

Tuxedo is nice and crisp on top of Nuclear Brownie.  On the Tuxedo side of the bead you can see how milky the Nuclear Brownie went.  No shiny line though as I 've been so prone to getting lately with just about anything and Tuxedo.

The Copper Green side of this bead is a little freaky, with its striations of turquoise amid a muddy grey-green-pink background.  The Nuclear Brownie stringer work is very bright in colour and more yellow than the same colour on the other side of the bead, and it has developed almost a white outline around it wherever it touches the copper green.  Where the deep striations of Copper Green are, the rich turquoise colour of it are seeping into the Nuclear Brownie.

On the Nuclear Brownie side of the bead, the Copper Green line develops a super-thin double outline around the Copper Green stringerwork.  The inner part of that double outline is a brownish purple, and the outer line is a light Ivory colour.  This is a very interesting effect indeed.

 

 

In all of these three beads (Opal Yellow, Ivory, Peace) the other colour has separated on top of the Nuclear Brownie and in all three cases is a very interesting reaction.  However, Nuclear Brownie is not really good stringerwork material and seems to not look quite right no matter what you put it on top of.  (Click the pictures to enlarge)

Here are some fun beads with Nuclear Brownie: