Test Results :: EDP (Evil Devitrifying Purple)

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



Effetre Purple, most commonly known as Evil Devitrifying Purple (EDP), is a very strange colour. The reactions with EDP and other colours are strikingly similar to the reactions I got with Reichenbach Flamingo. This is a very reactive colour. It is also a very frustrating colour because of its tendency to devitrify, turning matte and white in odd ways and places.

What I think I've discovered about working with EDP is that it is important to work it hot, and to not let it cool too much before finishing the bead. Cooling the surface of the bead -- by waiting outside the flame, by pressing -- and then reheating it seems to be what caused me the most devitrification headache. Keeping the bead pretty hot and cooling it only once, at the end on it's way to the kiln, is what helped me keep the devitrification off of these test beads. Where I did get some, I reheated the bead and got rid of it and put the bead away fast before my luck changed.

I find that when I work on large focals with EDP or Sedona (it devitrifies too *sigh*) that I usually just end up either etching or encasing the bead because I get discouraged once the bead is well and truly devitrified. I learned from Kimberly Affleck that you can reduce the devit off in a dragon's breath flame, but sometimes I don't really want to reduce my bead, and as you will see below, reducing EDP can have some unpleasant effects.

Here we have two plain spacers made from EDP. The one on the left is a rich purple with hints of blue. The one on the right was reduced, and is now a shiny, brownish purple. I did not know that EDP did this when it was reduced, so it was an interesting surprise.

EDP and silver don't really seem to like each other very much. You can see in the bead on the left how the EDP has sort of gone haywire under the silver, getting all pink and yellow. The silver leaf on top of the EDP has a strange greenish orange cast to it. When the silver is subsequently reduced and encased, almost every interesting thing that silver and EDP do together is no longer evident, the silver just looking like a dirty white shell over the mottled purple core of the bead.

Here, in the bead on the left, the EDP has turned almost all of the reduction fritty bits yellow. Underneath the frit, the EDP has turned pinkish and yellow (from the silver) and brown (from the reduction). In the bead on the right, my TerraNova2 frit sort of stubbornly refused to strike, and all around it, the EDP has turned pink and coral.

On top of Tuxedo, EDP looks blue and cloudy.

EDP makes copper green separate into two different colours of turquoise, and seems to prevent the copper green from getting that greyish sheen. The EDP is sort of mottled in this bead, looking like itself in some places and looking bluer and cloudier in others. This is an awesome reaction, and if you are familiar with the classic EDP/Copper Green/Opal Yellow colour combination and are looking for other colours that will work, I'd start by looking for other colours that do this to Copper Green. 

A few opaque colours that I have found so far that have this kind of dramatic reaction include Lauscha Olive, Lauscha Steel Blue, Lauscha Cocoa, CiM Rainforest and Reichenbach Flamingo. Of course, I have not tested them in combination with both Copper Green and Opal Yellow, so I don't know what the final result would look like, but these all seem like they'd be good ones to experiment with.

This is the yellowest yellow I have ever achieved with Opal Yellow, although Opal Yellow has behaved strangely with all of the same colours that have made Copper Green go crazy. In this bead, the EDP is a mottled pink and purple, and has formed a sort of pinkish brown line between itself and the Opal Yellow. The Opal Yellow, apart from being a lot yellower than I would have thought on the left-hand side of the bead, has also separated and developed purple dots in the centres of its dots where I've put it on top of EDP. Fun!

Weirdness with Ivory, again in almost exactly the same way Reichenbach Flamingo was weird with Ivory, turning it black. EDP looks sort of blueish on top of the blackened Ivory, in the same cloudy way that it looked blue on top of Tuxedo. The Ivory lines and dots on top of EDP look black, but in a strange pencil-lead kind of way that makes them look sketched on instead of painted on.

On top of Peace, EDP looks almost pink, and spreads a little. Peace on top of EDP separates, and all of the dots and stringer lines get a dark, translucent purple centre.

Here are some fun beads with EDP.

  

 

In all of the crunched beads, I used a cane that I made from EDP, Light Turquoise, Celadon and Iris Dense Blue. All of the orange you see in the beads is from a reaction between the EDP and Iris Dense Blue. The unencased bead (bottom left) devitrified pretty heavily, but you can't see any devit in the two beads I encased, and I rather like the resulting mottledness.