The Easy Contrast Palette

Merry Christmas!
Even if you don't celebrate Christmas, I hope you enjoy your present.

I find that the best way to think myself out of a rut or a dry spell is to put myself in a box. Not a literal, honest-to-god box -- that would be sort of creepy and uncomfortable -- but a metaphorical one, where the number of colours that are at my disposal are limited. But even if I'm not struggling at the torch, this is still a fun exercise that teaches me a lot every time I do it. I have come up with multiple ways of quickly choosing a colour palette, and I am going to share one of them with you in this post. 

Working with a limited palette of colours forces you to learn new things and think about your glass in a different way than you have been accustomed to. Some people find the idea of this sort of thing very frustrating and difficult, and others are excited by the challenge, but whatever category you fit into I hope that you give this a shot. 

Please keep in mind, though, that it won't work if you don't stick with the palette you create. Before you start you need to pledge to work with the colours you select for a minimum of ten consecutive torching sessions -- preferably more than ten.

This particular palette is focused on contrast - both colour contrast and light/dark contrast.

Colour Focus
The first decision you are going to have to make is what the 'core' colour family of your palette is going to be. Since this colour family will be, percentage-wise, a fairly large part of your total palette, I would choose a colour family that you like a lot. Or, if you are feeling adventurous, you could instead choose a colour family that you almost never use with the goal of developing some appreciation for it by the end of this exercise.

I'm referring to the following list of 'colour families':

• Reds
• Oranges
• Yellows
• Chartreuses
• Greens
• Teals
• Turquoises
• Blues
• Indigos
• Purples
• Pinks

This is a somewhat altered version of the standard colour wheel, and it sort of reflects how I think about colour. It contains primary colours, secondary colours and colours traditionally regarded as tertiary colours. It is green/blue/purple-heavy and red/orange/yellow-light. I've also inserted both teal and turquoise between green and blue. I am not really in a position to argue with decades upon decades of colour theory, but for the purposes of designing with colour in glass, I prefer to think of my colours this way.

Step 1 :: Choose Your First Four (4) Glass Colours
Choose one colour grouping from the list/image above and within that grouping, try to achieve some hue variation - for instance, if you have chosen a starting family of 'Blues', try to now choose some blues that tend towards indigo, some that don't lean much at all and some that are more on the turquoise side, but are still essentially blue. Ensure you have a mix of opaque, semi-opaque and/or transparent colours and a mixture of lightness and darkness.

For example, if you had chosen 'Blues' as your palette's starting point,  you could select:

• CiM Leaky Pen (dark, transparent, turquoise-leaning)
• CiM Zachary (light, opaque, indigo-leaning)
• EFF Medium Blue Transparent (light/medium, transparent, mid-blue)
• CiM Sapphire (medium, transparent, mid-blue)

-or-

• EFF Dark Blue Transparent (medium, transparent, mid-blue)
• EFF Earth (medium, opaque, blue, with streaks of turquoise)
• LAU Steel Blue (dark, opaque, turquoise-leaning)
• EFF Pale Blue Transparent (light, transparent, mid-blue)

... or any number of other possible combinations.

Step 2 :: Choose a Complimentary Colour
Look at the colour wheel, above (or below, if you chose Blues), and choose one of the colour families that is directly across from your starting colour on the colour wheel. Because my colour wheel has an unfortunate number of slots in it (11), you will come up with two possible choices. For example, if your starting family was Blues, you are now confronted with a decision between Oranges and Yellows. Don't worry about it too much, just pick one. Or, if the decision makes you uncomfortable, make your next selections on the border (e.g. Orangey Yellows).

Now that you've chosen, you are going to need to pick two glass colours that fit inside that new colour family. Again, you want to make sure that your overall palette stays sort of balanced between light, dark, opaque, transparent, etc.

For example, if you chose 'Oranges' you could have selected:

• CiM Peachy Keen (light, transparent, yellow-leaning)
• EFF Coral La Mesa (dark, opaque, red-leaning)

- or,if you chose yellows, you could have selected:

• EFF Yellow Ochre (medium, opaque, orange-leaning)
• EFF Kelp (light, transparent, chartreuse-leaning)

... or any number of other possible combinations.

Step 3 :: Choose Two (2) Accent Colours
Now, look at the colour wheel again, and choose the two colour groupings that fall between the two you've already chosen. Again, this is art and not science and there are no wrong choices, but my colour wheel is lopsided so there is going to be one clear choice, and then one sort of ambiguous one.

If you've stayed with me so far and are working with Oranges and Blues, you will now need to find yourself some Greens and some Pinkish Purples / Puplish Pinks. You are going to choose two glass colours fitting into each colour family. Again, you want a good mix of hue, saturation and lightness in your colour choices here, so you could go with:

• CiM Dirty Martini (light, opaque, teal-leaning)
• EFF Sage Green (dark, transparent, chartreuse-leaning)
• EFF Sedona (medium, opaque, purplish pink)
• EFF Pale Amethyst (light, transparent, pinkish purple)

- or - 

• CiM Commando (medium, opaque, teal-leaning)
• EFF Pale Emerald (light, transparent, mid-green)
• EFF Dark Lavender (light, transparent, pinkish purple)
• EFF Evil Devitrifying Purple (medium, opaque, pinkish purple)

... or any number of other possible combinations.

Step 4 :: Choose Four (4) Neutrals / Non-Colours
Finally, you are allowed to select four colours that don't really fit into any of the colour wheel slots.  You can choose any four browns, greys, blacks, ivories or whites. Again, you want to make sure you have a decent mix of hue, saturation and lightness in these colours. This palette is all about contrast.

For example, you could go with:

• CiM Marshmallow (light, semi-opaque)
• EFF Oliva Nera (dark, transparent)
• EFF Black Metallic (dark, opaque and FUN)
• EFF Ivoryish (light/medium, opaque)

- or -

• EFF Ivory (light, opaque)
• EFF Light Brown Transparent (light, transparent)
• EFF Black (dark, transparent)
• CiM Adamantium (dark, opaque)

So, you've created a palette...

It might look like this one:

• CiM Leaky Pen
• CiM Zachary
• EFF Medium Blue
• CiM Sapphire
• CiM Peachy Keen
• EFF Coral La Mesa
• CiM Dirty Martini
• EFF Sage
• EFF Sedona
• EFF Pale Amethyst
• CiM Marshmallow
• EFF Oliva Nera
• EFF Black Metallic
• EFF Ivoryish

No cheating. You can use goldstone, dichro and assorted metals (e.g. silver, gold, brass, paladium, copper) with these colours, and you can use Clear. That is the extent of the variation you are permitted. If you have a favourite colour that you feel you can't live without (e.g. Ivory, Dark Ivory, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, White, Black, EDP or Intense Black) you should have structured your palette to include it. If you need to, go back and fix it now.

Use your new palette for at least ten sessions. The first few sessions can be hard -- you may feel sort of stuck and uncomfortable with experimenting, and maybe no good beads will come out initially. The key is to be persistent, and work through those problems instead of abandoning ship. Usually for me, around the third or fourth session, something starts to click and I start having brand new, exciting ideas for what to make. I hope you do, too!

If you feel tempted to change colours before you hit your tenth session, suppress it. The rule I enforce for myself is that if I am that undisciplined, I need to pay for it. The clock resets on my palette and I'd better like that new colour I snuck in, because I have to use it (and the others) the next ten times I torch. The only exception I make is if I actually run out of something and I'd have to spend money to comply with my strict rules. In that case, I let myself find an alternative that can slide into the palette in its place (same hue, lightness).

I hope that you enjoy this exercise. 

Test Results :: Fostoria

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

CiM Fostoria is a pale pinkish, purplish neutral colour. Whenever there is a new colour in this range, I always hope that it will be like Sepia Unique #1, but this one wasn't. It's a pretty colour in its own right though, and nice to work with. This colour will boil, if you aren't careful, but I was working pretty hot and had to more or less park the rod in the hottest part of the flame to make it happen.

Silver turns Fostoria a yellowish brown. This is most visible in the bead on the left, where I used Silver Leaf over Fostoria. In the centre bead, I reduced and encased the silver which has resulted in an interesting, blue and purple-tinged silver coating under the clear. In the bead on the right, I encased a couple of layers of silver foil, and it turned golden.

I didn't get the results I wanted, but I did get some appealing streakiness in the bead on the left, where I used frit stringer made from Fostoria and my random Double Helix frit blend over Fostoria and then encased the bead in clear. If you look back at my results for Mojito, Pale Green Apple and Straw Yellow you'll see what I was wanting to happen. This bead ended up quite a bit too dark.

However, my reducing silver glass frit looks gorgeous over this colour, and I think my TerraNova2 frit would have too, if only I had not accidentally reduced the bead. It doesn't show up well in the picture, but the colour developed fairly well except for the mess I made.

When Fostoria is used on top of Opal Yellow and Copper Green, a lighter outline forms around the dots/stringer lines. I'm not sure how useful this information is, because, as you can see, Fostoria doesn't exactly look beautiful on top of these colours. I am probably just not using my imagination.

Opal Yellow has a sort of mottled appearance on top of Fostoria, alternating between pale, almost Ivory and brighter yellow.

Peace, Ivory, Opal Yellow and Copper Green all seem to separate slightly on top of Forstoria, resulting in a faint inner outline.

I already showed this bead with my Vanilla Latte test results, but I used Fostoria to encase the base bead prior to adding the decoration, so I'm showing it again. If you had enough of this one last week, don't look :P

Test Results :: Vanilla Latte

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 & 8 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace

CiM Vanilla Latte is just a beautiful colour of tan, that falls somewhere hue-wise between the beautiful pale of Butter Pecan and the rich terracotta of Adobe. The glass is creamy and wonderful to use, and just loves silver. Vanilla Latte is the first CiM colour that I have used where I have observed any curdling effect. I have so many more things I want to try with this colour, but will have to wait until it is for sale in January like everyone else before I can get any more.

This is a colour that will be gorgeous as a base colour for organics. It is nice to use for sculptural work, but like a lot of other CiM colours, you can see streaky joining rings wherever new glass is added to old, so you'll need to keep that in mind.

For those of us who like making organic beads, the bead on the left shows how beautiful Vanilla Latte is with silver. The silver leaf I used has turned sort of golden on top of the Vanilla Latte, has spread out, looks a little wispy in places, and has fumed the Vanilla Latte to a golden brown sort of randomly. When the silver leaf is reduced and encased, it develops a shiny silver coating that is heavily tinged with both blue and pink under the clear.

The bead on the left, with my reducing silver glass frit, got so shiny that it was extremely difficult to photograph. And I got beautiful colour out of my TerraNova frit, considering that I didn't even strike it properly. I think I must have had a little less oxygen in my flame than I needed because there are some red reduction streaks visible in the fritty bits.

The most interesting reaction here is the one that occurred between Tuxedo and Vanilla Latte in the bead on the right. The Vanilla Latte has risen up in halos around the Tuxedo, and in places that halos are ringed with an extra outline of black that must have migrated from the Tuxedo.

Copper Green likes Vanilla Latte, and the two colours develop a very faint dark line reaction, but the big takeaway here is that using these two colours together keeps Copper Green looking pretty and turquoisey instead of greyish green.

Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace all spread on top of Vanilla Latte, making the stringer dots and lines quite a bit wider than I thought they were when I put them on. When Vanilla Latte is used on top of those colours, it seems to sink very slightly into the surface, resulting in thinner lines and smaller dots than I actually applied to the bead.

Finally, in the bead on the right, not only did the Opal Yellow spread out, but it has also gone all strangely mottled, with darker yellow in the centre of the stringer dots and lines and paleness towards the outer edge. It hasn't really separated, but it looks pretty neat.

Here are some fun beads with Vanilla Latte. You can see evidence of the colour curdling if you click on the goddess picture to see a bigger version of it and check out her belly.

Test Results :: Bonnie Blue

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 & 8 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace

I have deep love for this colour... the kind of love that drives people to hoard glass. Unfortunately, I talked myself out of participating in Frantz Art Glass' Black Friday sale, so I don't have a whole lot of it, and if you all agree with me that this is possibly the nicest blue glass ever, I will miss my chance to get more.  This colour really shines on its own, and is also really nice in a base bead, under clear where it won't react with anything. It is also weirdly compelling on top of Opal Yellow.

Effetre Bonnie Blue seems to be a light blue opaque layered with two different colours of blue transparent - one on the teal side, and the other more aqua. Whatever they did at the factory, the result is a magical, streaky and beautiful.

When you reduce Bonnie Blue, it develops a patchy reddish reduction coating. I won't ever do this on purpose again, but if you have a use for this effect it's nice to know how to make it happen.

When silver leaf is melted into the surface of Bonnie Blue, a couple of strange things happen. First, the silver turns sort of yellow in places. Second, where it is darker, almost a dark grey, the silver has beaded up on the surface slightly. When the silver is reduced and encased, no good comes of it - it's yellow and brown and really sort of gross-looking.

Bonnie Blue also isn't a big winner with silver glass. My reducing silver glass frit sort of turned brown in places, and while I got some decent shine out of it the blues of the silver glass frit don't really bring out the beauty of the base colour. My TerraNova2 frit didn't really develop nice colour on top of Bonnie Blue and looks sort of sad and brown in places.

In terms of colour reactions, there are some interesting things to report.

On top of Tuxedo, the edges of my Bonnie Blue seem to have curdled slightly, and the streakiness of the Bonnie Blue is really evident. Nothing so interesting happens when things are turned upside down and it is Tuxedo on top of Bonnie Blue.

Bonnie Blue causes Copper Green to separate when Copper Green is used on top of it, and when Bonnie Blue is used on top of Copper Green it helps Copper Green to looks pretty and turquoise and not develop that greyish sheen it seems to like having when used by itself or with other colours.

I am oddly attracted to what happens to Bonnie Blue on top of Opal Yellow - the streakiness of it is accentuated and the stringer lines and dots look almost weirdly rippled on top of Opal Yellow in the bead on the left. When Opal Yellow is used on top of Bonnie Blue, it just looks like Opal Yellow.

Bonnie Blue and Ivory have a reciprocal dark line reaction, which because of the streakiness and semi-transparency of the Bonnie Blue in places is echoed all through the stringer lines and dots in my test bead where I used it on top of Ivory. This reaction is fairly strong - even in the bead on the right you can see that the Ivory has a dark line around it but is also pretty thoroughly shaded and discoloured on the inside of the stringerwork.

Peace and Bonnie Blue co-exist without doing anything noteworthy.

Here are some fun beads made with this colour. I used Bonnie Blue in the base of the mushroom bead.

And here is a really bad picture of the goddess bead I made with Bonnie Blue. I'm posting it only because I'm too lazy to try to take another picture, and so that you can see how pretty the colour looks when used in a sculptural piece. Please excuse the lint.

Test Results :: Woodie

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

Effetre Woodie is a pretty neat colour of brown. It's sort of strange to use - it's not grainy at all like some Effetre opaques, and it is smooth and almost buttery to melt. It's fairly transparent while hot, but when it cools it is as opaque as opaque can be.

Want a sort of washed out, streaky brown? Great, then don't strike or reduce it. Want instead a reddish, rich, chocolaty brown? Then just strike it by giving it a dose of reduction flame and be pleased with yourself for knowing it does this.

You can also strike it naturally in a neutral flame to darken it, but that doesn't give it the reddish hue. The next beads show its darker-yet-not-red aspect.

When silver leaf is used on top of Effetre Woodie, it lays flat on the surface and acquires a touch of a golden hue. You can also see around the silver leaf in the bead on the left that a subtle, darker line surrounds the silver. When the silver leaf is reduced and encased it turns a snowy silver colour with hints of blue.

Silver glass likes Woodie, too. My reducing silver glass frit got nice shine on it, and my TerraNova2 frit developed some nice colour.

And here it is with some colours. In these beads, the Woodie is not very well struck, and has a sickly yellowish hue to it. This glass is a chameleon, for sure.

On top of Tuxedo, the edges of Woodie look sort of bubbled and three-dimensional. No reaction is evident when things are switched around and it is the Tuxedo that is on top.

There's no obvious reaction when Woodie is used on top of Copper Green, however on top of Woodie, Copper Green develops an interesting three-dimensional-looking outline.

Woodie doesn't have any reactions with Opal Yellow or Ivory apart from a little bleeding/feathering with Ivory when it is used on top which is less of a reaction than it is a viscosity thing.

Finally, Peace separates on top of Woodie just like it does on just about everything else. you can see a faint outline inside the Peace dots and stringer lines in the bead on the right.

I made some fun beads with Woodie, too, but I made them so long ago that I can no longer tell which ones they are. Sorry about that! I am almost caught up with posting the test beads that I made in September, so I'll have more interesting stuff to show soon.

Test Results :: Dark Silver Plum

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 & 8 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace

Effetre Dark Silver Plum is a colour that requires some practice to get right, I think. I was not able to get the gorgeous rainbow oilslick colours that I have seen other people get with this colour, although I did get some hints of it in my goddess (see the bottom of this post). I haven't tried Dark Silver Plum in shard form, and a lot of the really beautiful things I've seen other people do with it have involved blowing it into thin shards and applying those to the bead.

Regardless, I did make some interesting discoveries about Dark Silver Plum, which I will share with you.

In the bead on the left, I applied silver leaf to the bead, burnished it in and then melted it off. Where the silver leaf touched the bead, the metallic sheen on the Dark Silver Plum is a markedly lighter colour of pinkish purple, and in some places has turned an orangey pinkish colour. This is sort of a cool development.

When the silver leaf is reduced and encased, it forms a pale lavender blanket over the Dark Silver Plum and retains some of its shininess under the clear.

My reducing silver glass frit got beautiful colour on top of Dark Silver Plum, and I got pretty neat results from my TerraNova2 frit as well although it's so dark that it's hard to see it properly. Dark Silver Plum seems to be a decent base for silver glass colours.

Dark Silver Plum is a surprisingly unreactive colour, however there are some interesting take-aways from this set of tests.

• When Tuxedo is used on top of Dark Silver Plum, a webby outline forms around it, that is bounded by a dark line.
• When Copper Green is used on top of Dark Silver Plum, a dark outline forms around it. On top of Copper Green, Dark Silver Plum seems to separate slightly.
• When Peace or Ivory is used on top of Dark Silver Plum, a dark line develops around the dots/lines and the Dark Silver Plum shininess coalesces into a silver coating around the edges of that dark line. This is by far the most interesting reaction.

Here are some fun beads with Dark Silver Plum:

The goddess bead is all Dark Silver Plum. I didn't get so much of the rainbow effect that some other people get, but I did get some hints of it. The glass is curiously matte-yet-shiny.

Here, I've used Dark Silver Plum as the border/edguing for this bead.

Pantone Colours - Spring 2013

For those of us who are fashion-conscious (and I don't think that anyone who knows me would put me in that camp) the people at Pantone predict the fashion colours ahead of the designers and sweatshops creating the clothes that we will end up buying.  Even if, as beadmakers and jewellery designers, we don't care about being fashionable ourselves, it never hurts to know what colours are likely to coordinate with what our more fashion-savvy customers might like to buy next year.

So, I've taken a stab below at matching up glass colours to the Pantone 2013 women's and men's fashion palette.  Enjoy!

These are the Pantone colours, from the Pantone website. I've taken the liberty of combining the two images here so that I can talk about them together. The top set of 10 colours are the women's fashion colours, and the lower set of 10 colours are the men's colours. For expediency, I will deal with them all together, and because it pleases me, I'll do it in rainbow order.

This is a gorgeous palette. I love almost everything in it, with the possible exception of the eye-bendiness of the Emerald. I'll add to this as more options occur to me!

Poppy Red

• CiM Maraschino
• CiM Vermilion, which was previously known as Lipstick Unique #2
• CiM Scarlett, which was previously known as Lipstick Unique #3
• REI Strawberry (work it cool, and with enough oxygen, or it will be more like Alloy)
• EFF Carrot Red
• Effetre Medium Red
• KUG Coral Red

Nectarine / Vibrant Orange
These are similar enough to me, in terms of how precise I can even get with glass colour, that I'll just deal with them together.

• REI Opal Orange
• EFF Striking Orange
• EFF Hallowe'en
• VET Tangerine Sparkle
• CiM Peachy Keen (a little light, but really one of only two light orange transparent options)
• LAU Peach (a little light, but really one of only two light orange transparent options)

Sunflower

• LAU Orange-Yellow Opaque
• EFF Venetian Sunrise Coral
• CiM Ghee (heavily struck)
• CiM Stone Ground
• EFF Light Topaz
• REI Amber

Lemon Zest

• CiM Daffodil
• CiM Ghee (lightly struck)
• CiM Lemon Drop

Tender Shoots

• EFF Green Olive
• EFF Pale Green Apple
• EFF Nile Green
• CiM Key Lime Pie
• CiM Elphaba
• EFF Light Grass Green
• EFF Kiwi

Grayed Jade

• CiM Celadon (although it's a bit bright)
• EFF Copper Green
• EFF Pale Green Emerald
• CiM Dirty Martini (although it's a bit light)

Emerald

• CiM Sherwood
• CiM Moana
• CiM Sea Foam
• EFF Light Teal Transparent
• CiM Galapagos

Dusk Blue

• EFF Bonnie Blue (although it's a little on the bright side)
• CiM Fremen (more than a little on the bright side)
• EFF Medium Blue Transparent (although it's a little on the purple side)
• EFF Sky Blue Opalino
• VET Pajama Blue
• CiM Caribbean

Monaco Blue

• CiM Ink Blot
• CiM Leaky Pen
• EFF Ka-Bluey
• LAU Steel Blue

African Violet

• CiM Evil Queen
• EFF Lavender
• EFF New Violet
• EFF Light Violet Transparent

Linen

• EFF Silver Pink
• CiM Sepia
• CiM Butter Pecan
• CiM Ginger
• CiM Peaches & Cream

Tidal Foam

• EFF Light Brown Transparent
• CiM Sand Dollar
• CiM Zombie (keep silver away from it or it will turn brown)

Alloy

• CiM Twilight
• EFF Dark Steel Gray Transparent
• REI Grey Transparent
• VET Medium Grey

Test Results :: Supernatural

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 & 8 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace

Effetre Supernatural is a very interesting colour. All by itself, it's a little boring - just streaky grey and white. However, reducing it, using it with silver and using it with other colours can change its appearance. I think I like it best reduced and with silver leaf. You'll see why, below.

It's not evident in the test beads, but superheating Supernatural brings out turquoise streaks, I'm assuming because it makes the copper in the glass separate from the rest of the colour. You can't see that in my test beads, but it is evident in the goddess bead at the end of this post.

You can see here in the spacer on the left the whiteish grey streakiness of Supernatural. When supernatural is reduced, it develops a translucent pinkish red coating.

When I used silver leaf on top of Supernatural, it fumed the Supernatural a yellowish colour. Additionally, the silver has turned a blueish colour. It's rather pretty, actually. When the reaction is reduced and encased, most of the prettiness goes away and it just looks like a whiteish coating surrounded by yellowish and pinkish patches, which is way less appealing.

When I reduced silver glass on top of Supernatural, I gor a brownish, yellowish fuming from the Supernatural, all around the frit. This is a pretty neat effect. On top of Supernatural, my striking silver glass frit got an interesting strike - I'm not thrilled with the amount of strike, but I am intrigued by the fact that each bit of frit seems to have developed colour in little patches. This makes me want to try it again, for sure.

Supernatural is a streaky colour, so in most cases above, it's not easy to see if there is a reaction. However, a few things come through loud and clear:

• Copper Green turns darker and pinkish when Supernatural is used on top of it.Supernatural gets a brown line around it when it's used on top of Opal Yellow. This line does not seem to appear when Opal Yellow is used on top of Supernatural.
• There is a reciprocal dark line reaction between Ivory and Supernatural. This dark line appears regardless of which colour is used as the base.

Here are some fun beads with Supernatural:

Supernatural's streakiness and its tendency to reduce even in a more or less neutral flame are both evident in this goddess bead. You can see the deep, turquoise streaks, the grey mottled streakiness of the glass itself and the patches of brick-red reduction here.

Here, I've used Supernatural both in the core of the bead under transparent light aqua and silvered, in the mushroom cap and stem.

Test Results :: Rogue

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 & 8 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, Peace

Effetre Rogue is a strange, streaky steel grey colour. I say strange because it doesn't fit neatly into any of my mental colour categories. It's not really blue, and it's not really grey. In some ways, it is reminiscent of the Turquoises and Copper Green, because it reduces to a vivid brick red, and unreduced it tends to get a greyish, oily-looking sheen on it that makes it look streaky. And on top of that, it is sort of streaky, dark grey lines interjecting themselves even in self-coloured spacers.

Here, you can see Rogue both unreduced (left) and reduced (right). The red coating that comes from reducing Rogue is even and sort of beautiful.

Silver leaf doesn't really add a lot of magic to Rogue. On the left, in the unencased bead, you can see some interesting surface variation and it's kind of cool how the silver's gone yellow in places, green in places and looks sort of blue in others. It's all noteworthy that it's spread out over the bead pretty uniformly. However, once the silver is reduced and encased, it's kind of ugly.

Rogue makes a passable base for silver glass. Both my reducing silver glass frit and striking TerraNova2 frit got good colour on top of Rogue. The weirdness here for me is in the reducing silver glass bead, because of the brown colour that's sprung up between the fritty bits. Generally, that brown fuming discolouration only comes up on sulfur colours, however Rogue is living up to its name by refusing to let me neatly categorize it.

In the bead on the right, you can see that Rogue has sprung up in thin litle halos around the TerraNova2 frit.

There's not much reaction to speak of between Rogue and Tuxedo, apart from a faint separation of the Rogue when used on top of Tuxedo. This can be seen in the bead on the left.

On top of Copper Green, Rogue separates slightly. You can see in the bead on the left the darker lines running through the middle of the Rogue. Weirdly enough, in the bead on the right it is the Copper Green that's separated on top of the Rogue with a faint, lighter outline surrounding a darker, metallic copper green centre to the dots and stringer lines.

There's weird separation for Opal Yellow and Rogue too. It's less dramatic when Rogue is used on top of Opal Yellow, and sort of reminiscent of, if fainter than, the reaction with Copper Green in the bead on the left. However, in the bead on the right, the Opal Yellow/Rogue reaction is much stranger, the Opal Yellow seeming to get grooves in it, separated into a centre and outer portion that are more or less the same colour but are separated by an apparent fissure.

Rogue develops a dark line reaction with Ivory, both when it is used on top of and underneath it.

On top of Peace, Rogue thins out and looks almost translucent. On top of Rogue, Peace develops a greyish appearance with a crisp white line around its edges.

Here are some fun beads with Rogue.

In the goddess bead, you can see Rogue's full range of colour. It has blushed brown in parts, and has also developed some seriously turquoise and dark grey streakiness. It's a beautiful glass to sculpt with - creamy and well-behaved.

In the mushroom bead, I used Rogue as the core under some transparent Light Aqua and Clear, and I also used it silvered in the mushroom cap and stem.

Test Results :: Ivoryish

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 6 - w/ TeraNova2 Frit, 7 & 8 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace

Effetre Ivoryish is a little like the Fossil family of cool colours from Effetre, except that Ivoryish is a warm colour where Fossil tends to be greyer and cooler. On the whole, I vastly prefer Ivoryish. I've never had much of an attraction to Fossil.

Like the Fossils (Dark, Medium, Light), Ivoryish is a streaky colour. Warm ivory tones, warm beige notes and darker greys and browns all run through the variegated rods. The consistency of Ivoryish is quite a bit like the consistency of Effetre Dark Ivory, and its reactions are also quite similar. Like Dark Ivory, Ivoryish curdles when it is super-heated, and turns browner when fumed with silver.

This is what Ivoryish looks like made up into plain spacers. You can clearly see all of the colour striations, ranging from ivory tones to darker beige and even darker grey.

Putting silver leaf on the surface of Ivoryish, burnishing it on and then burning it off results in a sort of 'petrified' appearance to the Ivoryish. The colour of it goes darker, browner and cloudier, with curdling striations wandering through it. When the silver is reduced and encased, some of the magic is lost  -- the blanket of silver looks sort of dirty and the fumed colour dissipates.

Silver glass likes Ivoryish a lot. In the bead on the left, I got great colour from my reducing silver glass frit on top of this colour. The dark lines that pop up around the frit make it even more interesting. And in the bead on the right, I got pretty decent colour out of the TerraNova frit in places, and in other places it just looks dark and drab. But, there is potential here for Ivoryish as a base for either reducing silver glass or striking silver glass.

In terms of reactions with other colours, Ivoryish is pretty much identical to Dark Ivory. It forms dark line reactions with Copper Green and Opal Yellow.

All of these beads contain Ivoryish to some degree.What an awesome colour.