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 Light Turquoise is a medium turquoise opaque colour. It is very sensitive to flame chemistry, and is very reactive with Ivory and other sulfur colours.
Because I mainly make organic beads, this kind of opaque colour doesn't really do much for me. It's not neutral enough to use as a base colour in my organics, and it doesn't do enough fun streaky spready things to really be fun for me. My favourite things to do with Light Turquoise, at the moment, are to bury it as the core of my vine cane or in the middle of a big bead overlaid with a dark transparent. Both Effetre Light Turquoise and Dark Turquoise are especially annoying to me because of the grey film that develops on their surface. They are nice underneath other colours, and if you layer them under something else, they don't film up.
Here I have made two Light Turquoise spacers. The one on the left was made in a more or less neutral flame (I'm on a Minor, with a 5lpm oxycon), and you can see how a greyish film has developed on most of the surface. This film can be removed in a number of ways - you will read in online forums about how it can be removed by soaking the beads in Coca Cola, by soaking them in CLR or Lime Away or any number of other household chemicals. I like CLR - an hour or so of soaking in that and the film is gone, but haven't had much luck with the Coca Cola method.
The bead on the right was reduced, and in addition to the greyish film, it has also developed a pinkish coating. This pinkish 'reduction' coating can't be removed by soaking in anything because it is the copper crystals in the turquoise rising to the surface. Once you've done this to your Light Turquoise, unless you get it nice and hot in an oxygenated flame and can burn the reduction film off, you're stuck with it.
If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you know that I always test with Copper Green, and that Copper Green also has this unfortunate habit of filming up, but that when it is used with some colours, that film doesn't appear. The same is likely true of Light Turquoise, although I didn't really do a lot to test that theory. If you are reading some of my other tests and come across a colour that seems to have kept Copper Green free of the blechy grey film, it is worth a try to combine that colour with Light Turquoise to see what happens. Copper Green has redeeming qualities that Light Turquoise does not, in spite of this unfortunate tendency. I will tell you all about them in a future blog post!
With silver, Light Turquoise is not very attractive. Both on the surface of the bead and under clear after reducing, the silver looks sort of a greyish greenish yellow colour. Where the silver was left on the surface, it does seem to have done some interesting things - you can see one area of the bead where there has been some darkening and veining of the Light Turquoise - however while it is a little odd and worth notice, I'm not sure I'd do it on purpose.
One of the nicer things that happens when you encase Light Turquoise is that the greyish film doesn't accumulate on its surface.
Silver glass is just 'ok' on Light Turquoise. Light Turquoise neither seems to do anything to help the colour along nor hurt it, but the colour of the Light Turquoise doesn't do anything for me when combined with either the reduction frit blend or the TerraNova2.
In terms of reactions, the most pronounced one in this set of results is the dark line that Light Turquoise develops when used with Ivory. Everyone already knows about this reaction, so I haven't exactly broken new ground here.
On top of Light Turquoise, Peace and Opal Yellow both separate slightly and the dots and stringer lines have a pronounced three-dimensional effect. This reaction is more evident with Opal Yellow than with Peace.
The only other thing worth pointing out is that Light Turquoise on top of Tuxedo and Light Turquoise on top of Peace look like two completely different colours. I'm not sure why this is the case, but when I look at the bead on the left, above, it is difficult for me to process the idea that I was using the same colour on both ends of the bead. I don't know if this is because of a reaction or if it's just what happens when you use Light Turquoise on top of a very light colour vs. a very dark colour. You can decide.
I used Light Turquoise as the base colour in this bead, underneath a layer of CiM Midnight.
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