Test Results :: Golden

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

I have a soft spot for the Kugler Beadmaking 104 colours, and Kugler Golden is one of those colours that is so pretty to look at in the rod that you don't even really want to melt it. Golden is the only 104 COE Pink that I have found so far that does not turn Ivory black. I think that this means that it doesn't have any silver or copper in it, but what exactly -is- in it is anyone's guess.

Golden is a pretty soft colour, and is butter-smooth to melt.

Golden strikes darker, the longer you work it. The bead on the right here was reduced after cooling.  I don't think it's the extra propane that causes the colour change, but rather the repeated heating. My goddess bead (below, after the colour tests) holds up this theory.

Here, the silver leaf has made the Golden itself go really dark, and then in the bead on the left, it's turned a brown, coppery colour but in some places has also turned blue or slightly iridescent. In the bead on the right, you can see that if the silver is encased you get a smooth, silvery blanket  under the Clear that is fumed blue at its edges. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, it's not a good idea to encase Golden, and that bead cracked in multiple places.

I got beautiful colour from both reducing silver glass frit and striking silver glass frit on top of Golden.

 

I also got great results with my Golden silver glass frit stringer here in the bead on the left. I love the colours I got and the weird grunginess of the effect. However, this bead also cracked in numerous places. I used Golden in the core, then frit stringer made with Golden and Double Helix frit, and then encased the bead with either Effetre 006 or the new Vetreria Soiva Clear. I'm not sure which Clear, but it doesn't really matter, because Golden has cracked every time I have ever encased it with any Clear, even just in dots.

In the bead on the right, you can see that Golden over Silver Foil results in a beautiful, shiny, pinkish coppery colour. I used Golden as the core of this bead, burnished on a couple of layers of Silver Foil, and then encased it with Golden.

So, in spite of how cool and reactive Golden is with silver, it is dull, dull, dull in terms of reactions with other colours. I don't think there's a single thing about these beads that I could pin on a reaction between Golden and one of the other colours.

This goddess bead is made with Golden.

I also did some messing around with colour mixing, because I wanted to prove to myself whether Golden just has an encasement problem or if it's a deeper, more concerning compatibility issue.  I haven't done any fancy polariscope testing, but after my colour mixing experiments below, I tend to believe that the problem with Golden is a problem with encasing it, because, weeks later, none of these beads have any cracking issues.

KUG Golden : EFF Dark Aqua (1:1)

This came out stranger than it looks. First, the Golden and Dark Aqua have only sort of blended together, so you can see clouds of pinkishness lurking in the depths of the bead when you look at it in person. Then, there's all the bubbles, which must have been my fault... but, why don't all of the other colours have bubbles, too, if that's the case? I don't think I did anything differently here. 

KUG Golden : EFF Ivory (1:2)

All of the other pinks I have used with Ivory have turned Ivory black. I wonder why Golden doesn't? I really expected this mixture to be terrible, but instead, it is very pretty and streaky, sort of like cotton candy.

KUG Golden : EFF Opal Yellow (1:1)

Of course. Light yellow plus pink makes a reddish black. I knew that.

KUG Golden : EFF Copper Green (1:1)

Strangely both not green and not golden. If anyone knows why the combination of these two colours creates a gross streaky black/grey colour, I'm interested.

KUG Golden : KUG Light Beige (aka ASK Moroccan Swirl) (2:1)

The rod I used was labelled 'Moroccan Swirl' with an ASK color number. Moroccan Swirl is apparently not all that opaque, but certainly lightens the colour of the Golden when combined with it this way. I also like the weird streakiness.

I need to work on my colour mixing technique, because I must have captured a lot of air mixing some of these colours.

Mixing colours is fun! If you haven't yet attempted it, though, here's a warning. Mixing colours takes a while. I wasted hours screwing around with these at the torch, and it's oddly addictive, so I'm sure that I'll be toileting more time on this type of activity again soon.

Test Results :: Eventide

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/ Silver Glass Frit Stringer (encased), 8 - Over Silver Foil, 9 & 10 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace

Eventide is a new Creation is Messy Limited Run, and it is very interesting with silver. I generally describe a colour's hue up here in the first paragraph, but as you will see below, I'm a little confused about what colour Eventide is.

If you read my post about Blue Steel last week, you already know that I may have been having some flame chemistry challenges when I made these beads. Like with Blue Steel, the bead on the left was made on a MiniCC, which was someone else's set-up. The bead on the right was made on my Minor, on a concentrator, with an oxygen hose that was, as it turns out, far longer than I needed it to be. I fixed it the other day and it made a huge difference in my flame, but I don't have any more Eventide to test, so I'm not sure if that was my problem or not.

I didn't anneal the brighter blue spacer, either, and I read on Kandice Seeber's blog (Color Addiction, here) that she believes it might be annealing that sucks the colour out of Eventide. Whatever the reason is, whether it was my oxygen levels or my kiln, the brighter blue is the colour I was hoping to retain after my bead had finished in the kiln.

Did you know that your oxygen hose only needs to be as long as the linear distance between your torch and your concentrator? I totally never even thought about it, which is a little embarrassing to admit.

I love how this colour reacts with silver. In the bead on the left, my unencased silver leaf dispersed into a lacy pattern. In the bead on the right, where I reduced and encased the silver leaf, it has turned a mottled blue colour with a dark blue halo. Often when a colour does this the silver looks smooth and shiny under the layer of Clear, but with Eventide the silver looks more jagged and dangerous.

Reducing silver glass develops vivid colour on top of Eventide, but it also fumes the Eventide a yellowish colour. The bead on the right, where I used TerraNova2 frit on top of Eventide, didn't strike as well as I might have liked. But your mileage may vary, particularly if you have more skill with the striking colours than I do.

Here, I used Eventide to make frit stringer with my reducing silver glass frit blend, and then wrapped it around the bead and encased it with Clear without reducing it. I got really pretty blue, turquoise and black striations under the encasement layer. Also, in the bead on the right, Eventide has turned the silver an interesting golden beer-bottle colour.

Eventide is not reactive with any of the colours that I typically test with. I think Peace, Ivory, Opal Yellow and Copper Green separated on top of Eventide ever so slightly, but I'm unable to come up with anything weird to report here.

This goddess bead was made with Eventide. I thought I washed her off, but she seems to still have a bit of bead release dust clinging to her. Please ignore it.

Test Results :: Blue Steel

 

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

CiM Blue Steel is a new Limited Run colour from Creation is Messy. The colour of Blue Steel is similar to, but a bit darker than, the Vetrofond Blue Slate that I have buried in my Vetrofond stash. The colour of blue steel is hard to pin down with a single word, but is somewhere between blue and indigo and grey.

One of my rods of Blue Steel was quite shocky, but the other two were just fine, so if you get a shocky rod or two, just ride it out because they're not all like that.

These beads are both plain Blue Steel, but the bead on the right has been reduced. I'm not sure if it was the reduction or if Blue Steel is a bit of a striker, but the bead I reduced is more purple than the bead I did not reduce.

The other things that might be at play here are that I did not anneal the bead on the left, and I made the larger, bluer bead on a MiniCC and I made the smaller, purpler one on my Minor. I've learned since I made these beads that I've been working on my torch for the last five years with the oxygen hose too long, which may be responsible for this (as well as my ongoing battle with striking some silver glass colours). I've shortened my oxygen hose, so I'm ready to see if it makes any difference next time I have some Blue Steel handy.

In the meantime, all I can do is assure you that your beads will either be the colour on the left OR the colour on the right OR some colour in between OR some other colour entirely, because Blue Steel seems to be sort of sensitive to either flame chemistry, or annealing, or both.

Totally wasn't expecting this. In the bead on the left, I covered the Blue Steel with silver, burnished it in and then burned it off before pressing the bead. The first weird thing is that the silver has turned golden, pink and blue in various patches. The second (but more obvious) weird thing is that the silver has fumed the surface of the Blue Steel to a mustardy olive colour.

In the bead on the right, where I reduced and encased the silver, the Blue Steel is still that weird colour of green around the silver. The silver is oozing an ethereal blue halo under the layer of Clear, and has turned a blueish silver with a subtle MoP effect.

Reducing silver colours don't really play well with the colour of Blue Steel, however I found that Blue Steel is a pretty great base colour for striking silver glass. I got good colour out of my TerraNova2 frit, and I really like the light halos that sprang up all around the fritty bits in the bead on the right.

Blue Steel separates into lighter and darker versions of itself on top of Tuxedo. In the bead on the right, Tuxedo, Copper Green and Opal Yellow all seemed to spread a little on top of Blue Steel.

Blue Steel is not one of the colours that keeps Copper Green from developing a greyish film, although with Blue Steel the film that develops is also a bit on the brown side.

A faint, uneven dark line has showed up around the Blue Steel in the bead where I used it on top of Ivory.

When I used Ivory on top of Blue Steel, the Ivory separated a little and went all streaky, and the Blue Steel has darkened all the way around it in a thick band, but there is no crisp line there. If you click on the picture to the left of these words and look at it enlarged, it seems like the Blue Steel is curdling as well as turning a much darker colour where it surrounds the Ivory.

There seems to be not much in the way of reaction between Blue Steel and Opal Yellow or Blue Steel and Peace, apart from the spreading I already mentioned re: Opal Yellow.

I've used Blue Steel here as the base colour in this organic focal.