Test Results :: Cobalt

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

Effetre Cobalt Transparent is a deep, rich cobalt blue transparent. It is moderately saturated, meaning that while it is a nice, dark colour, it still looks blue rather than black when used to make spacer beads. It is moderately reactive with silver and other glass colours, making it an interesting addition to my palette.

It's sort of funny to me now that I've been avoiding this colour for the last six years or so. I always regarded it as too bright or something, and never wanted to use it. I had no idea how much I was going to like it once I tried it. I guess I'm getting over my fear of bright colours or something.

On top of Cobalt, silver more or less stays put and forms a fine, webby network.  When it is reduced and encased, it takes on a blue/green appearance under the clear.

I read a post on Lampwork Etc. by Sarah Kay about her Blue Bead using this colour and silver, which you should also read if you are interested in how to really exploit the effects you can get by reducing and encasing this colour.

The results I got from putting silver glass on top of Cobalt, for lack of a more descriptive set of terms, is just sort of odd.  More experimentation is going to be required to figure out whether it is good-odd or bad-odd.  The reducing silver glass frit got beautiful colour and some interesting curdling and outlining effects on top of Cobalt, and my TerraNova2 frit developed colour well, but in a murky purple way that I'm not sure I'm a fan of.

Using Cobalt in my silver glass frit stringer test yielded a partial success.  It is interesting that it did something, even if that something isn't what I am usually hoping for in this test's results. It's wispy, and not solidly streaky like I have experienced with other reactive transparents like Yellow, Straw Yellow, Light Brown, etc.

Unfortunately, in the right-most bead, I seem to have done two stringers of Opal Yellow instead of one of Opal Yellow and one of Ivory. As a result, if you are very interested in how Ivory behaves on top of Cobalt, you are going to have to try it yourself.  Sorry about that!

In terms of reactions with other colours, Cobalt is not very interesting, although it is certainly nice to have some stable, non-reactive colours in our palettes.  The only things I observed in these test beads are that Opal Yellow, Peace, and Copper Green all separate on top of Cobalt, and that Copper Green develops a dark patina when used with this colour.

And finally, here is the Cobalt goddess bead. She has a little lint on her, but if you ignore that, you can see the richness of this colour and the different hues it takes on, depending on the thickness and how the light hits it.

Test Results :: Yellow

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

I never expected to love Effetre Yellow, but making these test beads has made me love it a lot. The best thing about falling in love with a colour like this one is that it is both cheap and readily available in addition to being really interesting and beautiful. And this is coming from someone who doesn't even really like yellow.

Yellow is reactive with silver but stable with other colours. It is on the golden side of yellow, and so is less livid than a lot of other shades of yellow glass I've used.  It melts nicely without bubbling or boiling, and it doesn't pit or do other unpleasant things when you're working it. The reactions that Yellow has with other colours fall in with my expectations of the family of colours that includes Kelp, Straw Yellow, Light Brown Transparent, and Mojito.

In the leftmost bead here, you can see that the silver has darkened the Yellow significantly, and beaded up on the surface of the bead in a strange way.  In the bead on the right, encasing the silver has produced a blueish/greenish reaction in places, and you can see the darkened yellow through the gaps where there is no silver on the base bead.

For this bead, I made a base of Yellow, rolled it in silver foil and then encased with more Yellow. Underneath the encasement layer, the silver looks almost burgundy.  I expected it to turn a coppery colour the way it does with Straw Yellow, but I guess the more saturated nature of this Yellow yields a darker, richer result.

I got beautiful, vivid colour from my reducing silver glass frit on top of Yellow, and I also got decent colour from TerraNova 2.  The biggest, most exciting surprise that Yellow gave me was what happened in the rightmost bead.  I did not expect this colour to work this way as silver glass frit stringer, but it not only worked but has amazing striations in it and beautiful blues and greens.

To make the bead furthest to the right, I melted a big blob of Yellow on the end of a rod, and then dipped it in my reducing silver glass frit blend.  I melted that in and re-dipped it a couple of times and then pulled it out into stringer.  I used that to encase a core of Yellow, and then without reducing it, encased the resulting bead with Clear.  I love this effect a lot.

Copper Green behaves a little oddly with Yellow.  When I used Yellow on top of it, a light line formed around most of the Yellow dots and stringer lines, and the Copper Green developed a sort of mottled, pinkish look to it.  When I used Copper Green on top of Yellow, it got pretty dark and seemed to pit more than usual.  Tuxedo on top of Yellow seemed more translucent than I am accustomed to it being.  Apart from those things, I didn't notice much else of interest in these beads.

And here is the Yellow goddess.  She shows how rich this colour is when used alone in a sculptural piece. I will post some more sample beads when I come back to this colour, although I am not sure when that will be.

Test Results :: Gellys Sty

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 Gellys Sty (darnit, I always want to put an apostrophe in it!) is a cool, beautiful, vibrant light pink opaque. It is reactive with silver, makes an interesting base for silver glass, and is full of interesting reactions with other colours.

In the leftmost bead, you can see that the silver has sort of crusted up on the surface of the Gellys Sty. It has also turned the Gellys Sty a really uncharacteristic brown colour.  The brown fuming is not evident at all in the reduced/encased bead, having disappeared. In the bead on the right where I reduced and encased the silver, it has a shiny, mother-of-pearl with blue highlights look to it under the clear encasement, and the Gellys Sty has faded to a yellowish colour in places.

You can see this yellowing in the leftmost bead of this pair as well.  It must be reducing it that makes it turn yellow, since the unreduced beads in both sets of test beads do not have the yellowing and the reduced ones do.  In the bead on the right, you can see that I was starting to get some interesting colour out of my TerraNova2 frit, so I think that this colour will make an above average base colour for striking silver glasses.

Most of the interesting reactions with Gellys Sty seem to occur when Gellys Sty is the base colour and other colours are used on top of it.

When Tuxedo is used on top of Gellys Sty, it spreads and webs a little.  The Gellys Sty separates and curdles underneath it, exaggerating the effect.  In the rightmost bead, where I used Gellys Sty on top of Tuxedo, the Gellys Sty has curdled in its dots and stringer lines, looking all striated.

Copper Green makes Gellys Sty separate when used on top of it.

Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace all spread on top of Gellys Sty. They also seem to lose a bit of their cohesion on top of this colour.  The colour out of the three that this happens to in the most pronounced way is Ivory, because you can see in the leftmost bead how the Ivory has curdled and frizzed up on top of the Gellys Sty. Interestingly enough, when Gellys Sty is used on top of these colours, nothing very interesting happens at all.

Sadly, I don't have any interesting 'fun beads' to show with Gellys Sty because I switched gears after making these beads. I will come back to it eventually, and I will add more bead pictures here when I do.

Happy 5th Birthday, Blog!

On November 5th, five years ago, I made my first post on this blog.  I was still pretty new to glass (just over a year of weekends), and it is pretty entertaining now for me to be able to look back through all of the posts I made in my first few months and the beads I made in those early days.

So, to celebrate the beginning of my sixth (wow!) year of blogging about glass, I am going to go back and do the same thing I did in my first year, only hopefully I will be a bit better at it this time around :)

I can't use the same colours I used in 2009, because many of them have been discontinued, and I don't still have all of them. Also, it would be unfair to any of you who want to play along to use colours that are no longer in production. So... I have revised the list a little bit, and for the foreseeable future, I have restricted my palette according to the following set of rules (copied from my 2009 post):

1. The palette must have no more than 15 colours. Black, Clear, Ivory and Dark Ivory don't count as colours and are always in the box as staples.
2. At least five of the palette's colours must be transparent.
3. Silver Glass colours do not count towards the total since they are used mainly as an accent.
4. I must use the same palette (see #5) for at least eight consecutive torching sessions.
5. I am allowed to make ONE adjustment between torching sessions if I decide that I really don't like a particular colour or if there is a new colour begging for me to try it RIGHT NOW, but if I put something new in, I must take something else out.
6. If I make any adjustment between torching sessions, I lose credit for the sessions I've completed with the palette to date and have to start over again (see #4). If the change was because I ran out of something, I can just carry on normally.
7. I start with around 1/4# of each colour. When I use up all of the rods of a given colour, I can select a new colour to replace it, or just grab another 1/4# of the same colour if I don't feel done with it yet.

And here is where we will start on January 1, with this initial selection of colours:

• Effetre Spanish Leather
• Effetre Striking Orange
• Effetre Opal Yellow
• Effetre Kelp
• Effetre Apple Blush
• CiM Slytherin
• CiM Shrubbery (you could use Olive, Leapfrog, Split Pea, Goblin, etc)
• Effetre Mosaic Green
• Effetre Copper Green
• CiM Mint Lozenge (you could use Poseidon or Kryptonite)
• Effetre Dark Violet
• CiM Evil Queen
• Effetre Lizard
• Effetre Oliva Nera
• Effetre Wood Legnos
• Staples: Tuxedo, Peace, Intense Black, Ivory, Dark Ivory
• Silver Glass: Assorted Colours
• Metals: Silver Mesh, Silver Wire, Copper Mesh, Silver Leaf, Silver Foil
• Dichro: Dichro on Clear (various colours)
• Goldstone: Gold Aventurine Chunks

What do you think?  Do you want to play along?  If so, get your colours and join me on January 1st. I will be blogging about my progress, and will show you all the beads I make and how I combine these colours to hopefully stunning, but possibly hideous, effect.

I may start earlier, but apparently I have to go to Australia this month, I'm pretty sure I have one more trip to the east coast before mid-December, and my mom is visiting in December.  Also, Christmas is apparently going to happen again this year. There just isn't enough time in my days!