Test Results :: Kabluey

Effetre Kabluey is a streaky blue colour, and its most interesting feature is that it behaves and reacts like Ivory in spite of its blueness. Kabluey is not currently available for sale anywhere I've looked except for a very pale, unstreaky variety, but if you happen across some, you should snap it up. I want to believe that it will come back, but it's a 700-series colour which, I think, means that it's a one-off. If there were ever a colour I was sad about losing from my palette, it's this one.

Silver behaves with Kabluey just as it does with Ivory. It fumes any surrounding Kabluey to a dark colour, and it crusts up on the surface of the Kabluey in a lacy fashion. When the silver is reduced and encased, the surface of it smooths out, but you can see the laciness in patches under the clear.

Because Kabluey is blue, it doesn't exactly set off the silver glass, but because it reacts like Ivory you get charming dark rings around the fritty bits. In the bead on the left, you can see that the frit has developed the black rings and some silvery halos inside the smaller pieces. In the rightmost bead, I got some decent colour from my TerraNova2 frit, which is what I would expect on top of an ivory-like colour.

I'm just going to bullet point the interesting reactions here, because there aren't very many of them:

• Copper Green goes a dull army green colour and develops a dark line with Kabluey, both when used on top of and underneath it.
• Opal Yellow and Kabluey develop a reciprocal greyish brown coloured line, both when Kabluey is used on top of and underneath Opal Yellow.
• Opal Yellow separates on top of Kabluey.
• Peace separates on top of Kabluey.

These beads all contain some Kabluey:

 

 

Test Results :: Streaky Denim

Effetre Streaky Denim is very streaky indeed. It is, however, not denimy at all, denim typically being neither purple nor cobalt blue in colour. Streaky Denim is one of the Effetre 'Cool Colours', a term which I have never heard explained. I used to think that these colours were so-classified because they were special batches of colour mixed from other regular production colours, and I guess for all I know that impression of mine could be true, but if it is, I wonder what this one would have in it. Maybe it's New Violet plus Light Cobalt?

Anyway, Streaky Denim is among the few of these so called 'Cool Colours' that I actually think is cool. I love Earth best, but you can't seem to be able to get that any more so it's best to just put it out of your head. In fact, I shouldn't have tempted you. Bad Melanie.

Where I used silver leaf on top of Streaky Denim, it sort of dispersed and is mostly not really visible on the bead's surface. However, when the bead is subsequently reduced and encased, you can see that the reason it was not visible on the surface was because it has spread itself thinly all over the bead. The rightmost bead in this picture has a shiny, mother-of-pearl effect under the encasement layer, and iridescent flashes of blue.

I've done this test with a lot of colours now (I think this might be colour #192 or #193) and at this point, what I am noticing is that some colours make silver spread out, some colours make it condense in on itself, and some colours don't influence its behaviour at all.

In my opinion, this colour doesn't make a great base for silver glass. The reducing silver glass frit looks washed out on top of it, and I had a hard time striking my TerraNova2 frit.

On top of Tuxedo and Copper Green, Streaky Denim separates and gets silvery around the edges. This reaction is pretty neat, and did not prepare me at all for what happened on the rest of the bead. For some reason, on top of Opal Yellow, Ivory, AND Peace, my Streaky Denim turned brown. This surprised me, and I'm not sure why it happened.  I should add also that in other beads, I have used Streaky Denim on top of both Opal Yellow and Ivory without this happening.  *sigh*

In spite of all this weirdness when it gets to be on top, when Streaky Denim is used as the base colour, the results are much less shocking, if not less confusing. Dots and stringer lines of Tuxedo, Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace on top of Streaky Denim seem not to react at all, and Copper Green's only response is to blush turquoise and separate slightly, and fail to develop the dingy army-green sheen that it had in the bead on the left.

Here are some fun beads with Streaky Denim:

Test Results :: Very Cherry

Effetre Very Cherry is a supersaturated transparent red that looks almost black until it is thinned out on top of other colours. It is not materially affected by a reducing flame, and once thinned out over white or clear, is a beautiful shade of red. Very Cherry also does not seem to get livery the way a lot of other reds do with long working., and it's a good colour to use in hollows, as well as twisties, wigwags and other kinds of cane since it holds its colour so beautifully in thin layers.

With silver, Very Cherry behaves much as it does for many other colours that are Ivory-friendly. The silver crusts up on the surface, much as it does with Ivory only without the blackening that accompanies this reaction on top of Ivory. In the bead on the right, you can see that reducing and encasing the silver made it turn blue. This is similar to results I've gotten with other hot transparent colours like Reichenbach Mystic Coral and Effetre Striking Orange.

Very Cherry also seems to be a really nice base for silver glass.  My TerraNova2 frit struck beautifully without any of the nasty discolouration that many other similarly effective base colours (e.g. Ivory) have when used with silver glass.

Reactionwise, Very Cherry doesn't really seem to pick a fight with other colours. You can see that it thins out and spreads on top of Peace which is probably a useful thing for it to do when used for flower petals, and some colours (Ivory, Copper Green, Opal Yellow) separate when used on top of it.

Here are some fun beads with Very Cherry: