Test Results :: Crocus

CiM Crocus is a light, bright, semi-opaque lavender. I'm not sure why it's taken me this long to try it, but I've really enjoyed my adventures with semi-opaques this year -- I love the translucency and the reactivity of almost every single semi-opaque colour I have tried, and this one has been no exception.

Crocus is not very reactive, making it a both beautiful and stable colour to use in my designs. Someone told me when I started using this colour to watch out because they had incompatibility problems with Crocus, but I did not experience any problems that way at all, whether I encased the Crocus or not. I did find some of the rods a bit shocky, but not in any serious 'want to throw it across the room and forget it's name' kind of way.

Here we have Crocus, au-naturel. Reduced, unreduced, it's all the same. I also didn't find that I got much colour change or opacification from Crocus when I repeatedly heated it, which was nice since it happens a lot with other semi-opaques.

Crocus does not seem to be very reactive with Silver. The silver spreads out and basically just looks like a fine silver crust on top of Crocus, and when you reduce and encase the silver on top of Crocus you get a silvery, snowy blanket look.  Silver does not affect the colour of Crocus much in my test beads, above.

However, when I used my reducing silver glass frit on top of Crocus and reduced it, the Crocus turned an odd colour of grey. I'm not sure if this was because of reactions with the frit, the reduction, or if the colour change is a mix of reactivity with the frit and reduction, but it's a dramatic difference.  In the rightmost bead, my TerraNova2 went reddish purple which is the first striking step. This means to me that I could probably get decent colours with striking silver glass on top of Crocus if I worked at it a little.

In terms of reactions, I didn't observe that much with Crocus.

Copper green didn't go grungy when used underneath Crocus, which to me means that something in the Crocus helped to keep it clean. On top of Crocus, Copper Green separates and the edges of my dots and stringer lines turned an odd greyish pink colour.

There were also some very minor separation reactions in Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace when used on top of Crocus, but the separation was so minor that I'm not counting those in my overall reaction index.

Here are some beads that include CiM Crocus:

Test Results :: Periwinkle

I'm finally testing Effetre Periwinkle. I've spent eight years avoiding this colour pretty religiously, so it's surprising (to me) that I'm using it so much right now. It's a pretty but kind of alien colour that falls somewhere between blue and purple on the colour wheel.

Reducing Periwinkle doesn't have any effect on its colour.

Silver seems to discolour periwinkle slightly, which seems like it could be fun. The silver, reduced and encased, lies like a lacy whiteish blanket under a layer of clear in the leftmost bead.

In the bead on the left, you can see again how reducing the silver glass has discoloured the periwinkle, robbing it of its bright blueness. The silver glass frit is a touch coppery on top of the periwinkle, which I don't usually see in this test. in the bead on the right, I got big pale halos around all of the TerraNova2 fritty bits.  I didn't get much colour from the TerraNova2 in this quick test beads, telling me that it isn't one of the magic silver glass base colours I'm hunting for.

Periwinkle is not a very reactive colour. However, there are a few notes for me to make here.

On top of Tuxedo, Periwinkle seems to separate very slightly, developing some translucency around its edges. Tuxedo bleeds into Periwinkle when it is used on top.

With Periwinkle, I got a lot of the grunginess on my Copper Green that I only seem to avoid naturally when I combine the Copper Green with certain other colours.  I don't know if Periwinkle brings out the sludginess or if it just doesn't help to inhibit it, but I definitely get this more when combining Copper Green with some colours than others.

When I used Periwinkle on top of Opal Yellow, a faint crevice showed around all of the dots and stringer lines causing them to almost look lifted off the surface of the bead.

I don't have anything significant to add about either Ivory or Peace.

Here are some other beads that include Effetre Periwinkle:

Test Results :: Light Cobalt (Vetrofond)

So just to start things off on the right foot, this is Vetrofond Light Cobalt, not Effetre. I don't know how similar Effetre Light Cobalt is, because I have not tried it.  I'm trying to test more production colours than out-of-production to make this resource more generally useful, but I had two pounds of this and I needed to know how the reactions work and what the colour looks like and since Frantz seems to still have tons of this, maybe someone else will too.

Light Cobalt is a not-very-light royal blue. It's a gorgeous colour, if you like bright, dark blue. It reminds me of the colour of some ice wine bottles, although those are generally transparent.

It was weird for me that this colour was transparent when I pulled it into stringer because it's so very saturated. So, it's dark and it's saturated, but not as dense and opaque as it seems like it will be in rod form. The stringer, when used on top of other colours, looks perfectly opaque, like that whole transparency thing was all in my head. (it wasn't)

What a vibrant colour this is. Reducing it seemed to darken the colour slightly.

Silver looks pretty silvery on top of Light Cobalt. In the bead on the left, the silver seems to have just stayed where I put it, and then when the silver is reduced and encased, it looks like a soft silvery blanket under the clear glass.

This colour is fun with reducing silver glass. It has struck darker here in the bead on the left just like it did in the spacer I reduced, and my silver glass frit looks beautiful on top of it, in lacy shades of blue and green. In the bead on the right, you can see gentle lighter blue halos popped up around my TerraNova2 frit.

Light Cobalt is not a very reactive colour, but there are a few things to talk about here.

Where I used Light Cobalt on top of Tuxedo, there is a thin crusty whiteish line around the dots and stringer lines in a not-very-uniform way. Nothing happens when it's the Tuxedo that's on top.

There's no real reaction between Copper Green and Light Cobalt except that Copper Green seems to develop that yucky greyish sheen more easily with this colour.

When Light Cobalt is used on top of Peace or Opal Yellow, you can see that there is some bleeding of the Light Cobalt into the glass around the stringer lines and dots giving a blueish glowy effect. When Peace or Opal Yellow is used on top of Light Cobalt, it develops a light blue outline, which is really neat-looking.

These beads all contain Light Cobalt.

Test Results :: Dirty Martini

CiM Dirty Martini is a very pale opaque teal that is one of my favourite colours. It's versatile, the consistency of it is beautiful, it is stable, not reacting really outrageously with anything apart from silver, and the reactions with silver just make me happy.

It makes a fabulous base colour for just about anything, and I was able to get some pretty neat effects from it combining it in spacer beads with other colours.

Reducing Dirty Martini has no effect on its colour, and Dirty Martini does not strike.

The bead on the left where I put silver leaf on top of Dirty Martini is really interesting. You can see how it has fumed brown and yellow and I even see a touch of purple underneath the silver, which has gone a yellowish grey colour.

Reducing and encasing the silver removes all of that visual interest and the silver turns snow white and all of the discolouration vanishes. Weird.

Dirty Martini seems to make a pretty good base for striking silver glass, as I got some really nice colour starts from my TerraNova2 frit in the rightmost bead. With reducing silver glass frit, it yellows significantly after the reducing step and I'm not sure that the result is very attractive.

Dirty Martini separates on top of Tuxedo, and when Tuxedo is used on top of Dirty Martini, it spreads. This was weird for me because I am accustomed to thinking that it will be the softer colour that will spread, but Dirty Martini is softer than Tuxedo. Again, weird.

Dirty Martini makes Copper Green separate. The separation is subtle, and more obvious when Copper Green is used on top of Dirty Martini than the opposite.

The most interesting thing here is that Opal Yellow makes Dirty Martini greener. I don't know how or why, but it happens both when Dirty Martini is on top and when it is underneath Opal Yellow. There's no real reaction, just greenness.

There are no obvious reactions between Dirty Martini and Peace or Dirty Martini and Ivory, although Ivory seems to really spread on top of it.

Here are some other beads made with Dirty Martini: