Test Results :: Lipstick

Reichenbach Lipstick (RL6116) is a bright, happy semi-opaque (opal) red. This colour melts really nicely, does not boil easily, and didn't turn grey on me the way Reichenbach Strawberry did, although I should really try that colour again now that I have a more powerful oxygen concentrator.

Here is Lipstick with some other colours for reference.  Effetre Light Red is actually quite similar to Lipstick, although I think Lipstick is a bit lighter and a bit less opaque.  CiM Valentine and CiM Hemoglobin are substantially darker.  CiM Maraschino is darker in colour and more transparent than Lipstick.

Lipstick does not change significantly when it is reduced.

On top of Lipstick, silver leaf really crusts up, and the Lipstick itself fumes a dark colour. When the silver is reduced and encased, it turns blue. The Lipstick stays dark though, and does not lighten under the clear the way some other colours have for this test.

Lipstick is a good base for silver glass. I got some nice colour out of both my TerraNova2 frit and my blend of reduction glasses on top of this colour, and the dark line that forms around the fritty bits really make them pop.

Here you can see that because this colour is not fully opaque, it looks significantly lighter when used over a lighter base colour.

Lipstick separates on top of Tuxedo, and the edges of Tuxedo stringer lines and dots on top of Lipstick are a little fuzzy.

All of the colours I used here with Lipstick seem to have spread on top of it.  Ivory separated and developed a lightline up the middle, and there is a greyish dark line reaction with Copper Green that is both wide and blotchy.

Here are some other beads made with Lipstick:

Test Results :: Multicolor Dark

Reichenbach Multicolor Dark (RL6206) is a reactive striking colour. It is relatively easy to strike. The rods are a reddish purple colour, they go transparent when heated, and then turn green as they cool, then striking to blue, purple, and sometimes even a reddish colour.

You can see here that reducing the Multi Dark doesn't make it shiny and doesn't cloud it up the way Raku behaves when reduced. Here, it just advanced the colour of the glass into the purple hues.

I have noticed that in order to strike this colour, you need to let it get fairly cool and then give it a thorough, deliberate reheating. I was not able to screw it up -- no matter how I did it, I still got great colour, so that's a huge point in its favour.

I've now had two different versions of Multi Dark - or at least they seem different based on the appearance of the unmelted rods.

Both of the goddesses below are solid Multi Dark.  The top one was made with the darker rods and the bottom one was made with the older, paler-rodded variety. Maybe the newer, darker-rodded batch gives more deep blues, but it's also possible that these two beads received a different amount of heat, were cooled a different number of times, etc. This is a seriously beautiful colour, and no matter what batch of it you have, it's great glass.

  

On top of Multi Dark, silver disperses such that it's not really apparent on the surface. In so doing, it seems to inhibit the natural colours of the glass, or maybe just cover them up. When the silver is reduced and encased, it forms a solid layer through which you cannot see much of the base bead.

Copper Green, Opal Yellow, and Peace all separate on top of Multi Dark, and Multi Dark does not inhibit the sheen that develops on top of Copper Green.

Ivory forms a dark line reaction and turns a dark greyish brown around the edges of the dots and stringer lines when used on top of Multi Dark, and it also seems to separate. When Multi Dark is used on top of Ivory, it gets a dark outline and fumes the base ivory a brownish colour.

Here are some other beads made with Multicolor Dark.

Test Results :: Prussian Blue

CiM Prussian Blue is the rich, deep navy blue colour that I've been waiting for without even realizing how much I wanted it.  It's darker than Lapis Cobalt, it strikes even darker, and when it strikes it can develop a greenish cast that makes it a similar colour to Lauscha Steel Blue. It's wonderful, and I love it. I have a feeling it won't last long, and who knows whether or not it will be reproduced, so I'm going to have to break my self-imposed glass buying hiatus and get a few pounds of this.

You can see the plain colour in self-coloured beads.  The bead I reduced is darker, because this colour darkens with repeated heating and cooling. It could also be because of the reducing flame, but it is hard to say for sure without using it a lot more.

Here I've compared Prussian Blue to some of the other blues out there.  Effetre Navy Blue, CiM Class M Planet (another awesome blue limited run), Effetre Lapis Cobalt, Lauscha Steel Blue, and Vetrofond Light Cobalt.  Prussian Blue is darker than Lapis Cobalt, deeper in tone, and strikes to a colour not unlike Steel Blue with repeated heating and cooling and/or the addition of silver.

Add silver to Prussian blue and you get a wonderland of lacy, silvery blueness. When the silver is reduced and encased, it turns into a lacy white blanket with a blue haze. My Prussian Blue bead where I encased the reduced silver leaf cracked, though, and I'm not 100% sure why.

Because the cracks seem to originate at the hole, it's possible that this is a thermal crack. I think I encased this bead with Zephyr, so it's also possible that there was a viscosity clash between the Zephyr and Prussian Blue, maybe created or exacerbated by the silver leaf I used. Kandice Seeber successfully encased Prussian Blue with Zephyr without any cracking, but her beads did not include silver and were likely smaller than this one. When I get more Prussian Blue, I need to explore this further.

Silver glass likes Prussian Blue, too. I got very pretty blues out of my reduction frit on top of this colour, and the striking silver glass frit got a nice starting strike. Not a miraculous base for TerraNova2 like Dark Grass Green was, but promising.

Around Tuxedo dots and lines on top of Prussian Blue, the Prussian Blue shows up in light halos. On top of Tuxedo, Prussian Blue separates.

On top of Prussian Blue, Copper Green separates. Nothing interesting happens when you put the Copper Green on top of Prussian Blue, although it is may be notable how stubbornly greyish the Copper Green becomes when used with Prussian Blue. This is definitely not one of the colours that helps Copper Green not develop that sheen.

Opal Yellow and Prussian Blue don't really have a reaction, but you can see in the left bead that Prussian Blue bled into the Opal Yellow stringerwork in places.

Ivory separates on top of Prussian Blue. This combination does not produce the reciprocal dark line reaction that I was expecting.

Prussian Blue and Peace don't noticeably react with one another.

These beads / sets were all made with Prussian Blue.

Test Results :: Chartreuse

CiM Chartreuse is a bright and pretty translucent, lime green glass.  It's a more on the yellow side of green than its close cousin Inchworm, which I blogged about last week, but is otherwise quite similar.

This colour is a bit greener and way more transparent than Vetrofond Key Lime, which was an opaque chartreuse colour in the early days of it being for sale that got streakier and more cored with transparent as time went on and eventually morphed into what Frantz started calling 'Key Lime Parrot' which was a Key Lime-skinned transparent green with a solid stringer core. The true opaque Key Lime is the stuff that I miss.

This colour is perhaps a little more on the yellow side than I remember Vetrofond Parrot Green being, which was a bright green transparent that had some murky streakiness to it, and this colour is more translucent, but I think it fills the hole that Parrot Green's departure left. I wish I still had some of these two old colours so that I could do a side-by-side comparison, but mine is long gone.

Reducing Chartreuse does not alter the colour or surface finish.

Silver behaves with Chartreuse much as it did with Inchworm. It dissipates on the surface until you reduce and encase it, where it blankets the base bead with hints of blue fume here and there. Also, it does not alter the colour of silver when you use it to encase silver foil. The silver looks green through it, but it doesn't turn golden or coppery the way it does with many other colours in this hue group like Mojito and Pale Green Apple.

Chartreuse seems to be a good base colour for silver glass. In the leftmost bead, there were great reactions with the silver glass frit, although the blue doesn't stand out that well against the green of the Chartreuse, and I got a good starting strike from the TerraNova2 frit.

Like Inchworm, the main reaction ability that Chartreuse seems to have is to make the other colours separate on top of it. This happened with Copper Green, Ivory, Opal Yellow, and Peace. This colour doesn't seem to have adverse reactions with Ivory, either. In fact, you can see in the bead on the left that Ivory rises up in interesting halos around Inchworm dots.

I didn't have many rods of Chartreuse and they were all fairly thin, so apart from these test beads all I managed was this earring pair.

Test Results :: Orange Dreamsicle

Vetrofond Orange Dreamsicle is an orange that packs a lot more punch than the rods lead you to expect.  It is annoyingly shocky (you can expect it to chunk off the rod in approximately 1" pieces, most of the time, while you're working it) and it boils really easily. Some of my rods have little rocks in them, and some of them are wonkily shaped.

My Orange Dreamsicle also has rather less white streakiness than the variety pictured on Frantz Art Glass' website. This isn't usually necessary, but since the Vetrofond odd lots had a lot of variation, and my Orange Dreamsicle looks different than the Orange Dreamsicle samples I've seen online, I should show you an unworked rod:

Orange Dreamsicle is a bit of an opacity puzzle. It looks quite transparent in rod form, but beads made with it are not particularly transparent at all.  It looks almost like veiled cane when you look at the unworked rods, and pulls out very transparent in stringers, but is still quite a dense colour when it strikes. I guess it's opaque-ish?

Orange Dreamsicle does not change colour when you reduce it. It's a striking colour, so the final shade can vary, but it is easy to strike to this bright orange.

When you use silver on top of Orange Dreamsicle, it discolours it and turns it a greyish brown. The silver balls up and spreads out in a lacy way. When the silver is reduced and encased, it turns blue and the greyish brown fugliness of the base colour transforms back to orange.

Oops. Wouldn't it be nice if I'd cleaned these beads properly?  The leftmost bead shows that Orange Dreamsicle is very pretty with reducing silver glass frit. The frit gets a dark outline that really makes it pop, and the colour contrast between the orange and blue is very dramatic.  In the bead on the right, you can see I got very interesting colour from my TerraNova2 frit on top of Orange Dreamsicle.

When Tuxedo is used on top of Orange Dreamsicle, there are no obvious effects, but when Orange Dreamsicle is used on top of Tuxedo you can see that it separates and develops a thin line down the middle of stringer lines.

Copper Green and Orange Dreamsicle have a mutual dark line reaction. The line is more pronounced and darker when Orange Dreamsicle is used on top of Copper Green.

Opal Yellow and Peace separate very slightly on top of Orange Dreamsicle, but there is no obvious reaction when the Orange Dreamsicle is used on top of those colours.

Ivory really spreads on top of Orange Dreamsicle, and looks faintly translucent.

Here are some beads made with Orange Dreamsicle: