Test Results :: Heffalump

Creation is Messy Heffalump (CiM645) is a pale lavender that colour-shifts depending on whether you're looking at it under incandescent or fluorescent light. My photo tent bulbs seem to act like the latter, and I didn't get any pictures of these in natural or incandescent light, so I am sorry that I can't show you the slightly pinker cast these beads would have had. Fortunately, other people have been smarter and you can go see that on CiM's page for this colour.

Heffalump is very tolerant of different flame chemistries and doesn't do anything weird when you reduce it.

Here, you can see that Heffalump is a little bluer than the new CiM Rapunzel, but pinker than Effetre Lavender Pastel.

Silver on top of Heffalump reminds me of what happens with silver on top of Vetrofond Seashell Swirl. The silver turns greyish but with pink and blue blushes to it that are quite attractive if you reduce and encase it. If you don't reduce and encase it, it sits on top of the bead like a brownish crust, fuming the Heffalump yellow around itself.

Reducing silver glass is interesting on top of Heffalump because you get the same yellowing that you get from plain silver, only you get it in a lot of different places. I am a little in love with the effect of the blues and purple of my reduction frit blend on that background of gently yellow-fumed lavender. I didn't get a particularly nice initial strike out of the TerraNova2 frit on top of this colour.

Heffalump has poor cohesion, and separates on top of Copper Green, Opal Yellow, and Ivory. On top of Tuxedo it thins out and looks almost transparent and milk-mustachey.  When Copper Green and Tuxedo are used on top of it, it rises up around them in little halos.  Copper Green separates a little on top of Heffalump, too, but it's hard to see because this colour is definitely not one of the ones that helps keep Copper Green clean. Ivory separates on top of Heffalump.

Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace all spread like mad on top of this colour, too.

These are the only beads I have to show so far with Heffalump. I'll come back and update this when there are more.

Test Results :: Iris Dense Blue

Reichenbach Iris Dense Blue (RL3206) is a lovely colour, and much more fun to use than you could guess just by looking at an unmelted rod of it. It's soft as butter, very reactive with other colours, and lovely reduced. Let's look at some details.

Iris Dense Blue in solid-coloured beads is a mottled blue with a greenish cast, with dark veiny streaks running through it. I expected it to be brighter and sort of lividly blue, and this was a very pleasant surprise. When this colour is reduced, it develops a metallic sheen on it. You can see this sheen on both the middle and right-most beads, although for some reason it looks redder in the middle bead. I think that the amount of reduction alters the colour of it somewhat.

As I found in the rightmost bead, you can encase the reduction on Iris Dense Blue and achieve a mother-of-pearl effect. It does burn off easily, though, so you have to work cool if you want it to stick around. I managed to keep rather more of the reduction in this bead than I did in the pair of gobstoppers at the end of this post.

Silver spreads out and beads up on top of Iris Dense Blue. When the silver is reduced and encased, it forms a silvery blanket under the clear layer.

In the leftmost bead, my little fritty bits of silver glass developed an organic light border, and the surface of the Iris Dense Blue reduced to a gunmetal-ish colour.

In the rightmost bead, I got an interesting light border around all of my TerraNova2 frit and a starting  strike to burgundy, but no unusually great striking results.

Iris Dense Blue separates on top of Tuxedo, and if you compare the way it looks on top of Tuxedo to how it looks on top of all of the other colours here, I think you'll have to agree that it looks both brighter and bluer on top of that colour than with any of the others.

Copper Green, Opal Yellow, and Peace all separate on top of Iris Dense Blue, and Iris Dense Blue separates on top of them as well, a faint dark line running through the centre of its dots and stringer lines. It fumes Peace a weird greenish colour, both when Peace is above and when it is below it.

The big star of this series of tests is the behaviour with Ivory. On top of Ivory, Iris Dense Blue separates into light and dark, and throws a brown reaction line. The resulting effect is of a 3-dimensional set of stringer lines and dots that looks raised off of the Ivory base glass which is very appealing. When Ivory is used on top of Iris Dense Blue, the result is still interesting. You still get the dark line and the light outline, but because the reaction 'shadow' encroaches on the Ivory and not the blue, the stringer dots and lines take on a messier, uneven appearance.


Here are some beads that include Iris Dense Blue.

Sale on Frit until Jan 2! (Website Only)

All of my 104 CoE frit products are going on sale this week and staying on sale until January 2nd.

To get your 20% off, use coupon code 'merrychristmas' in the shopping cart when you check out. Please note that the sale is only applicable on my website - I am not offering this discount on Etsy.

Website link:
http://www.melaniegrahamstudios.com/

I hope everyone is having a beautiful start to their holiday season.

Test Results :: Poolside

Poolside (CiM553) is a beautiful light teal transparent. Like with other light CiM transparents, I found that this one had a tendency to boil, but that you can avoid that problem by working further up in the flame and being careful not to overheat it. 

Reducing Poolside does not alter its colour. The smaller bead looks darker here only because more of the darker grey background colour shows through less glass.

Poolside, huewise, falls somewhere between Effetre Light Aqua and Effetre Light Teal, with just a smidgen less saturation than either of those colours. It's bluer than Light Teal, but greener than Light Aqua.

On top of Poolside, silver leaf balls up and disperses. If you reduce and encase it, it forms a greyish blanket under the clear layer.

I got nice colour from my TerraNova2 frit on top of Poolside.

The most interesting thing about Poolside is how mildly it reacts with Ivory. Other teals and turquoises form an intense dark line reaction with Ivory, but Poolside developed only a faint brown reaction when used on top of it, and no dark reaction at all when Ivory was on top.

Poolside separates Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace.

I don't have anything else to show you with Poolside yet, but if that changes I will come back and update.

Test Results :: Siren

CiM Siren (CiM463) is a pretty, pale teal green transparent colour.

I found that this colour worked up sort of cloudy, giving me the same boiling/scumming experience I am prone to with the other light CiM transparents. Working cooler and higher up in the flame really seems to help with this, but is unfortunately not second nature to me. More practice required, I suppose :)

Siren is, huewise, right between Effetre Pale Aqua and Pale Emerald, although it is more saturated than either of those.

Siren is not very reactive with silver. Silver leaf on top of Siren disperses and continues to look silver. Siren does not turn silver foil yellow when it is used to encase it, and if you reduce and encase silver on top of Siren, it looks greyish, with blue pockets where there are gaps in the silver layer and the Siren peeks through.

My tests with silver glass and Siren didn't yield any remarkable results.

On top of Siren, Copper Green separates and definitely develops that army green patina that it is famous for, both on top of and underneath this colour. It also is pinkish in appearance, as though something in the Siren drives the Copper in Copper Green closer to the surface.

Opal Yellow separates fairly dramatically on top of siren, developing a thick, lighter outline to dots and stringer lines. This happens to a much lesser degree with Ivory and Peace.

I got a weird grey scumminess in the dots and stringer lines I made with Siren over my other test colours. I'm not sure why that happened, but it is similar to the greying that I have sometimes had with Rubino Oro or CiM Peace. Possibly my flame was a bit on the reducing side, or I was working a bit too hot for this colour's comfort.

I didn't make any other beads with Siren, but if I do I will come back and add them.