Test Results :: Green Cave

Effetre Green Cave (EFF856) is a gorgeous, medium-dark green glass that some people seem to have been able to make turn blue with selective reheating. I haven't experimented much with that, but it's clear that nothing I did while making these test beads evoked blueness from it.

Reducing Green Cave seemed to make it a little darker. It's not very clear if this was because of the reduction flame or if this is a striking colour - I'd need to experiment with it a bit more before I could be sure.

Here are, side by side, the two different tonalities I have of Green Cave. I prefer the one on the left, but honestly I love both of them. It's so rare to have a dark green that doesn't do nasty things to Ivory, and I am going to enjoy every last crumb of it.

Green Cave reacts like Ivory when silver is added to it, which makes me wonder what silvered Green Cave stringer would be like. In the bead on the left you can see how the silver crusted up and looks misty and blue in places. When the silver is reduced and encased, it's less attractive, showing patches of brownish green and losing any lustre it had before the reduction/encasement.

Like Ivory, Green Cave makes a really interesting base colour for silver glass. My reduction frit got all kinds of interesting borders and fading, and I got dark outlines around my TerraNova2 frit and lots of initial, interesting colour. Like Ivory, Green Cave is very soft glass and the TerraNova2 frit migrated towards the centre of the bead as I was heating and shaping it.

Tuxedo makes Green Cave separate into lighter and darker versions of itself, both  when used on top of and underneath it.

Copper Green separates on top of Green Cave and develops a dark outline. When the Green Cave is on top of Copper Green, it also separates and gets a dark outline.

Opal Yellow gets a dark border with Green Cave, but only when the Opal Yellow is on top.

Ivory spreads out on top of Green Cave and the Green Cave separates underneath it.On top of Ivory, Green Cave separates but doesn't spread at all. If anything, the Green Cave lines look narrower on top of Ivory than on top of the other colours I tested it with.

Here are some other beads that include Green Cave.

Test Results :: Ectoplasm

Ectoplasm (CiM474) is a medium-to-light green semi-opaque colour that is a bit more muted than some of the other new shades of green in this new lineup of CiM colours. It is a pretty shade of green, has interesting reactions with other colours, and is nice with both silver and silver glass.

Here you can see that Ectoplasm doesn't change colour when you reduce it. The smaller bead only looks a bit darker in this picture because more of the dark background is visible through it because it has less glass than the other bead.

Silver leaf makes a playful, shiny, lacy design on top of Ectoplasm. When the silver is reduced and encased, it fills out to a more uniform shiny blanket with blue fume visible in it.

Ectoplasm seems to make a pretty nice base colour for silver glass.

On top of Ectoplasm, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace all separate.

The most interesting reaction in these beads, though, is where I used Ectoplasm on top of Ivory. In the beads above, you can see that where Ectoplasm is over Ivory, it spreads out and the Ivory rises up around it in a feathery layer that looks almost 3-dimensional. Cool.

Here are some other beads made with Ectoplasm.

Test Results :: Aiko

CiM Aiko (CiM468) is a light teal transparent colour, very similar in hue to Effetre Light Teal. It's a bit stiffer than Light Teal, and I found it easier to boil than Light Teal until I got the hang of giving it a bit less heat than my normal.

After doing these tests, I would choose Light Teal Transparent over this colour if I were going to be encasing with it, but if I was planning to use it with Silver or with other colours in combinations where I wanted to minimize any angry reactions, then I would definitely go with Aiko instead.

Here you can see that as I eased into these test beads, I didn't have a great feel for how hot I could get Aiko without it bubbling. This is not a particularly difficult colour to use, and it's easy to avoid these bubbles if you work up a bit higher in your flame.

Reducing Aiko doesn't change its colour at all.

Here I've sandwiched Aiko between Serenity and Light Teal. You can see that it is only very slightly darker than Effetre Light Teal and a bit lighter and quite a bit greener than Serenity.

Silver beads up and disperses over the surface of Aiko. When you reduce and encase the silver, it is a greyish blue. This is quite different from the result I got when I encased silver under Light Teal, because in that combination the silver turned quite yellow.  I wonder what the difference is chemically?

Silver Glass is pretty nice on top of Aiko, both the reducing kind and the striking kind.

There are no significant reactions in these test beads apart from a very minor amount of dark line reaction when Aiko is on top of Ivory. There's maybe a tiny bit of separation in Peace, Copper Green, and Ivory when used on top of it, but it's very, very minor.

I am always excited when I find teals, turquoises, blues, and greens that are not very reactive because they are more versatile than their more volatile cousins. This colour is like a paler and greener version of Serenity, with fewer and less dramatic separation reactions with other colours.

Here are some other beads made with Aiko.