Test Results :: Light Red

Effetre Light Red is a gorgeous colour. I don't know what took me so long to try it, but I am glad I have found it eventually :)  It's sort of in the middle of the red hues, and seems like a real, true red until you pull it out thin over white or use it in thin layers over white, when it looks more orange.

Here, you can see that Light Red doesn't change when it is reduced. It also seems not to alter much with repeated heating and cooling, maybe darkening just a bit.

One of the benefits of all of the anal-retentive planning I do is that I occasionally get to recycle a picture instead of taking a new one, and this is one of those times.  Here, you can see that Light Red is very slightly darker than Reichenbach Lipstick, and is substantially lighter than CiM Maraschino, Valentine, and Hemoglobin.

On top of Light Red, silver clouded up and visibly bunched on top of the base colour. It also fumed the base colour a dark, bluish colour. When the silver was reduced and encased, it turned blue.

Silver Glass is very pretty on top of Light Red, both the reducing kind and the striking kind.

In terms of reactions, this colour was surprisingly volatile.

On top of Tuxedo, my stringer dots and lines are decidedly mottled and blotchy.  I also got a reciprocal dark line reaction with Copper Green, and then some separation inside my stringer dots and lines of Copper Green, Ivory, and Peace when used on top of Light Red.

Opal Yellow, when I used it on top of Light Red, got a strange, irregular blotchy brownish edging to it, and where I used Light Red over Ivory, the Ivory has crept over its edges in places to do that milk moustache thing it sometimes does to other colours.

I think the very weirdest thing though is that when I used Light Red on top of Peace, so much of the red bled into the Peace that it looks pink.

Here are some other beads that contain Light Red.

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 :: Lapis

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 7 & 8 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace

CiM Lapis is hands-down the best blue-purple opaque colour I've yet used. It is interestingly reactive, vibrant, and relatively inexpensive (compared to other purples and indigos) to boot.

On the surface of Lapis, silver spreads out and balls up in tiny little bits, mostly. What doesn't break up turns an interesting turquoise colour. If you reduce and encase the silver, the mottled bluish, turquoisey green effect can cover the whole bead surface under the clear. This effect is also faintly shiny, like mother of pearl.

Because Lapis is reactive with silver, it rises up in light halos around silver glass. You can see the light halos around all of the fritty bits in this picture. You can see also that all of my TerraNova2 frit turned purple, which is stage one of striking for it. Had I cooled and reheated the bead a few more times I would have gotten more interesting colours. To me, this means that Lapis is potentially a pretty decent base colour for striking silver glass colours.

I do this silver glass test with every colour just to see the differences in how the frit behaves when I run the test the same way each time. Some colours seem to magically accelerate the striking of silver glass while others seem to inhibit it. Lapis seems like a good one, but not a great one.

Here, you can see that just like with silver glass, Lapis rises up in halos around Tuxedo, and Lapis separates very dramatically when used on top of Tuxedo.

Copper Green separates on top of Lapis, with the lighter more turquoise bits in the middle of dots and stringer lines and the outside lines looking sort of dark and dingy. On top of Copper Green, Lapis separates so that it has a dark line in the middle of stringer lines and dark pinpoints in the middle of dots.

When Opal Yellow is used on top of Lapis, the Lapis at the edges of the dots and stringer lines fades and looks a bit mottled.  Lapis separates very slightly on top of Opal Yellow.

Ivory separates and curdles on top of Lapis. Lapis separates on top of Ivory.

Like with Opal Yellow, Peace causes a light Lapis outer line to form around its edges. When Lapis is used on top of Peace, it bleeds and the Peace takes on a lavender appearance.

All of these beads contain Lapis:

   

 

 

Test Results :: Mosaic Blue

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 6 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 7 & 8 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace

Effetre Mosaic Blue is an extremely dense medium blue colour that looks darker and darker, the thicker it is layered. Unlike its friend Mosaic Green, this colour is not terribly reactive, and does not spread or web at all when used on top of other colours. I found this a bit disappointing on a mental level, since I wanted there to be something similar about two colours with such similar names.

This colour is very stiff, and very dense. It's not a great colour for overdotting flower petals (at least I don't think so) in encased florals because the result doesn't have a lot of depth because not much light gets through the Mosaic Blue.

Where this colour really shines is when it is used with silver. You can see here that both of my silver leaf beads are interesting-looking. The bead on the left has a greyish silver film over it that is made up of hundreds of little microdots of silver. The bead on the right was reduced and encased, and the silver has gone bluish where it touches the Mosaic Blue, and silvery and shiny where it does not. Pretty!

Mosaic Blue is also a good base colour for silver glasses. It doesn't compete with them, and the reduction colours and striking colours do well on top of it.

And weirdly, there is not a single thing to say about these beads. Usually there is a lot of action here, but I can't detect a single reaction between any of these colour combinations apart from (maybe) a little bleeding of Mosaic Blue into Peace, and a gentle separation of Peace over Mosaic Blue. These are pretty typical reactions for Peace, and not in any way unique to, or spectacular with, this colour.

Here are two sets using Mosaic Blue (I didn't bother making a goddess bead, since it would have just been an almost-black bead because this colour is so dense). One is with Antique Green, and the other is with Ivory.

Test Results :: Intense Black

Intense Black is classified as a transparent, but it looks pretty opaque in anything I have ever used it in. It is a super-saturated colour, and makes beautifully crisp black stringer design on top of every colour I've tried.

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 6 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 7 & 8 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, Peace

If you get Intense Black really, really hot after using a small amount of it on top of another colour, it will web like crazy.  I intentionally did not do that thing in any of these test beads, to try to see if I could also get Intense Black to behave nicely and NOT spread around.  As it turns out, without any particular skill or practice necessary, it is easy to control this aspect of Intense Black.

Silver sort of disperses and disappears on top of Intense Black, but when the silver is reduced and encased, you can see in the bead on the right that it forms a shiny, metallic silver layer under the clear.

Intense Black makes an unexpectedly good base for silver glass. My striking silver glass frit bloomed nicely, and the reduction frit looks pretty nice as well.

And here you can see how dark and crisp the intense black lines are over the other test colours. The bead on the left doesn't show any real reaction between colours.

In the bead on the left, the opposite seems to be true. Copper Green separates so that it is pink and crusty around the edges but then turquoise and 3-dimensional-looking in the centres.

Ivory separates and develops a fine line down the middle of lines and a fine dot in the middle of dots when it is used over Intense Black.

When Peace is used over Intense Black, the Intense Black bleeds into it, making it look murky.

Test Results :: Earth

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 6 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 7 & 8 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, Peace

Effetre Earth is one of the 'Cool Colours', and was new in 2011.  It is a rich, vibrant and streaky colour that  is veined with a saturated dark blue transparent. While using it, it developed mottled patches of turquoise that are especially pronounced when it is used with silver.

Some glass colours were meant to be used only in combination with or under other colours. In my opinion, Earth is a colour that really shines on its own -- its streakiness is really beautiful -- and is sort of difficult to like when used with other colours. And you'll see at the end of this post what can happen when you encase it. It is going to take some creativity to figure out how to use this colour to its full advantage.

Earth turns a dark brick red when it is reduced.

Silver really brings out the turquoise in Earth -- you can see it surrounding all of the silver in the bead above, on the left. The Silver Leaf has balled up and veined, attaching itself to the dark blue transparent streaks running through the Earth. When the Silver Leaf was reduced and encased, it turned an otherworldly mustard colour.

Reducing silver glass on top of Earth has more or less the same effect on the surface colour as melting Silver Leaf into it. I don't really like putting shiny blue things on top of other blue things, but other people might. I got a nice, dramatic strike in the purple ranges from my TerraNova2 Frit on top of Earth.

When you do stringer lines with Earth, it is streaky and veined with a dark blue transparent webbing. This is a pretty neat effect on its own, without even taking into account any reactions with other colours.

Copper Green separates on top of Earth, going darker in the centres of lines and dots. When Earth is used over Copper Green, the Copper Green is a vivid turquoise colour.

The edges of Earth, when its used over Opal Yellow, thin out slightly with a bit of a bleed. Opal Yellow on top of Earth develops a strange, veiny separated look to it.

Earth develops a mottled, medium brown line reaction with Ivory. You can see this both on the bead where Ivory was used on top of Earth as well as the bead with Earth over Ivory.

On top of Earth, the edges of Peace take on a turquoisey blueishness and translucency. The Peace stringer lines and dots look more solid in their centres than where they meet the Earth. There doesn't seem to be any strong reaction when you use Earth on top of Peace, except for a little blurring of edges.

Here are some fun beads with Earth:

 

In these beads, if you enlarge them, you can see that the dark blue lines that Earth has, which are what make it streaky, are transparent. When you Encase Earth, underneath the encasement layer it looks all billowy and organic - this is because the solid, opaque portion of Earth is criss-crossed with those dark transparent veins. It looks almost like blue clouds. This effect is more pronounced in the bead above than it is in the Mushroom bead.

  

Test Results :: Indigo

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - Over Clear, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf, 5 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 6 - w/ Reducing Silver Glass Frit, 7 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 8 & 9 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace

CiM Indigo is a dark, rich royal blue transparent. It's a very densely saturated colour, looking almost black in small self-coloured spacers. Even over Clear, the colour of Indigo is almost black-dark. In thin layers, however, Indigo lightens up enough for us to see it when it is used over other colours.

Silver leaf burnished into the surface and then burned off results in just the faintest spray of dusty-looking silver across the surface of the Indigo. When the silver is reduced and encased, it forms a greyish, translucent, ethereal blanket over the Indigo. I was a little aggressive here with my encasing rod across the too-soft surface of the bead, which resulted in 'rod tracks', but it look sort of cool the way the tip of the encasing rod dragged the silver in ripples. That might be worth doing on purpose.

Silver glass likes Indigo very much. The reducing silver glass frit shined up and got a beautiful brightness to it, and the TerraNova2 frit got some nice colour as well.

Indigo develops a light line around it when you use it on top of Copper Green. When Copper Green is used on top of Indigo, gets a bumpy look to it that is not quite what I'd call separation, but there's definitely something going on there.  Opal Yellow behaves very similarly.

With Peace though, there's definite separation, and it rises up in halos around Indigo dots and stringer lines. Indigo also bleeds into Peace - you can see how the halos that have popped up around the stringer lines are light blue instead of white.

Oddly enough, there is no dark line reaction between Ivory and Indigo.

Here are some fun beads with Indigo.

 

Test Results :: Evil Queen

Evil Queen is my 100th colour test. That sort of seems like a lot, yet there are more (maybe even a lot more) than 300 104 COE colours out there that I haven't even tried yet. Isn't it fortunate that being tasked with something that even I recognize to be impossible only makes me work harder?

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 7 - In Silver Glass Frit Stringer (encased), 8 - w/ Tuxedo, 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - w/ Opal Yellow, 11 - w/ Ivory, 12 - w/ Peace

CiM Evil Queen is the nicest opaque purple glass I have yet used. As luck would have it, it is also one the most expensive, trailing just behind Effetre EDP in terms of cost.

The consistency of Evil Queen is very soft, smooth and drippy.  Some of the other very soft CiM opaques have a noticeable 'stickiness' to them (e.g. Poi, Split Pea, Sherwood) but Evil Queen does not, although that is a pretty meaningless observation because the colours that do have that 'stickiness' are equally pleasant to use. In very thin layers or as hair-thin stringer, Evil Queen is slightly more on the semi-opaque side of opaque, so it's not an ideal colour for surface detail work.

Evil Queen does not devitrify, and pretty much stays where you put it on a bead. It is a little reactive, but in a gentle way, as opposed to the crazy reactivity I experienced with EDP. It does not turn a livery brown with repeated striking the way Effetre Dark Violet does, and isn't particularly streaky like Effetre New Violet or CiM Poi are.

Evil Queen does not change colour when silver leaf is added to the surface, and the silver leaf sort of fans out and balls up on the surface, creating a sort of mist of silver spray. When the silver is subsequently reduced and encased, it gets some blue highlights and forms a solid, matte armour-like coating over the core of Evil Queen. I think the yellowing that we can see in the bead on the right is due to a reaction between the Clear and the silver, and is not attributable to the Evil Queen.

Silver Glass on Evil Queen isn't very exciting. My TerraNova2 frit stubbornly refused to strike, although the light purple halos that sprung up around it are very neat. The reducing silver glass frit on top of it just looks kind of mottled and sad, but it is kind've intriguing how reducing the silver glass made the Evil Queeen underneath take on a shiny, purple iridescence. When I used Evil Queen with silver glass frit in frit stringer, wrapped that around a core of Evil Queen and then encased it, I got a little bit of interesting streakiness, but Evil Queen is just not reactive enough to really succeed with this technique.

Evil Queen and Tuxedo are mutually reactive. When Tuxedo is used on top of Evil Queen, the Evil Queen rises up around the Tuxedo dots and stringer lines and forms a lighter purple outline around its edges. When Evil Queen is used on top of Tuxedo, it separates, developing a dark, translucent purple line in the middle of stringer lines, and the edges of the stringer lines and dots look a little hazy on the left side of this bead.

The combination of Evil Queen and Copper Green doesn't really result in a lot of reactivity, but a couple of things sort of spark my interest here. First, the Copper Green develops a bit of a sheen. On the left side of the bead where the Evil Queen is over Copper Green, the Copper Green looks sort of vibrantly turquoise, but has also sheened up, taking on a dreamy, mottled appearance. On the right side of the bead where Coper Green is over Evil Queen, the Copper Green does not have that vivid turquoise colour, but does seem to have spread a little and is definitely somewhat shiny.

On the left side of the bead, you can see how the dots and stringer lines of Evil Queen have separated gently, and a darker line of purple runs through the stringer lines. The edges of the Evil Queen dots and stringer lines seem a little blueish and indistinct.

Opal Yellow and Evil Queen are both soft, spready colours, so it was not very surprising that I experienced some spreading of the dots and stringer lines on both sides of this bead. On the right side, where Opal Yellow is over Evil Queen, the edges of the Opal Yellow are sort of indistinct and have a somewhat violet hue to them. On the left side, where Evil Queen is over Opal Yellow, the Evil Queen has also spread a little, and has also separated into two different shades of purple, a thickish, lighter line forming around the edges of the dots and stringerwork. Neat.

Ivory spreads out a little on top of Evil Queen, and my Ivory stringer lines and dots also have a curdled, mottled appearance. On the left side of the bead, the Evil Queen dots all have a lighter purple outline and faintly darker centre. Their edges are also a little cloudy and indistinct.

Over Peace, Evil Queen seems more of a semi-opque than an Opaque. Peace spreads on top of it, and you can see in the centre of the bead how the Evil Queen has bled into the Peace turning it a purplish blue colour.

I didn't make any real beads with Evil Queen, but I am sure that I will revisit this colour. When I do, I will come back and update this post with some pictures.