Test Results :: Antique Ivory

Effetre Antique Ivory (EFF481) is a dark ivory-coloured glass that has a similar reaction profile to Light Ivory and Dark Ivory but it is just a little more muted in hue. Like the ivories, this reacts interestingly with silver and makes good Silvered Ivory Stringer.

Here, you can see that Antique Ivory doesn't change colour when you reduce it.

Silver darkens Antique Ivory and crusts up on its surface. When the reaction is reduced and encased, the darkening of the Antique Ivory goes away.

Like Light and Dark Ivory, this colour makes a good base colour for silver glass. The colour develops well on top of it, and it has interesting blackening/crinkling at the edges of the fritty bits, too.

Apologies for the dirt you can see on the Tuxedo end of the leftmost bead. It's been hard to find time to do anything bead-related over the last few months and I don't have the energy to retake that photo.

You can see in the rightmost bead here the Antique Ivory curdling underneath the other colours I used it with. Like Light and Dark Ivory, this colour gets a dark line around it when used with Copper Green, although the line is more subtle with this colour when the Antique Ivory is on top.  Ivory spreads out on top of this colour.

The edges of Tuxedo dots and stringer lines get all blurry on top of this colour but, interestingly, Antique Ivory on top of Tuxedo seems not to be a reactive pairing. 

Like Light and Dark Ivory, this colour forms a subtle brown line reaction with Opal Yellow.

Here are some fun little pairs that include Antique Ivory.

Test Results :: Black Marble

Effetre Black Marble (EFF774) is a streaky, dark brown-black colour that has the same consistency as Effetre Dark Ivory. Also like Dark Ivory, it does a crazy reticulation thing that looks like little cells of different shades of brown and ivory in between veins of darker colour. It's in this glass' reactions to other colours where some big differences lie.

On a bit of a side note, this colour does not look like marble, and it is also not really black. It's more of a 'rich farmland soil' kind of dark, streaky brown.

Black Marble doesn't really change much when it is reduced. It's possible that the bead on the right got a bit darker, but it's hard to be sure since this colour has so much variation anyway.

Here I did Black Marble as stringer (wrapped about three times) on the left side of the bead and then the same amount of Silvered Black Marble on the right side. The silvered stringer is darker overall (my best guess is that the silver reacted with whatever ivory-like glass forms the lighter streaks?) and has tiny flecks of silver in it that make me happy. I made the Silvered Black Marble the same way I make Silvered Dark Ivory.

I sort of expected this colour to behave the same way with silver as light and dark ivory glasses do, but I was wrong. The silver leaf on the surface of this colour is a more interesting light golden hue. When I reduced and encased the silver, the golden-ness went away and it blushed blue in places which I have not had it do with ivory glasses.

Silver glass is very beautiful on top of Black Marble, which seems to make a decent base colour for both reducing and striking colors.

Black Marble has a much milder version of the same reaction profile as Ivory - which is to say that it does a gentle dark line reaction with Copper Green, and it is also gently reactive with Opal Yellow. Because both colours are spready, you can see where Ivory and Black Marble were used together that there is some interesting bleed at the edges of the stringer dots and lines.

My most important takeaway from these beads is that Black Marble is really awesome as stringer.

Here are some other beads that include Black Marble:

Test Results :: Light Lemon Yellow

Effetre Light Lemon Yellow is a beautiful, bright yellow opal. I call it an opal rather than a pastel/opaque, because it is transparent when pulled out into stringer and used in thin layers. It's a bit of a pain because it is quite boily, so you need to be careful not to work this colour too hot.

Light Lemon Yellow does not change colour when you reduce it.

Silver develops a greyish crust on top of Light Lemon Yellow with blue haze throughout it in places. When the silver is reduced and encased, it loses some (but not all) of this interesting colour. This is fairly consistent with other colours in the ivory/red/orange/yellow family that contain sulfur.

Light Lemon Yellow is a surprisingly good base for silver glass.  The colour of it is not really that appealing with the silver glass colours, but I guess we can't have everything. These beads make me think of the Northern Pikes song 'Nice Legs, Shame About Her Face'.

Light Lemon Yellow and Copper Green develop a reciprocal dark line reaction. Apart from that, this colour did not react strongly with any of my other standard test colours.

This bead is Light Lemon Yellow swirled with my Firefly 104 CoE frit blend.

Test Results :: Strawberry Sweet

Vetrofond Strawberry Sweet (VET994) is no longer in production, but it is still available at many vendors. You could also try Effetre Spanish Leather if you are looking for something similar but can't find this particular colour. Strawberry Sweet's main advantage over Spanish Leather is that it is less shocky, but Spanish Leather is also a lovely colour and very close to it in hue.

Strawberry Sweet does not noticeably change colour when it is reduced.

Like many other colours in the Red-Orange-Yellow-Ivory colour family, this colour turns dark with the addition of silver, and silver turns beige and blue on top of it. Encasing this reaction darkens it slightly.

Strawberry Sweet makes an average base colour for silver glass. My reducing silver glass frit popped on it better than my TerraNova2 frit did.

Here, you can see that Strawberry Sweet and Copper Green have a reciprocal dark line reaction. Also, Strawberry Sweet separates a little on top of Opal Yellow and Ivory thins out at its edges when it is used on top of this colour. Apart from that, nothing really odd reactionwise happened in this colour test set.

Here are some other beads that include Strawberry Sweet.

Test Results :: Coral (Dusty Rose)

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 

These beads are made with a particularly beautiful variety of Effetre Coral called 'Dusty Rose' from quite a few years ago. It seems like every time Effetre makes Coral, it comes out a different colour! I have versions that are red, versions that are pink, and versions that are orange. I'll be sad when this batch is gone and I have to find another Coral to love.

Even though I've used this ridiculously rare and frequently very expensive colour of Coral for this test, it is reasonable to expect that other, newer and cheaper varieties of Coral will have similar behaviour with other colours.

In the bead on the left, you can see how dark and brown the Coral has turned with the addition of silver. In the bead on the right, you can see that the silver has turned blue on top of the Coral, and the brown fuming has disappeared. It also does this with Reichenbach Mystic Coral.

Coral makes silver glass pop.  I got awesome colour in the bead on the right, where this test usually yields a pretty unexciting result.

Coral's reactions are pretty similar to Ivory's reactions with other colours.  None of the reactions you see here are very exciting, and the highlights are:

• A dark line forms between Coral and Copper Green. When the Copper Green is on top, the Coral pools in strange, blushing crevices around the Copper Green.
• Ivory separates on top of Coral
• There's a subtle dark line effect between Coral and Opal Yellow.

These beads were all made with Dusty Rose Coral: