Test Results :: Oracle746.pst

Double Helix Oracle746.pst is a very pale green opaque colour. It's very well-behaved, and I quite like it as a cooler base colour.

This colour does not change when you reduce it.

Oracle746pst is quite reactive with silver. You can see in the leftmost bead that the silver all turned brown on top of it. Reducing and encasing the silver gets rid of the brown, instead making the silver silvery again under the clear in a gentle, mother-of-pearl way with hints of blue and pink.

I was expecting, because of the strong reactions with silver, for this glass to foster colour in my striking silver glass a bit more, but I was wrong. My reduced silver glass frit fumed this colour a bright yellow.

I would not call this colour reactive with other colours, either.  It is, however, prone to separate. You can see here how it has done that under Tuxedo and on top of basically everything.  Ivory both spread like mad on top of it.

Here are some other beads that include Oracle746pst.

Test Results :: Oracle751.pst

Double Helix Oracle751.pst is a soft, slightly off-white opaque. I enjoyed this colour most in layered dot beads with other, brighter colours. While this colour has a bit of translucence in thin layers, it still provides good coverage. Its slight translucence increases its appeal to me as a layering colour since the light can play in and around it in more interesting ways than with colours that are more fully opaque.

Oracle751.pst does not change when it is reduced.

This colour fumes yellow with silver. When encased, this combination's appearance does not change.

You can see the yellow fuming here with the reducing silver glass frit as well.  I didn't get a very interesting starting strike from my TerraNova2 frit with this Oracle751.pst, but it was enough that I can see this colour as a passable (if not magical) base for silver glass.

Tuxedo bleeds into this colour something fierce, and you can see that around the Tuxedo stringer lines and dots, the Oracle751.pst has gone quite bluish. You can also see the transparency of this colour in thin layers where I've used it over Tuxedo. Apart from that and this colour's tendency to separate on top of Ivory, I did not notice anything else of significance.

Here are some fun beads with Oracle751.pst:

Test Results :: Oracle752.opl

Double Helix Oracle752.opl is a semi-opaque white colour.  It is a fairly inert colour, and really shines through when used on its own or as a base colour. Because it is semi-opaque, light moves in and around it in interesting ways, making it more visually interesting than White.

The thicker it is applied, the more opaque it appears, which you can see very clearly in this image, where I have two spacers of it side-by-side, the left one about 30% bigger than the right.

Silver turns a mustardy yellow on top of Oracle-752.opl, When you reduce and encase the silver, the yellowishness mostly goes away and leaves an ethereal, silvery pattern underneath the clear.

This colour is not especially interesting with silver glass, either.

And here, you can see that it is very inert with other colours.  Almost everything spreads on top of it.

Here is a fun bead with this colour.  It really shines on its own, and I like it in thin layers so that it keeps its translucency. Although this goddess bead is quite thick in places, it appears much more translucent than the photo lets on.

Test Results :: Lotis

Double Helix Lotis is a beautiful middle pink colour. It has gorgeous smoothness and clarity, and is not difficult to strike at all.

The larger the amount of Lotis in one place, the darker it looks.

Lotis is pinker, brighter, and lighter than Rubino Oro and Pink Lady, the other two pinks I had on hand to test it with.

In spite of it being a lighter pink, Lotis is still powerful in a handmixed colour. Here, I've paired it with one of the Double Helix semi-transparent whites for a beautiful, semi-opaque pink without much dilution of its colour.

Lotis is a bit reactive with silver, turning it a smokey, yellowish grey colour with blue fume around its edges. When the silver is reduced and encased, it looks lacier and the yellow goes away.

Lotis makes a pretty base colour for silver glass. I got a beautiful starting strike in my TerraNova2 frit.

Although Lotis is reactive with silver, it is mostly inert with these other colours I use for testing. Apart from a slight tendency for Copper Green to separate when used next to it, there isn't much to report about these beads.

Test Results :: Oracle Black

Double Helix Oracle Black is an interesting addition to our black glass options. It is a little freaky to work with, because when you pull it out into stringer it looks blue, not black and it continues to look blue while you are working with it in thin layers but it changes back to black in the kiln.

This colour is a magical base colour for silver and silver glass, and has some very interesting reactions with other colours, but it is not useful for stringerwork because it loses cohesion pretty quickly when it is heated and bleeds into other colours.

Nothing happens to Oracle Black when you reduce it.

Here I decided to test Oracle Black in comparison to CiM Hades and Reichenbach Deep Black to see how it performed as stringer.  The base colour of both beads is Oracle White.

Making the bead on the left, I heated it what I consider a 'normal' amount (your normal may vary) and then gave the rightmost bead what I would consider to be a 'ridiculous' amount of heat.  As you can see, Reichenbach Deep Black stayed together in both situations, but the Hades and Oracle Black both came apart. The Hades spread less and more evenly than the Oracle Black, which in the bead on the right looks like a black and blue smear.  Even in the bead where I thought my heat was 'normal' the Hades and Oracle Black did not entirely stay together.

This means that Deep Black is still my go-to black for when I need the black to behave itself, but as you will see Oracle Black has its own set of superpowers, so I imagine I'll be needing some more of it as well.

The leftmost bead here has silver leaf over Oracle Black, and has turned a mottled blue. It's a very interesting change, and I imagine that there are fun ways to exploit this effect. Reducing and encasing the silver makes it less beautiful, but it remains interesting and silvery under the clear.

In both of these beads, I got very nice reactions from the silver glass. The reducing silver glass got fun curdled edges around it and transmitted some of its silvery haze onto the Oracle Black. In the rightmost bead, I got a nicer-than-usual starting strike from my TerraNova2 frit making me think this colour might be a good catalyst for striking silver glass.

So I spent some time talking about how Oracle Black loses cohesion in that Oracle White example above, but if you look at the bead on the right you can see that it held itself together well on top of these other colours. On top of Copper Green it developed a very odd purple border, but that border is a faint greyish shadow on top of Ivory, Opal Yellow, and Peace.

However, absolutely bonkers things happened when I put Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace on top of Oracle Black.  The edges of my Copper Green got a little frayed by the Oracle Black base, but click into the image above and get a good look at the edges of the other three colours.

Opal Yellow looks like its edges are curdling, Ivory has a pale, mottled border, and the Peace is positively bizarre, developing a wide pale blue outline around all the stringer dots and lines.  I am imagining that some fun could be have with exploiting these reactions in a more intentional way, and I am very curious to see how Oracle Black behaves when used to handmix other colours from it.

I made a couple of other beads with Oracle Black, but unfortunately cannot figure out at this point which ones they were, so I will have to get some more and come back to update this post.

Test Results :: Oracle742.pst

Oracle742.pst is a very pale pink opaque glass. In certain combination with other colours, and given some extra heat, that pink can darken into a medium mauve colour. This colour is well-behaved for the most part, but can get fizzy and boily when you use it in fine stringers.

This colour does not change when it is reduced.

I got some interesting orange/yellow tones from silver on top of this colour, but that blush of colour faded when I reduced and encased the silver.

The silver glass frit fumed Oracle742.pst a yellowish colour, and I got a reasonably good starting strike from my TerraNova2 frit on top of this colour.

On top of this colour, Tuxedo loses its integrity a little bit and bleeds a bluish halo into the Oracle742.pst.  Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace all spread excessively on top of this colour and it is very interesting to note that where you can see flashes of it between Opal Yellow and Ivory dots and lines, the colour of it is a more vivid pink than it is on its own.

On top of Ivory and Opal Yellow, this colour separates fairly dramatically into a lighter and darker version of itself. There is also separation in Oracle742.pst on top of both Tuxedo and Copper Green. On Tuxedo, this effect lends it a faint translucency, but the weirdest thing is the bright turquoise that appears around it on top of Copper Green.

Here are some more interesting beads containing Oracle742.pst.

The pale pink lines and dots in this bead are Oracle742.pst, but the little wavy pale pink bands with dark pink centres are also Oracle742.pst. I'm not sure how the colour gets darker, but I suspect it has something to do with reacting with the other things around it.

Interesting side note... I am not able to try this because I don't have any more of this colour but when I added a little Grass Green Opaque to Vetrofond Light Pink, I got a dark purple colour. I wonder what this colour would do with some green added to it?

Test Results :: Oracle White

Double Helix Oracle White is a white, opaque glass. It is stiffer than either Peace or Effetre White, and reacts similarly to silver as other white glasses do, but its reactions with other colours are more unique.

Because this colour is stiffer, it is well-suited to applications like stringer and sculptural work. As you'll see, Oracle White is a little more translucent, so when it is used on top of a dark colour in thin layers, a tint of the base colour shows through. Because more light passes through it, Oracle White's colour is a little brighter than that of either CiM Peace or Effetre White.

This white  also seems like it is a little more difficult to smear than other whites, making it great for flower petals in encased florals.

Oracle White does not change when you reduce it.

Here is CiM Peace, Double Helix Oracle White, and Effetre White all side-by-each on top of Oracle Black. Oracle White is a bit less opaque than either Peace or Effetre White, but not so much that it doesn't show well over a dark colour. It still covers reasonably well, so if you happen to be looking for a cooler, lighter effect, it can be a good choice for stringerwork.

If you blow the picture up really big, you can see that Oracle White and Peace both get a slight border around them on top of the Oracle Black.

Here I mixed Oracle White and Effetre White with Effetre Light Cobalt. Light Cobalt is a really saturated colour, and I thought it would be a good test to evaluate whether Oracle White is more translucent than Effetre White and CiM Peace because it is less saturated, or if there might be some other reason. In my results, the blue that resulted from the Oracle White mix is a bit darker, which helps to support my theory that this White is slightly less saturated than the CiM and Effetre ones.

Oracle White's reactions with silver are very similar to what I experienced with other Whites. If you're interested, you can look back at my test results for other whites: Effetre White, CiM Peace, Ornela Chalk White, Lauscha Kryolith White, Reichenbach White.

In the bead on the left, I've reduced silver glass frit on top of Oracle White, and you can see that it has fumed the White yellow in places. The bead on the right has TerraNova2 frit. It is probably very possible to get silver glass to strike well on top of this colour, but what I am testing when I do this particular test is to see if the base colour has any magic in it that will make getting great colour out of the silver glass easier. Wait until you see my silver and silver glass tests on Oracle Black, and you will see what I mean by 'magic'.

Tuxedo spreads on top of this colour, bleeding into it, and Oracle White separates on top of Ivory. These reactions are not like the reactions I've had with other whites.

Here are some other beads that include Oracle White: