Test Results :: Dark Emerald

Effetre Dark Emerald is a vibrant, pure medium green transparent. It is relatively inert with other colours -- even with Ivory it has only a very slight brown line reaction. I was expecting it to be more reactive than it is, so I was pleasantly surprised.

Here, you can see that reducing Dark Emerald makes no appreciable difference in itsappearance.

Dark Emerald does nothing with silver until you reduce and encase the silver - then you get faint bluish hints here and there that remind me of how silver interacts with the cobalt blues.

Dark Emerald seems to make a nice base for both reducing and striking silver glass.

And finally, here you can see how very non-reactive this colour is. You'll notice there's a weird, dark sooty line between the Ivory and Peace, but I think that is nothing to do with Dark Emerald and quite a lot to do with me needing to clean my torch head. Also, there was a batch of Peace that did this fairly easily a few years back, and it's possible that I still have a few rods of it mixed in with my newer stock.

And here are some fun beads with Dark Emerald.  On the whole, I think this colour is a bit brighter than I really like to work with. If I am going to use the rest of my stock, I think I will probably mix it with other transparent colours to see what I can do with it in blends.

Test Results :: Loch Ness

CiM Loch Ness (CiM432) is a very dark green moonstone colour, although to me it just seems like a very dark transparent since it is quite difficult to see through, even when used in thin layers. It's a very well-behaved colour, buttery and easy to control except that it gets a lot easier to boil it when applying it in thin layers with stringer. Work cooler and higher up in your flame to avoid this problem.

Loch Ness does not change colour when you reduce it, and looks pretty much black when used in self-coloured spacers.

Silver dissolves in a fun way on top of Loch Ness, looking almost like a starscape or galaxy. When the silver is reduced and encased, it opacifies on top of the Loch Ness and develops hints of blue here and there.

This colour has potential as a good base colour for silver glass. Both my reducing silver glass and my striking silver glass got great colour on top of it.

Copper Green separates with Loch Ness, but apart from that it is not a terribly reactive colour. This reaction happens with Light Turquoise as well, so I suspect it will happen with most turquoise opaque glasses.

This colour does not react with Ivory, and it is always good to find greens and blues where that is true.


These beads all contain some Loch Ness:

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 :: Budgerigar

CiM Budgerigar (CiM477) is the misty opal twin of Ectoplasm, and both colours are a lovely light green.

Budgerigar does not change colour when you reduce it.

You can see blue in the silver leaf where I've melted it into the surface of Budgerigar even before reducing and encasing it. Reducing and encasing silver on top of Budgerigar yeilds a snowy, blue-streaked blanket under the clear layer.

My reducing silver glass frit came out quite pretty on top of Budgerigar, but colour in my TerraNova2 didn't develop quite the way I thought it would after using Ectoplasm. Possibly it just needed a hair more heat to bloom - more experimentation required.

Budgerigar is not very reactive with other colours, although it does separate Copper Green, Ivory, Opal Yellow, and Peace.

Here are some other beads made with Budgerigar:

Test Beads :: Mantis

Creation is Messy Mantis (CiM472) is a pretty, medium green translucent colour. It is the misty opal cousin of Eclectus Parrot, and like that colour, Mantis is very nice to work with. It doesn't boil and bubble crazily when you heat it, and it stays this beautiful, milky translucent colour no matter how long you work it.

Reducing Mantis doesn't change its colour.

Silver is gorgeous with Mantis, and you can see blue haze forming around it even before the silver is reduced and encased.

And following on the promise that it showed with silver, silver glass on Mantis is magical. I got really interesting surface outlining and haze with my reducing silver glass frit, and my TerraNova2 frit struck on top of it right away in a beautiful array of purples and burgundies with interesting yellow and dark outlining.

For some reason, my silver glass results are more interesting with this colour than they were with Eclectus Parrot. Maybe whatever makes this colour 'misty' also makes it love silver glass more.

Mantis is not very reactive with other colours, but Opal Yellow separates on top of it and Copper Green looks very ominously grey on top of it.

Here is a bead pair with Mantis:

Test Results :: Eclectus Parrot

CiM Eclectus Parrot (CiM473) is a vibrant green opal. It's the juicy shade of lime Jell-o and completely fuss-free to work with.

The smaller bead looks darker here only because more of the dark background is showing through. Reducing Eclectus Parrot does not alter its colour.

Eclectus Parrot is not very reactive with silver. Silver stays silver underneath it, and when reduced and encased on top of it, the silver turns a whiteish colour with blue streaks through it.

Eclectus Parrot is a good base colour for striking silver glass.

Copper Green separates on top of Eclectus Parrot, and there is also a slight amount of separation in Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace when used on top of this colour.

I don't seem to have any other pictures of beads made with Eclectus Parrot. If I make more, or I find some pictures, I'll come back and update this.

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.