Test Results :: Black Pearl

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - Plain (reduced & encased), 4 &5 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace

Precision 104 glass and I have not had a very extensive relationship, but I have deep love for this colour. Precision Black Pearl is a really beautiful reducing silver glass colour that reduces to a cloudy and variegated range of blues and greens and even a shiny oilslick that exudes a rainbow of other colours.

To reduce Black Pearl:
Once you've shaped your bead that includes one or more Black Pearl elements, you should let it cool ever so slightly and then turn down your oxygen until you have an orange/yellow candle in your flame but there is still some blue surrounding the candle, and give the bead a little bath in the reduction flame near the top of that orange candle.

As with all reduction colours, it is better to do a few quick passes and check your progress after each one than it is to potentially overdo it. Black Pearl goes blue first, and then progresses through to green and gets cloudier after each pass in the flame. It is not a fast process, so you don't have to be too worried about accidentally overdoing it, but go slow until you get the hang of it.

Black Pearl keeps its reduction under clear, but it does not really develop a mother of pearl look to it.

I did not reduce these beads because I thought that would make it easier to really see the reactions.

Copper Green goes a dark, greyish pink on top of Black Pearl, with a bright yellowish outline. On top of Copper Green, Black Pearl develops a bit of a ragged appearance that  has a faintly pink outline. The Copper Green also takes on a shiny pinkishness all over in this combination.

Opal Yellow on top of Black Pearl develops a dark border which is ringed by a bright silver line. The same reaction appears when the Black Pearl is used on top of the Opal Yellow except that it is inside out -- the silver line is on the inside of the stringer rather than the outside.

Ivory and Black Pearl have the same reaction as Opal Yellow and Black Pearl except that the reaction is stronger and sharper. Like with Opal Yellow, when Black Pearl is used on top of Ivory, you get the same reaction except that it is inside out.

On top of Black Pearl, Peace turns yellow. When Black Pearl is used on top of Peace, you can see a little yellow develop on the surface of the Peace.


Here are some fun beads that include Black Pearl:

I used Black Pearl in the background of this mushroom bead, underneath all of the surface decoration, so you can just sort of see it peeking out here and there.

 

These goddess beads are both made from solid Black Pearl. You can see here the cloudy blue reduction and some surface oilslick effect.

 

And finally, these sets are made from Black Pearl and Opal Yellow. I love these two colours together a lot.

Test Results :: Clockwork

CiM Clockwork (229) is a vibrant, happy orange transparent.  It is not as easy to strike as Effetre Striking Orange (072), but it is not difficult either, once you get the hang of it.  It's easier for me to strike this colour in larger beads than smaller ones.

The colour of Clockwork is richer and more vibrant than Striking Orange, and is possibly the most vivid orange in our 104 COE palette, but it is also denser and cloudier, so there is a comfortable place for both colours in my glass stash.  One of the big advantages that Clockwork has over Effetre Striking Orange is that you can tell what colour it is by looking at the unmelted rod.  In the rod, Striking Orange looks like a pale yellow, so it is easy to get it mixed up with other pale yellow rods of glass (including Striking Red, Yellow, and Electric Yellow) if you aren't careful. Clockwork screams 'ORANGE' at you without any ambiguity whatsoever.  

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

What I am waiting for these glass companies to make is a light orange. I would really like to have a light orange transparent glass that is lighter in colour and less dense than either Clockwork or Striking Orange but darker than CiM Peachy Keen or Lauscha Peach.  Not instead of these colours, but in addition to them. Please? I'll put it on my wish list underneath 'Transparent Coral'.

You can see the richness of this colour in the left-most spacer bead.  Clockwork is a JUICY colour, oranger (this is a word, right?) than anything I've ever seen in nature.

Ignore the weird mark that looks like a crack in the right-most bead.  That is a stupid kiln bead-sticking accident, and not something you need to worry about, unless you want to spend time worrying about how competent I am.

On top of Clockwork, silver leaf turns brown and more or less stays the way you melt it in.  When the silver is reduced and encased, some blue fuming can be seen on the Clockwork under the clear. This is most visible above in the far right-hand side of the right-most bead.  You can also see from this picture that I was able to successfully encase Clockwork without any issues.

Reducing silver glass is really beautiful on top of Clockwork. I like the light edging the fritty bits get around them, and the contrast of the blue over orange. My striking silver glass got ok colour in the bead on the right, but it is nowhere near as appealing because it is dark and the contrast is not as vivid.

I didn't notice any particular reactions between Tuxedo and Clockwork.

You can't really get the full effect from it in the picture, but Copper Green over Clockwork is really interesting. It gets a dark line around it, which is interesting enough on its own, but the Copper Green also gets a faint mirror shine to it, which really sets it off. I often talk about how Copper Green darkens or 'shmutzes up' on top of some other colours, and this is different from that because the Copper Green doesn't really discolour or darken in this combination, it just gets shiny.

I would have expected to see the same reaction only in reverse when I used Clockwork on top of Copper Green, but glass likes to surprise me. There is a faint darkness around the edges of the Clockwork stringer and dots, but not a pronounced black line the way there is when the Copper Green is on top. Also surprisingly, there is a definite pale line around the Clockwork stringer lines and dots in the bead on the left, which I was in no way expecting.

Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace all separate over top of Clockwork.  The effect with Opal Yellow is very subtle, the dots and lines developing a faint inner halo and looking vaguely three-dimensional.  The effect is a little more pronounced but a little less structured with ivory, the dots and lines taking on a creamy, creased appearance. And then the Peace dots and lines, depending on how much they are heated, separate so dramatically that a very dark 'chasmy' line can be seen in the middle of the stringer lines I put on the right-most bead, above.  At first, I thought this was Peace misbehaving and turning black on me, because I have had that happen in the past when my propane tank level is getting low, but that is not what happened here at all.

Nothing much interesting happened when Striking Orange was used over Opal Yellow, Ivory, or Peace, apart from a little trouble getting it to strike to Orange on top of Ivory or Peace.  I'm not sure if this was a colour thing or a stupid user error, though, so before you take that to the bank you might want to do a little playing around.

I will add some additional beads with Clockwork as I make them. It gets an interesting cloudiness to it when it is used in sculptural pieces, and I love it for making striped ribbon cane for flower petals.

Test Results :: Sage Green

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

Effetre Sage reminds me of Effetre Dark Grass Green. It's in the same hue group, it's just more saturated and darker. The reactions it has with other colours are a little different though, particularly the way it influences silver glass. On the whole, Dark Grass Green is a better base for the striking colours (the colours pop way brighter on that colour than on this one), while Sage seems like a better base for the reducers (the reduction is more vivid).

Sage is less saturated, lighter and a less on the yellow side than CiM Slytherin, one of my other favourite dark transparent greens.

On top of Sage, silver leaf disperses in a fine, webby dot pattern. When the silver leaf is subsequently reduced and encased it forms a filmy, silvery blanket with a hint of blue in it on top of the Sage. These reactions are pretty much identical to the way silver leaf behaves with Dark Grass Green.

Sage does not influence silver foil. While some greens and yellows turn silver foil a rich coppery colour, all the silver foil does under Sage is reflect back the rich green colour.

Both with reducing and striking silver glass, Sage is a winner. The reducing silver glass frit got beautiful shine and stands out wonderfully on top of the dark green of the Sage. In the bead on the right, I got great colour from my TerraNova2 frit, however the colours are pretty dark and hard to make out on top of the Sage.

There are no interesting reactions to report between Tuxedo and Sage.

On top of Copper Green, the edges of the Sage dots and stringer lines look turquoise. This is because the Sage has cleaned a little of the Copper Green's film at its borders. You can see the inverse of this reaction in the bead on the right, where the Copper Green's pinkish/greyish sheen has been disrupted at the edges of its dots and stringer lines. Generally, Copper Green (when it develops a sheen) develops a greyish film, but when it's used with Sage the film is a pinkish colour instead.

There is no obvious reaction when Sage is used on top of Opal Yellow. When Opal Yellow is on top of Sage, it separates slightly and develops a paler yellow border.

When Sage is used on top of Ivory, you can see an irregular dark line develop around the dots and stringer lines, and a faint browning of the glass underneath. When Ivory is used on top of Sage, the dark line doesn't really present itself but the Ivory spreads and breaks up a little.

There is no real reaction evident between Peace and Sage when Sage is used on top of Peace, but when Peace is used on top of Sage it separates, and goes translucent in between the edges and the middle, so that it looks almost like it is two stringer lines/dots in one.

Here are some fun beads that contain Sage.

Test Results :: Berry Punch

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

CiM Berry Punch is a Limited Run, and is a medium amethyst colour. I haven't tested CiM Simply Berry yet, but this colour seems somewhat lighter and pinker than that one. I haven't tested the Effetre Amethysts yet either, but in the rod, this colour seems less pink than those ones.

On top of Berry Punch, silver disperses and in some places takes on a blue colouration. When the silver is reduced an encased, it looks both blue and grey and sort of pretty.

Both reducing and striking silver glass do OK on top of Berry Punch. These results are not overwhelmingly beautiful, but they show that Berry Punch can hold and help both striking and reducing silver glasses. The results for the striking silver glass aren't as beautiful as with some other colours (e.g. Dark Grass Green) but they are significantly nicer than what I've managed on many of the other colours I've tried.

Berry Punch and Copper Green have a bit of a reaction. When Berry Punch is on top of Copper Green, it develops a light outline. When Copper Green is used on top of Berry Punch, it develops a thin, shiny outline. Copper Green gets a greyish sheen when used with Berry Punch -- or perhaps it is more accurate to say that Berry Punch is not one of the colours that seems to help stave this off.

Peace and Opal Yellow both separate on top of Berry Punch, developing a pronounced, textured outline. In the case of Peace, the outline is somewhat shiny.

I like this colour a lot. It's an airy purple, it's well behaved, and it has some fun reactions. The colour of it reminds me of purple Gatorade.

Test Results :: Rose Tea

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

CiM Rose Tea is a new limited run colour from Creation is Messy that sort of reminds me of an older Limited Run called Dusk. It's a little pinker than Dusk, but it is silver and silver-glass friendly in the same way, without the tendency to boil and bubble that Dusk had.

Rose Tea is a soft, pinkish lavender colour that looks the same colour under natural light that it does under white light. It doesn't colour-shift, which is nice for those of us who photograph our work. It is moderately reactive, and seems to be a good catalyst colour for striking silver glass.

Rose Tea does not change the colour of Silver Foil significantly when used over it. You can see in the left-most bead above that there is one streak of goldish colour developing over the silver, but that it has mostly stayed a uniform shade of pinkish lavender. In the centre bead, I have melted Silver Leaf into the surface, which has resulted in a strange 'galaxy' feel - the silver has gone a goldish colour and seems to have caused a blueish reaction in the glass around it. When the silver was reduced and encased,  it made the Rose Tea take on a blueish-pinkish haze with a sort of golden halo. Weird.

Reducing silver glass on top of Rose Tea is sort of interesting - the Rose Tea takes on a sort of oilslick appearance. But the frit itself goes a lackluster matte colour, so it's not all that attractive. In the bead on the right, I got a very encouraging and interesting strike response from the TerraNova2 Frit.

Over Rose Tea, Tuxedo seems to thin out and look more transparent than I am used to. Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace all separate slightly over Rose Tea.

Rose Tea is one of those colours that keeps Copper Green looking like a rich turquoise. There is no hazing up, pinkening or otherwise yucky thing happening in the Copper Green when Rose Tea is used on top of it.

A light turquoise line pops up around the Rose Tea when it is used on top of Copper Green.

A lighter yellow halo pops up around Rose Tea when it is used on top of Opal Yellow.

Unfortunately, I didn't make very many beads with Rose Tea. Nevertheless, here is one sort of murky lentil. I'm not really sure what possessed me to decorate it with Mosaic Green stringer or add those Light Teal dots, but I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time. The only reason I'm showing you this is because the striking silver glass twisties did some neat things with the Rose Tea underneath them.

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 :: Marmorin

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, Peace

Effetre Marmorin is sort of an odd colour. It looks transparent when it's hot, and it doesn't completely opacify until after it has been annealed. So, it's hard to see what you're doing, and also sort of hard to see where it starts and other colours begin when working with it. Like a lot of Effetre handpulled colours, it can be a little shocky. My rods of Marmorin were 6-7mm, which is a little thicker than I'm really comfortable with, although still pretty slim compared to some of the Lauscha I have in my glass stash.

When I reduced Marmorin, it got perhaps a little shinier and a little more brown, however the slight browning and shine enhancement I see in the beads isn't really evident in the picture.  I was not able to get much of the shiny coppery lustre that was mentioned in the Frantz Newsletter back in 2009, except for where I was also using silver glass frit, and even then it didn't happen all over in any predictable way. Maybe there's a trick to it, or maybe it was a batch thing, and that batch did it but this one does not.

Silver leaf webs and gets a blue tinge to it on top of Marmorin. When the silver leaf is reduced and encased, the reaction is accentuated and has interesting greyish striations to it, as well as the blueish patches.

Marmorin seems to be a decent base for silver glass, but the results I got weren't extraordinary. I think that I understruck the TerraNova2 frit a little, but I probably do that every time. When I do this test, I'm looking for the bases that make the frit pop without me having to do a bunch of extra work. Marmorin is not that colour. The reducing silver glass frit was more exciting, developing interesting shiny outlines and beautiful iridescence. I also got just a hint of coppery colour in the Marmorin around some of the frit, although not consistently or predictably.

Effetre Marmorin has interesting reactions with most of the colours I tested it with. When Marmorin is used on top of Tuxedo, it looks grey and semi-opaque. Nothing very interesting happens when Tuxedo is used on top of Marmorin.

When Marmorin is used over Copper Green, it develops a light line around the dots and stringer lines. When Copper Green is used over Marmorin, the Copper Green separates and develops a grey, shiny outline to the dots and stringer lines.

When Marmorin is used over Opal Yellow, the Opal Yellow separates and develops wide halo bands around the Marmorin dots and stringer lines. When Opal Yellow is used on top of Marmorin, it separates into two separate colours, the edges of the dots and stringer lines turning an orangey-brown. This is bizarre and wonderful :)

When Ivory is used on top of Marmorin, it develops a brown line reaction. When Marmorin is used on top of Ivory, the brown line is fuzzier and wider, and the Marmorin itself turns an opaque grey. This is one of the most interesting reactions of the bunch, because on top of all of the other colours Marmorin looks brown and transparent, but over Ivory it looks way different.

Peace separates on top of Marmorin, but very subtly. On top of Peace, Marmorin thins out and looks transparent but the separation in the Peace is more dramatic, popping up around the Marmorin in wide, white halo bands.

I used Marmorin as the exterior of this window bead.

Test Results :: Electric Yellow

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

Effetre Electric Yellow is not all that electric. For some reason, I was expecting a brighter, less tolerable colour when I saw what they'd named it, but it's sort of surprising that I didn't know better since I've done more than eighty of these colour tests now and it's pretty common for the colour names to not elicit the right mental picture.

I didn't do a great job of striking the Electric Yellow in small spacers, but since I never make small beads, that won't ever matter to me very much. In all of the other beads, I had no trouble striking it at all - it seemed to happen naturally just by working it.

The irritating thing about Striking Yellow is that it looks exactly the same as a lot of other colours that aren't yellow. For instance, it's sort of hard to tell Electric Yellow apart from Clear unless you've melted the end of it, and it's almost impossible to tell it apart from Striking Red, too. This can make a torching session a little like a game of Russian Roulette if you aren't careful about keeping track of where you put stuff down. The very first thing I do now when I 'm working with this colour (or Striking Red) is melt one end of the rod slightly and tease a strike out of it, and then use that end as the handle from then on (AFTER it cools. OUCH!) so that no accidents happen.

Electric Yellow does the same thing opaque yellows do when you add silver to it, which is turn brown. Silver leaf on top of Electric Yellow goes very brown, almost black in places, with some silvery bits crusting on the surface. Encasing this reaction predictably nets silver and brown under clear.

Silver glass is surprisingly nice on Electric Yellow, or at least the reducing silver glass frit was. The TerraNova2 frit didn't seem to get a very good strike on the face of the beads, but on the edges where it naturally cooled more, it is nicer. This tells me that the lack of colour here is MY fault. The reducing silver glass frit looks really neat, sort of blending together and forming those funky yellow lines around its edges.

Blech. This is the result of making frit stringer with Electric Yellow and reducing silver glass frit, using that to encase a bead made from Electric Yellow and then encasing with Clear. Not attractive at all, although some of the effects inside are interesting to look at.

Copper Green and Electric Yellow are also surprisingly nice together. I particularly like the side of the bead where the Electric Yellow is on top of the Copper Green. There is not much in the way of reaction on the Striking Yellow side of the bead, although the Copper Green does have an interesting sheen to it and is noticeably paler and faded around the edges of the dots and stringer lines. The light line that has formed around the Electric Yellow dots and stringer lines on the right-hand side of the bead are more interesting, and really just sort of cool. Like.

  

And then Electric Yellow just sort of stopped being interesting. Ivory and Peace separate on it a little bit, but honestly, that happens with a lot of colours so it's hard to get excited about. There is really not much of a reaction between Opal Yellow and Electric Yellow at all.

I didn't really make a lot of beads with Electric Yellow because I was afraid (unnecessarily, as it turns out) that it would be stupidly reactive and wreak havoc with the other colours I was using, but I did make this rose cane. The cane is Electric Yellow and a hand-mixed yellow that I made by combining Orange Sherbet and Dark Ivory in roughly equal proportion.