First Look :: Burnt Sugar

CiM Burnt Sugar (CiM733) is a brown transparent glass that is a pale brown in thin layers. Like all transparents, the more of it is bulked together, the darker it is. 

Burnt Sugar is a light brown transparent that fumes very dark with silver. Silver foil encased with this colour turns a rich bronze colour.

On top of Burnt Sugar, silver foil looks amazing. 

I love the way it crusts up on the surface, and when the silver is reduced and encased, it forms a blue-ish haze around it and looks quite magical.

Because Burnt Sugar does such amazing things with silver, I thought it might be a good candidate for using with silver glass frit in stringer, but unfortunately the reaction is so strong that the results are too dark to be interesting.

I'll show you two other tests like this from the new batch of colours in future posts, and you'll see what I was hoping for here in one of them.

This colour melts like butter, and although it is possible to boil it if you hold a thin stringer directly in the flame, it is very nice to work with. In thin layers, it is a gorgeous pale brown, and in thicker layers, a deep brown. The denser the Burnt Sugar, the darker a bead made entirely of Burnt Sugar will appear.

Here's Burnt Sugar in a group with many of the other colours from this batch of Limited Runs:

Test Results :: Medium Topaz

 

Effetre Medium Topaz (EFF014) is the colour of amber or maple syrup. Some vendors call it Root Beer.

This colour is part of a small family of topazes, which we can all appreciate because it is very nice to have a series of 3 or more tranparents that are all the same hue but at different saturation levels. We have to be more inventive to create this kind of graduated effect with other colours. I wish someone could do this with reds and oranges.

Because all of the great colours have more than one name, this one is also sometimes called Root Beer, so if you're looking for Medium Topaz and can't find it, that could be part of your problem.

Reducing Medium Topaz doesn't have any effect on it's colour.

In the rightmost bead, you can see Medium Topaz sitting smack between it's two cousins, Light Topaz and Dark Topaz.

Medium Topaz is a very vivid colour with reddish overtones, which is very appealing but maybe a little frustrating if what you really want is a medium brown colour. If you're facing this problem, consider choosing CiM Indian Summer  or CiM Maple instead, since they are less red but about the same level of saturation. Medium Topaz is brighter and more saturated than Reichenbach Amber, brighter than CiM Indian Summer, and significantly redder and darker than the old Vetrofond Streaky Topaz.

On top of Medium Topaz, silver spreads out and forms a brownish crust. When that crust is reduced and encased, it turns a bluish grey. Medium Topaz deadens silver. I encased silver foil in the rightmost bead, and usually I expect to see the silver glinting out at me with some intensity, whether the colour of it is changed or not. Medium Topaz seems to have eaten it.

Medium Topaz makes a very interesting base colour for reducing silver glass frit. I got interesting outlines around the fritty bits here, and I also got very nice colours in the frit. My TerraNova2 frit got some interesting colour in it, but everything is so dark in that bead that it seems like maybe the reaction between it and the Medium Topaz was too strong. I'll have to try this again and see what happens.

In my frit stringer test, I certainly got a reaction but instead of the blues and greens that I get with colours like Yellow, Straw Yellow, Mojito, and others I instead got a lot of grey and pale yellow with the barest hints of blue. This combined with its behaviour with silver makes me think that the Topaz family's reaction profile is a lot like that of an Ivory. That sort of makes sense based on the little I know about glass colouring and I can't help remembering that Ivory is sort of amberish when it's hot.

Medium Topaz lightens up considerably when used on top of other colours.

Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace all separated on top of Medium Topaz, but I didn't notice much in the way of reactions when the Medium Topaz was on top.

Here are some beads that include Medium Topaz:

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 :: 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 :: Ginger

CiM Ginger (CiM701) is a pretty, soft peachy-pink opaque colour. It is fairly inert - it will fume and discolour with silver, but in a much milder way than other neutral colours like Ivory.

Ginger doesn't change colour when you reduce it. You can see in the bead on the right that Ginger can be a bit streaky. In that bead, a lot of the colour migrated to the middle of the bead when I was melting it down.

Silver fumes the surface of Ginger slightly, giving it a yellowish cast. If you reduce and encase the silver leaf with Effetre Super Clear it turns an interesting, ethereal, lacy white with blue and pink halo effects under the clear.

It also, sadly, cracked in this test bead, so if you will be using this colour with silver and encasing it with clear, make a test bead or two first to see if this crack was because of that combination or if it was my fault.

Ginger is an average base for silver glass. My reducing silver glass bits spread out on top of the Ginger, and it stayed pretty neutral under the silver glass. I got a lackluster starting strike from my TerraNova2 frit. It seems from looking back at my notes for CiM Butter Pecan Uniques #4 and #5 that Ginger is significantly less reactive with silver than either of those colours were.

I'm looking forward to having worked all the way through this bluish batch of Tuxedo that I still have so much of. Ginger separates and thins out on top of Tuxedo, but the only reason the Tuxedo looks blue on the leftmost bead here is because this particular batch of Tuxedo was less opaque than usual.

Copper Green and Ginger don't strongly react, but you can see a defined outline around my Copper Green stringer work if you zoom in. It's not a dark line reaction like with Ivory, it's more like the Copper Green is floating just on top of the Ginger on some thin transparent layer. Ginger separates a bit on top of Copper Green.

On top of Ivory, Ginger blushes a darker colour at its edges, but there is no strong reaction between Ginger and Opal Yellow, Ivory, or Peace.

Here are some other beads that contain Ginger.

Test Results :: Cream

Vetrofond Cream (VET822) is a pale, neutral opaque. It is a bit cooler in tone than the coveted Vetrofond Light Ivory, but it is similarly stiff and has gentler reactions with unfriendly colours than the Effetre ivories. I love this colour a lot, so I was sad to see the last time I was at Frantz Art Glass that it is all gone.

This colour's only real weak point is that is sometimes has little black speckles in it. I don't mind the speckles, and if they're in my way I just pull them out, but some other people seem not to like them. You can make up your own mind if you're lucky enough to come across some of this glass.

Cream doesn't do anything much when you reduce it.

Silver crusts up on top of Cream. When the silver is reduced and encased, it looks the same but smoother and less interesting.

Cream makes an ok (but not awesome) base for silver glass. I like it better with the reduction colours than with striking ones like TerraNova2.

Here you can see that Cream separates on top of Tuxedo and makes Tuxedo bleed when Tuxedo is used on top of it.

Cream does develop a dark line with Copper Green, but mostly only when it is used on top. The dark line reaction that it has with Opal Yellow is stronger.

I didn't make any interesting observations about its behaviour with Ivory or Peace.

Here are some beads that contain Vetrofond Cream.