Test Results :: Porpoise

Porpoise (CiM828) is a medium grey opaque. When it is molten, it is disconcertingly green in colour. I thought for sure that the finished beads would be greenish, but they aren't in the least.

Reducing Porpoise turns it brown.

Porpoise seems to fall somewhere between Effetre Light Gray and Effetre Dark Gray in hue. It's much darker than Pearl Grey, and less blue/green than Bayou, another new CiM colour.

On top of Porpoise, reduced silver turns yellow under encasement.

Porpoise gets an interesting light border around TerraNova2 frit, and the colours really popped in my reduction frit bead. It seems like it might be an interesting base colour for silver glass.

Porpoise separates on top of Tuxedo, Copper Green, and Peace. It spreads out on top of Opal Yellow, and develops a brownish dark line reaction with Ivory.

On top of Porpose, Copper Green separates and Ivory develops a dark shadow line around its edges that looks like it has texture.

These beads contain some Porpoise.

Test Results :: Oobleck

CiM Oobleck (CiM465) is a that's-not-a-colour-we-see-a-lot-here-on-earth sort of colour. It's wickedly vibrant, beautiful to work, and I was intrigued by its reactions with other colours. Most of the opaques I tried with it spread on top of it, and I love it with silver.

Here you can see that Oobleck doesn't change when you reduce it.

It does change, though, quite a lot, when you put silver on it. Silver turns Oobleck an ochre colour. You can see some of that in action in the beads at the end of this post. On top of Oobleck, silver looks beigeish and beads up a little. When the silver on top of Oobleck is reduced and encased, it takes on a blueish cast.

My silver glass travelled to the middle of the Oobleck beads for some reason. And once it got there, in both cases, behaved very interestingly. i got cool outlines around all of my reduction frit pieces, and it developed colour in a beautifully variegated way. My TerraNova2 frit got very interesting, thick outlines and also developed colour really nicely. So, good base for silver glass is Oobleck.

Something worth noting is that I got all this gorgeous colour from the silver glass frit but although Oobleck is clearly quite reactive with silver, it didn't take on a lot of fume when I reduced the silver glass frit on top of it. Interesting.

Oobleck reacts like it thinks it's Ivory, in a category with other colours like Coral, Vetrofond Yellow Ochre, Effetre Grasshopper, and most yellows, oranges, ivories, and some reds. It develops a dark line with Copper Green, and brownish line with Opal Yellow, and seems to be heavier than the other colours I used it with here because they spread on it like crazy.

On top of Ivory, Tuxedo, and Peace, Oobleck separated into darker and lighter versions of itself.

These beads all contain some Oobleck.

Test Results :: Algae

CiM Algae is a yellowish/greyish dark green transparent.  I think that this colour fills an important void in my 104 colour palette, and so I'm a bit sad that it's a limited run and only sporadically available.

There are only so many dark transparent greens in our colour palette.  To name a few, we have Effetre Sage Green, Effetre Dark Emerald, Effetre Dark Grass Green, CiM Slytherin, and REI Beryl Green, and none of them are in this exact yellow-green space.  Slytherin and Sage Green are the only other green transparent glasses that approach Algae in terms of saturation level, but Algae is darker and richer than both of those other colours. Algae is the only colour in this group that has adverse reactions with Ivory, which mean that it also has a very unique reaction profile compared to other transparent dark greens.

Here, you can see how very saturated this colour is. You can't see through the self-coloured spacers. As you can see in the rightmost bead, reducing Algae does not have any effect on the colour.

Silver on top of Algae develops some blue colour, and the crust that it forms is fairly even and uniform in texture. When the silver is reduced and encased, it turns yellow and all of the interesting patterning is lost out of it.

On top of Algae, I had interesting results with silver glass.  The reduction frit bloomed nicely on top of the Algae and has cool borders to all of the fritty bits.  I got a reasonable first blush of colour in the striking silver glass, too, although it's hard to see in the picture.

Copper Green, Opal Yellow, and Peace all separate on top of Algae, whereas Ivory curdles a little and develops a dark reaction line.

When Algae is used on top of Copper Green, the Copper Green separates even more dramatically and pops up around the Algae dots and lines in light halos with dark turquoise veining in between.  On top of Opal Yellow and Peace, Algae separates so that it has a thin, dark line down the middle of its dots and stringer lines.  I can't remember the last transparent colour I tested that did this - usually it is opaque colours that I see this in.

On top of Ivory, Algae looks an ochre-y, brownish green version of itself.

Here are some beads made with Algae.

Test Results :: Light Umber

Effetre Light Umber is one of the 800-series colours, which probably means that it's limited production and won't be around for too much longer. I think it's a really interesting colour, pretty unique in the 104 palette, and both earthy and fiery at the same time. Depending on how much you strike it and the other colours it is used with, it can range from looking quite a burnt orange to being a very dark olive green, and all the shades in between.

Here you can see that in the bead I reduced, the colour is much darker. I'm not sure if this is because it struck in the reduction flame or if reducing it actually darkened the colour. Putting silver on Light Umber also made it a dark brownish green.

In the leftmost bead, you can see that silver turns a greyish colour and stays more or less in place on top of Light Umber, similarly to how it behaves with Ivory. Reduced and encased, the silver turns blue.

I am pretty sure that this cracking was the result of me having a rod of old Precision 104 Diamond Clear mixed in with my clear shorts, and not from putting silver on Light Umber, but the bead I put silver leaf on top of cracked in a really odd way. It's clearly a compatibility crack, because of how weirdly jagged and around the widest part of the bead it is, and dicey clear is the only thing I can think of that could have caused this.

Light Umber goes dark in beads with silver glass, too. I think it's a great base colour for silver glasses - the reduction colours pop, and the striking silver glass got beautiful purples even if I wasn't patient enough to properly develop the colour.

Light Umber is very reactive with Tuxedo - you can see in the leftmost bead how it has risen around the Tuxedo in halos, and in the bead on the right how it has quite dramatically separated on top of the Tuxedo.

With Copper Green, the edges of whichever colour is used in smaller quantity get dark, but the reaction is mild. Light Umber separates slightly on top of Copper Green and Copper Green spreads on top of Light Umber.

There are no obvious reactions between Light Umber and Opal Yellow, Ivory, or Peace. There is a slight separation of Light Umber on top of Opal Yellow and Peace, but nothing dramatic.

And here are some fun beads with Light Umber :)