Test Results :: Little Boy Blue

CiM Little Boy Blue (CiM561) us a gorgeous blue-grey opaque. It's butter-smooth, and reminds me a lot of Dirty Martini and Lapis in terms of how nice it is to work with. I'm sad to see that it is already sold out, but I hope that hearing how nice we all think it is might inspire CiM to make more of it for us.

Little Boy Blue does not change colour when you reduce it.

On top of Little Boy Blue, silver disappears. Until you reduce and encase it, and then it sits like a cloudy, silvery blanket under the clear layer. This is the exact opposite of what happens between silver and Dirty Martini, so I guess here is where those colours' similarities end.

Reducing silver glass frit is pretty on top of Little Boy Blue, and it really stands out as an excellent base of striking silver glass frit. I got beautiful colour  from my TerraNova2 here, and beautiful separation haloes around all the little fritty bits.

Little Boy Blue separates on top of Tuxedo, but it is not very reactive with other colours. Copper Green stays very grey on top of it.

Here is a pair of beads made with Little Boy Blue. I'll come back and publish some more when I have them.

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 :: Wisteria

Wisteria (CiM628) from Creation is Messy is a misty opal version of Crocus, and is officially the prettiest lavender that I've ever used. Because it is a limited run, maybe you didn't get any. I'm sorry about that - I didn't get very much either, but I will hope that it gets remade so that we can all have more. I have been thinking about whether or not I would still need Crocus if this colour were made more regularly, and decided that I wouldn't want to have to choose. I hope CiM produces more batches of both colours.

I got a few bubbles in these initial beads that I made, but Wisteria is not a bubbly colour. It works up with minimal fuss, and its colour stays true whether your flame is oxidizing or reducing.

Silver affects the colour, though, and you can see here how the application of silver leaf made the colour greyer. In the bead where I reduced and encased the silver, a lot of the grey was transformed into the silvery coating you can see under my clear layer.

Silver glass is pretty on top of Crocus.

And finally, Crocus is not very reactive with other colours. None of my usual combinations provoked any reactions from it, and the only thing worth noting here is how dull Copper Green looks on top of it.

Here are some beads I made with this pretty colour.

Test Results :: Periwinkle

I'm finally testing Effetre Periwinkle. I've spent eight years avoiding this colour pretty religiously, so it's surprising (to me) that I'm using it so much right now. It's a pretty but kind of alien colour that falls somewhere between blue and purple on the colour wheel.

Reducing Periwinkle doesn't have any effect on its colour.

Silver seems to discolour periwinkle slightly, which seems like it could be fun. The silver, reduced and encased, lies like a lacy whiteish blanket under a layer of clear in the leftmost bead.

In the bead on the left, you can see again how reducing the silver glass has discoloured the periwinkle, robbing it of its bright blueness. The silver glass frit is a touch coppery on top of the periwinkle, which I don't usually see in this test. in the bead on the right, I got big pale halos around all of the TerraNova2 fritty bits.  I didn't get much colour from the TerraNova2 in this quick test beads, telling me that it isn't one of the magic silver glass base colours I'm hunting for.

Periwinkle is not a very reactive colour. However, there are a few notes for me to make here.

On top of Tuxedo, Periwinkle seems to separate very slightly, developing some translucency around its edges. Tuxedo bleeds into Periwinkle when it is used on top.

With Periwinkle, I got a lot of the grunginess on my Copper Green that I only seem to avoid naturally when I combine the Copper Green with certain other colours.  I don't know if Periwinkle brings out the sludginess or if it just doesn't help to inhibit it, but I definitely get this more when combining Copper Green with some colours than others.

When I used Periwinkle on top of Opal Yellow, a faint crevice showed around all of the dots and stringer lines causing them to almost look lifted off the surface of the bead.

I don't have anything significant to add about either Ivory or Peace.

Here are some other beads that include Effetre Periwinkle:

Test Results :: Light Cobalt (Vetrofond)

So just to start things off on the right foot, this is Vetrofond Light Cobalt, not Effetre. I don't know how similar Effetre Light Cobalt is, because I have not tried it.  I'm trying to test more production colours than out-of-production to make this resource more generally useful, but I had two pounds of this and I needed to know how the reactions work and what the colour looks like and since Frantz seems to still have tons of this, maybe someone else will too.

Light Cobalt is a not-very-light royal blue. It's a gorgeous colour, if you like bright, dark blue. It reminds me of the colour of some ice wine bottles, although those are generally transparent.

It was weird for me that this colour was transparent when I pulled it into stringer because it's so very saturated. So, it's dark and it's saturated, but not as dense and opaque as it seems like it will be in rod form. The stringer, when used on top of other colours, looks perfectly opaque, like that whole transparency thing was all in my head. (it wasn't)

What a vibrant colour this is. Reducing it seemed to darken the colour slightly.

Silver looks pretty silvery on top of Light Cobalt. In the bead on the left, the silver seems to have just stayed where I put it, and then when the silver is reduced and encased, it looks like a soft silvery blanket under the clear glass.

This colour is fun with reducing silver glass. It has struck darker here in the bead on the left just like it did in the spacer I reduced, and my silver glass frit looks beautiful on top of it, in lacy shades of blue and green. In the bead on the right, you can see gentle lighter blue halos popped up around my TerraNova2 frit.

Light Cobalt is not a very reactive colour, but there are a few things to talk about here.

Where I used Light Cobalt on top of Tuxedo, there is a thin crusty whiteish line around the dots and stringer lines in a not-very-uniform way. Nothing happens when it's the Tuxedo that's on top.

There's no real reaction between Copper Green and Light Cobalt except that Copper Green seems to develop that yucky greyish sheen more easily with this colour.

When Light Cobalt is used on top of Peace or Opal Yellow, you can see that there is some bleeding of the Light Cobalt into the glass around the stringer lines and dots giving a blueish glowy effect. When Peace or Opal Yellow is used on top of Light Cobalt, it develops a light blue outline, which is really neat-looking.

These beads all contain Light Cobalt.

Test Results :: Gold Violet

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

Reichenbach Gold Violet (RL2012) is a beautiful pink, if you use it over something that dilutes its colour. Used alone, it is so dark it is almost black. It is an exciting alternative to CiM Cranberry and Effetre Rubino Oro, because compared to those colours, it is barely reactive at all but still has all the beautiful pinkness.  I haven't tried Pink Lady or Gold Ruby yet (other Reichenbach 104 pinks), but I am interested to see whether they react more like this colour or more like the CiM and Effetre varieties of dark pink transparent. This testing is pretty fun stuff :)

Gold Violet is pretty with silver, and it is awesome to have a transparent pink that can be used with Ivory without turning the Ivory black.  The other thing that is really cool about Gold Violet is that it seems not to mind being encased.

Here, you can see that when silver is used on top of Gold Violet, the colour of the Gold Violet browns up a little and the silver geads up on top of it.  If you reduce and encase the silver, it turns blue and leaves a blueish haze across the base glass.  The bead on the left is unimpressive and sort of icky looking, but it can be easily transformed into the bead on the right by reducing and encasing it with Clear.

Here, you can see that encasing silver foil with Gold Violet has resulted in the colour of the gold violet being lightened and reflected back at us with minimal discolouration. I was expecting it to turn orange the way it did when I encased silver with Cranberry, and was pleasantly surprised that it didn't really do that.

Reducing silver glass is gorgeous on top of Gold Violet. Not only did I get beautiful, vivid colour, but I also got some interesting mottling and edging to the fritty bits that I do not see with a lot of other colours.  I got some colour out of my TerraNova2 frit as well, but because that colour strikes mostly pink and purple, it is sort of lost against the base.

And now this is the most magical part of my show and tell about Gold Violet.

Instead of separating and going turquoise with Gold Violet, Copper Green develops a dark patina. I'm not sure this is very attractive, but it is an interesting change.  I probably wouldn't do this on purpose, but it is good information for you because you should absolutely not approach using this colour with Copper Green (or anything else) the way you would approach it with Rubino or Cranberry.

On top of Gold Violet, Opal Yellow and Peace both develop a subtle border that makes those colours look three-dimensional on top of Gold Violet. In my opinion, the reaction with Peace on top of Gold Violet is really attractive.

Ivory is the biggest surprise here. You can see that on top of Gold Violet, the Ivory has separated and curdled a little, but mostly stayed in place. It has not turned black or brown even a little bit. When I used Gold Violet on top of Ivory, nothing weird happened there either.

Finally, here is a goddess bead made with Gold Violet. You can sort of see pink in her if you look close where the light is shining through, but anything sculptural made from this colour is going to look almost black because the colour is so dense.

Test Results :: Cobalt

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

Effetre Cobalt Transparent is a deep, rich cobalt blue transparent. It is moderately saturated, meaning that while it is a nice, dark colour, it still looks blue rather than black when used to make spacer beads. It is moderately reactive with silver and other glass colours, making it an interesting addition to my palette.

It's sort of funny to me now that I've been avoiding this colour for the last six years or so. I always regarded it as too bright or something, and never wanted to use it. I had no idea how much I was going to like it once I tried it. I guess I'm getting over my fear of bright colours or something.

On top of Cobalt, silver more or less stays put and forms a fine, webby network.  When it is reduced and encased, it takes on a blue/green appearance under the clear.

I read a post on Lampwork Etc. by Sarah Kay about her Blue Bead using this colour and silver, which you should also read if you are interested in how to really exploit the effects you can get by reducing and encasing this colour.

The results I got from putting silver glass on top of Cobalt, for lack of a more descriptive set of terms, is just sort of odd.  More experimentation is going to be required to figure out whether it is good-odd or bad-odd.  The reducing silver glass frit got beautiful colour and some interesting curdling and outlining effects on top of Cobalt, and my TerraNova2 frit developed colour well, but in a murky purple way that I'm not sure I'm a fan of.

Using Cobalt in my silver glass frit stringer test yielded a partial success.  It is interesting that it did something, even if that something isn't what I am usually hoping for in this test's results. It's wispy, and not solidly streaky like I have experienced with other reactive transparents like Yellow, Straw Yellow, Light Brown, etc.

Unfortunately, in the right-most bead, I seem to have done two stringers of Opal Yellow instead of one of Opal Yellow and one of Ivory. As a result, if you are very interested in how Ivory behaves on top of Cobalt, you are going to have to try it yourself.  Sorry about that!

In terms of reactions with other colours, Cobalt is not very interesting, although it is certainly nice to have some stable, non-reactive colours in our palettes.  The only things I observed in these test beads are that Opal Yellow, Peace, and Copper Green all separate on top of Cobalt, and that Copper Green develops a dark patina when used with this colour.

And finally, here is the Cobalt goddess bead. She has a little lint on her, but if you ignore that, you can see the richness of this colour and the different hues it takes on, depending on the thickness and how the light hits it.

Test Results :: Peach

1 - w/ Silver Leaf, 2 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 3 - w/ Silver Foil, 4 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 5 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit Stringer, 7 - Plain, 8 - Plain (reduced), 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - w/ Opal Yellow, 11 - w/ Ivory, 12 - w/ Peace

Lauscha Peach is a very pale, subdued peach transparent glass.  It is a little reactive with silver, although not on the same scale as Light Brown Transparent or Straw Yellow, and has a beautiful consistency.  It is not particularly prone to boiling.

Silver leaf melted onto the surface of a Peach bead is not terribly interesting, just looking like random greyish surface discolouration, however when the silver leaf is reduced and encased, it takes on a shiny, ethereal appearance under the encasing layer with a tinge of lavender to it.

When Peach is applied over silver foil, the silver foil turns a rich gold colour.

Peach is an average base colour for silver glass frit.  Nothing exceptional happened, but there was no epic fail either.

Here I used frit stringer made from Peach and silver glass reduction frit (Kronos, Psyche, Gaia, Elektra) to encase a core of Peach, and then encased the whole thing with Clear.  The resulting striations are interesting, but don't have much colour to them.  I got much prettier results with this technique with Effetre Straw Yellow, Effetre Light Brown, Effetre Pale Green Apple and CiM Mojito, but this less colourful result has possible uses as well.

   

 

And here is Peach with Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace.  Not much to report here in terms of reactions.

I haven't made anything very fun with Peach yet, but I still have a couple of rods left so I will try to get something posted in the next couple of weeks.