Test Results :: Light Red

Effetre Light Red is a gorgeous colour. I don't know what took me so long to try it, but I am glad I have found it eventually :)  It's sort of in the middle of the red hues, and seems like a real, true red until you pull it out thin over white or use it in thin layers over white, when it looks more orange.

Here, you can see that Light Red doesn't change when it is reduced. It also seems not to alter much with repeated heating and cooling, maybe darkening just a bit.

One of the benefits of all of the anal-retentive planning I do is that I occasionally get to recycle a picture instead of taking a new one, and this is one of those times.  Here, you can see that Light Red is very slightly darker than Reichenbach Lipstick, and is substantially lighter than CiM Maraschino, Valentine, and Hemoglobin.

On top of Light Red, silver clouded up and visibly bunched on top of the base colour. It also fumed the base colour a dark, bluish colour. When the silver was reduced and encased, it turned blue.

Silver Glass is very pretty on top of Light Red, both the reducing kind and the striking kind.

In terms of reactions, this colour was surprisingly volatile.

On top of Tuxedo, my stringer dots and lines are decidedly mottled and blotchy.  I also got a reciprocal dark line reaction with Copper Green, and then some separation inside my stringer dots and lines of Copper Green, Ivory, and Peace when used on top of Light Red.

Opal Yellow, when I used it on top of Light Red, got a strange, irregular blotchy brownish edging to it, and where I used Light Red over Ivory, the Ivory has crept over its edges in places to do that milk moustache thing it sometimes does to other colours.

I think the very weirdest thing though is that when I used Light Red on top of Peace, so much of the red bled into the Peace that it looks pink.

Here are some other beads that contain Light Red.

Test Results :: Streaky Denim

Effetre Streaky Denim is very streaky indeed. It is, however, not denimy at all, denim typically being neither purple nor cobalt blue in colour. Streaky Denim is one of the Effetre 'Cool Colours', a term which I have never heard explained. I used to think that these colours were so-classified because they were special batches of colour mixed from other regular production colours, and I guess for all I know that impression of mine could be true, but if it is, I wonder what this one would have in it. Maybe it's New Violet plus Light Cobalt?

Anyway, Streaky Denim is among the few of these so called 'Cool Colours' that I actually think is cool. I love Earth best, but you can't seem to be able to get that any more so it's best to just put it out of your head. In fact, I shouldn't have tempted you. Bad Melanie.

Where I used silver leaf on top of Streaky Denim, it sort of dispersed and is mostly not really visible on the bead's surface. However, when the bead is subsequently reduced and encased, you can see that the reason it was not visible on the surface was because it has spread itself thinly all over the bead. The rightmost bead in this picture has a shiny, mother-of-pearl effect under the encasement layer, and iridescent flashes of blue.

I've done this test with a lot of colours now (I think this might be colour #192 or #193) and at this point, what I am noticing is that some colours make silver spread out, some colours make it condense in on itself, and some colours don't influence its behaviour at all.

In my opinion, this colour doesn't make a great base for silver glass. The reducing silver glass frit looks washed out on top of it, and I had a hard time striking my TerraNova2 frit.

On top of Tuxedo and Copper Green, Streaky Denim separates and gets silvery around the edges. This reaction is pretty neat, and did not prepare me at all for what happened on the rest of the bead. For some reason, on top of Opal Yellow, Ivory, AND Peace, my Streaky Denim turned brown. This surprised me, and I'm not sure why it happened.  I should add also that in other beads, I have used Streaky Denim on top of both Opal Yellow and Ivory without this happening.  *sigh*

In spite of all this weirdness when it gets to be on top, when Streaky Denim is used as the base colour, the results are much less shocking, if not less confusing. Dots and stringer lines of Tuxedo, Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace on top of Streaky Denim seem not to react at all, and Copper Green's only response is to blush turquoise and separate slightly, and fail to develop the dingy army-green sheen that it had in the bead on the left.

Here are some fun beads with Streaky Denim:

Test Results :: Poi

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain - reduced, 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf - reduced & encased, 5 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (Gaia, Kronos, Elektra, Black Nebula) - reduced, 6 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 7 - w/ Vetrofond Black, 8 - w/ Copper Green, 9 - w/ Opal Yellow, 10 - w/ Ivory, 11 - w/ Effetre White

If you've been following this blog, you will remember how much of a hate-on I have for Effetre Dark Violet, and you might recall why I have a bit of an aversion to opaque purple glass. This is a bit of a barrier for me with Poi as well, but Poi has a couple of redeeming features. First, it is really interestingly reactive, and second, the consistency of it makes it really nice to work with.

I'm constantly making excuses for my test beads, but when you look at these, be kind... I'm using my new press and my new beadroller and am still getting the hang of them. Using them to make test beads is the perfect way to practice :)

General Impressions
CiM Poi is super-soft.  It might even be softer and spreadier than Opal Yellow, which makes Poi the new #1 on my mental glass viscosity scale, and bumps Opal Yellow and White to #2.  It is similar to Effetre Dark Violet in colour, but it has just a little more pink in it, and the reactions are way more fun.

I had a couple of rods that were shockier than I'd like, but overall, working with Poi was a dream.  I really enjoyed what happened when I made a thick encased stringer of Poi with Ink Blue. The cage of Ink Blue kept the otherwise spready Poi from moving around too much and really made it sing on the bead.  A picture of that bead is included at the end of this post - it's the long, brightly-coloured focal bead.

Reduction
Reducing Poi doesn't have much effect when the Poi is all by itself.

I don't think I have a picture of this, but when I've reduced Poi with silver glass and silver leaf on it, I've had it fume a little and turn shiny and mauve.

Reactions

Silver fumes the surface of Poi a little, turning it a brownish colour, and when the silver is melted onto the bead, it practically disappears except for a few little patchy bits. Encasing the silver turns the silver to a white blanket under the clear, and the Poi lightens a little under encasement. I used silver leaf here.

Poi is just ok for me with the silver glass tests I did. The reducing silver glass frit shined up really nicely, but it's just sitting there, and after doing this with quite a few other colours, my expectations have been raised.  I find this colour as hopeless to strike silver glass on top of as I did Dark Violet.  I'm sure it's possible, but it just didn't want to happen for me. I do really like the light purple rings that appeared in the Poi around the striking silver glass frit though.

Now things start to get more interesting. This bead was made with the last of my Vetrofond Black.  On top of the Black, the Poi has developed a thin dark purple line in the middle, and has changed colour slightly, taking on a yellowish hue. Similarly, the dots and stringer lines of Black on top of the Poi have all developed a bit of a yellowish halo.

On top of Poi, Copper Green develops a subtle light outline. When you put Poi on top of Copper Green, the Copper Green sort of goes nuts.  It's a vibrant, sloppy mess underneath the Poi lines that have separated so that there is a dark purple line running down the centre.  This reaction makes me really happy.

Like Black, Opal Yellow seems to make Poi want to be a yellowish brown colour. Yellowish halos have developed around the Opal Yellow dots and stringer lines, and the Poi dots and lines have taken on a yellowish hue. The separation of the Poi on top of the Opal Yellow isn't as dramatic as it was on Black, but it's still evident. Conclusion? The colours that make great bases for silver glasses also are big influencers for Poi.

You can see that the Poi has spread on the Opal Yellow, and that Opal Yellow has sunken into the Poi.  This is why I say that Poi is a softer, spreadier glass than Opal Yellow.

The reactions that I observed between Poi and Ivory are pretty consistent with what I saw when I tested Ivory with Dark Violet. The Poi develops a thin dark line in the middle, but apart from that, there's not much else that's interesting going on here. 

Poi spreads and webs on White.  If it could hold itself together, I think there'd be a dark line going through the Poi, but it just can't because it's so much softer than the White.  The White stringer lines and dots have sunken into the Poi, resulting in their edges getting sort of frazzled.

And I've made some interesting beads with Poi.  Much nicer things are possible with Poi than was really evident from the test beads.