Test Results :: Serengeti

CiM Serengeti (CiM729) is a medium, yellowish brown colour. On CiM's website it says that Serengeti has reddish overtones, and the paddle colour is very orange, but achieving colours like that with Serengeti was not possible for me.

Serengeti is a striking colour. The bead on the right was reduced, but reduction is not necessary to darken it. It will darken with repeated heating and cooling as you're working your bead.

Silver crusts up on the surface of Serengeti, and I think I see the faintest hint of a reddish blush underneath it. When I reduced and encased the silver, it turned pink and blue.

Serengeti seems to make a decent base colour for silver glass, but not a magical one.

When you put Tuxedo on top of Serengeti, it makes the Serengeti separate and raise up in halos around it.

Serengeti does a very interesting thing when you put it on top of Ivory. It both separates gently and if you look at the dots of Serengeti on top of Ivory, it almost looks like there is space underneath them and you could pry them up. The Serengeti separated underneath Ivory as well, screwing up the edges of my stringer lines and dots.

The colour of Serengeti can apparently be made more vivid by applying it on top of Peace or White in thin layers.

These beads all contain some Serengeti:

Test Results :: Rapunzel

CiM Rapunzel (CiM627) is a light lavender pink colour. It's gorgeous with silver and silver glass, and I had buckets of fun combining it with orange and purple. It's a fairly tight colour, by which I mean that it condenses in on itself when you use it on top of other things, and other colours spread on top of it.

I usually make the plain spacers first when I make a set of test beads, but for some reason I started differently with these ones and then forgot to go back and make the plain spacers. I put maybe too much value on consistency, and so I'm probably way more upset about the fact that they're missing from this set of test beads than you are, but I apologize anyway.

Here is Rapunzel with CiM Gellys Sty, CiM Heffalump, Effetre Lilac Dark Dark, Effetre Lavender, and Reichenbach Soft Violet. Rapunzel sits directly between Gellys Sty and Heffalump, hue-wise, and is a very pretty colour.

Where Rapunzel really shines is when you pair it with silver. Silver leaf on top of it fumes the Rapunzel immediately surrounding the silver to a rich brown colour. When the silver is reduced and encased it gets a dark pink and bluish haze to it.

You can see in the leftmost bead here that reducing silver glass frit on top of Rapunzel fumes it a yellowish colour. I guess this is Rapunzel letting down her golden hair?  The reducing silver glass frit develops colour well on top of Rapunzel.

I also got a beautiful starting strike in my TerraNova2 frit on top of this colour and as an added bonus, Rapunzel separated underneath this silver glass colour and popped up around the fritty bits in little rapunzelly halos.

In general, Rapunzel separates with everything, and everything spreads on top of it.  Copper Green separates on top of Rapunzel.

The most noteworthy things that happened here involve Tuxedo and Opal Yellow:

• Because the colour of Rapunzel is not very dense, it thins out considerably when you use it in thinner layers. It is almost translucent on top of Tuxedo, and you can see that when it separates on top of that colour it gets considerably lighter at the edges forming stringer lines and dots that are almost ghostly in appearance.
• Rapunzel, when it separates on top of Opal Yellow also takes on some of the Opal Yellow colour. So, instead of looking like a cool pink, it instead looks like a warm, dusty rose colour in the middle of the dots and stringer lines.

Here are some other beads that include Rapunzel.

Test Results :: Marble

When I got the Marble rods, I found myself asking "How is Marble different from Marshmallow?" because the Marble rods are a similar semi-opaque white colour. After melting the Marble (although never having melted any Marshmallow) it became clear that it is different from Marshmallow in that it does not stay semi-opaque. On the CiM site, Marble is described as a streaky, marble-like white but I didn't get much in the way of streaks. It looks pretty white to me.

So then I felt the need to ask myself "OK then, how is Marble different from White?" since it seemed like I should be asking some questions, questions being the mother of answers and answers being what we are looking for when we test anything.

And sadly, the answer is that I only sort of know, because in spite of all of the testing I've done, I haven't yet bothered to test the staple colours that I test everything else with. This didn't really seem like such a huge oversight until I tested Marble, so I'm a little annoyed with myself. Fortunately for Marble (and for me) it is a very interesting colour, so not having done my homework can only really eat at me so much.

This seems destined to be a chatty post. Bear with me.

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

In some of the pictures, Marble has blended right into the background. I'd like to say that I photographed Marble on a white background on purpose to demonstrate its inherent whiteness (or lack thereof) however the truth is that I just didn't think to get out the black plexiglass. I guess the next time I test such a light colour I really should, since some of these beads are sort of hard to make out.

CiM Marble is an opaque white that is very reactive with silver, and has some unusual reactions with other colours as well. It's a fairly stiff colour, and is sort of nice to use because of its smooth consistency.

Marble fumes a yellowish colour when used with silver. You can see the mottled yellow/orange/brown reactions in the bead on the left. You can see the yellow in the middle of the bead on the right, too, where the silver didn't cover the core of the bead. On top of Marble, silver goes a brownish colour as well, but then when it is reduced and encased as in the bead on the right, it takes on blueish and pinkish tints and goes pretty shiny. This is a pretty reaction (or at least it would be if the yellow had stayed hidden).

I had mixed results for Marble with silver glass. I really like the way the reduced silver glass behaved on Marble, and the sheen reducing the silver glass gave to the marble is really interesting in the bead on the left.  I swear I make all of these test beads the same way, and I had great success with Midnight just the day after I made these, so instead of blaming myself for this one I am going to say that Marble is much nicer as a base for reducing silver glass than it is for striking silver glass. One interesting feature of the bead with TerraNova2 frit is the way the Marble came up in little halos around the frit. I love that effect.

Tuxedo
I'm not really sure what was going on here, so you are going to have to work this out for yourself if you are interested. In the bead on the left, my Marble stringer got a lot of dark 'gunge' in it, and I have no idea if this is from a reactions or if it is because I was coming to the end of my propane. It's sort of suspicious that the Marble did this on top of all of the colours EXCEPT copper green, but weirder things have happened. In any case, the 'gunge' seemed to only fill the centres of the dots and lines on Tuxedo, which means that that the Marble separated on top of it.  If you try it, I predict you will either get two different consistencies of white, or that you will get what I got.  Let me know :)

When Tuxedo is used on top of Marble, the Marble rises up around it in little white halos.

Copper Green
On top of Copper Green, Marble separates a little, and when Copper Green is used on top of Marble, white halos rise up around it as well. Copper Green stays an odd, shiny yellowish colour with Marble.

Opal Yellow
When Opal Yellow is used with Marble, it seems inclined to blush pink. On top of Opal Yellow (apart from where it turned grey) the Marble seems to acquire some of Opal Yellow's pinkish yellowness.

Ivory & Peace
It's difficult to really discern anything meaningful from what I did on top of Ivory and Peace with Marble, and from the complete wash that was Ivory and Peace on top of Marble, but this seems to be the area of the bead that received the most blackening. There's not a lot of point in ever attempting white-on-white, so I'll probably never do this again so we may not find out if there's anything more to it.

I made some fun murrini with Marble (although I've just realized I didn't take any pictures of it *sigh*), and also used it underneath Midnight in my Midnight bead. On the whole, I liked Marble. It's got character.

 

Test Results :: Porcelain

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 - w/ Tuxedo, 8 - w/ Copper Green, 9 - w/ Opal Yellow, 10 - w/ Ivory, 11 - w/ White

General Impressions
Reichenbach Porcelain (RL7202) is a weird and wonderful colour that looks very similar to White in rod form.  I've been pestering one of my friends to melt the half-pound she bought earlier this year every chance I get, but she has been avoiding it because it just looks like boring old White in the rod.  Boy, has she been missing out!  I'm not sure I have completely grasped all of the strange things going on in my Porcelain beads, but the things that I have found so far have been awesome.

While Porcelain looks like White in rod form, it is definitely not white in the same way that Effetre White is white.  It is well-named, because it really does remind me of porcelain - not quite white, not quite ivory, but somewhere in between and very reminiscent of bone.

In thin layers, Porcelain is translucent, which is an interesting effect both in florals and in surface decoration on top of other colours.  As a base colour, it can be reactive, but it does not really react in ways that I consider predictable for a white or ivory family kind of colour.

In the picture below, you will see two crystals that I made with Porcelain in my crystal press.  I added a second layer of dots to get the size right for my press, and this has resulted in a thin, pink translucent line forming in between where the layers meet.  This effect is not unpleasant, but it means that solid crystals or other pressed shapes where you might need to add glass will be sort of challenging with porcelain if the end result is supposed to be smooth and seamless.

Also, I'm not really sure where the pink is coming from.  You'll see it in a few more beads as you read through the rest of this, and I would need to test a host of other colours with Porcelain to be able to definitively say 'I think this is why it's pink'.  Either it is pink here because it is reacting with itself, or it is pink here because Porcelain can strike to pink and it happened because of my brass press, or it is pink for some other, more arcane, reason.  I'm not really sure :)

The reactions I have obtained with Porcelain in this limited set of test beads completely blew me away, and I think that Porcelain is one of my new favourite colours.

Reactions

In the bead on the left, I added silver leaf to the porcelain and just melted it in.  It has left a brown residue over a lot of the bead.  In the bead on the right, I added silver leaf to the Porcelain, melted it in, reduced it and then encased it with Effetre Clear.  The result of that is the snowy white blanket that I sometimes get in this test and a slight yellowing of the Porcelain that I suspect is from reducing the silver.

In the bead on the left, I overstruck my TerraNova2 frit, which is the first time that's happened to me in a while.  How embarrassing!  The weird thing here is how very pink the Porcelain has gotten under the frit. Again, I pressed this bead and I struck it repeatedly (*sigh*) so I'm not sure if it was that striking or if it was the silver glass that turned it pink. I feel strongly that the TerraNova2 frit problem is all my fault, and deep inside, I know this is a colour that will be nice with striking colours. You will see below what it does with Raku.

In the bead on the right, the Porcelain has turned yellow with the reduced silver glass frit.  The silver glass frit developed its colour nicely, and I am pretty happy with how the reduction colours look on Porcelain.  I am hypothesizing that reducing the silver glass made it fume yellow on this one, too.  Odd contrast though, right?  I wouldn't have imagined this in 1000 years.

 

And holy crap, this is Porcelain with Raku.  Raku and I are not the best of friends, but this reaction is killing me.  A white-ish halo rises up out of the Porcelain to support the Raku stringer dots and lines, and leaves a darker pink line in between.  Then, to put icing on the cake, the darker pink reactiony bits boiled but the rest of the bead didn't, which means I have two sets of decoration here.  The decoration I applied... and then the decoration that boiled, because the boily bit is every bit as precise as the stringer work I did and looks like it was etched or sandblasted on purpose but stayed sparkly.  Cool, right?

Tuxedo bled onto Porcelain just a bit, and the Porcelain has just the faintest tinge of pink when used with this colour.

I love the way Copper Green behaves with Porcelain.  No grey-green sheen on this Copper Green.  On top of Porcelain, the Copper Green has separated so that the outsides of the lines and dots have a lighter outline and darker middle.  The Porcelain on the right side of this bead has turned pinkish in places, but not uniformly like in some of the other beads.

On the left side of the bead, the Copper Green has really brightened up and is a turquoise colour that is just gorgeous.  Apart from keeping the Copper Green clean, there is not much reaction from the Porcelain on top of Copper Green.

I don't really know what happened here.... one side of the bead was supposed to be Opal Yellow and the other side was supposed to be Porcelain, but as it turns out, they don't really look different enough when they're hot for me to keep them straight when I forget to focus at the torch.

Regardless, the Opal Yellow almost looks dirty when used with Porcelain, the Porcelain struck to pink on top of Opal Yellow, and where I used Opal Yellow beside or over top of the Porcelain, it developed a lighter outline and a darker, dirtier centre colour to the dots and lines.

Here you can see the colour difference between Ivory and Porcelain pretty well.  On the right side of the bead, you can see that Ivory is a fair bit warmer than Porcelain.  On the left side of the bead, you can see that Ivory has a hard time dealing with this... it looks all yellowed where it is right up against the Porcelain and then dirty in a big swath and then finally, more like itself towards the end of the bead.

 

And here is Porcelain with White.  There is no obvious reaction here but you can see on the right side of the bead that the Porcelain is a warmer colour than white, and looks sort of like a greyish ivory colour.

Regardless, it's all yummy.  This colour and I are going to have a long relationship together.  The viscosity of it makes it dreamy to work with in stringer form, it makes a fantastic base colour for Raku (and hopefully other reactive colours as well) and doesn't do that dark line thing with turquoises.  It's versatile, it's beautiful and it's interesting.

Here are some of my fun beads with Porcelain:

 

  

Test Results :: Yellow Opalino

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 - As a particularly sickly-looking floral (Core of Slytherin, Yellow Opalino Petals), 8 - w/ Copper Green, 9 - w/ Tuxedo, 10 - w/ Opal Yellow, 11 - w/ Ivory, 12 - w/ White

Effetre Yellow Opalino isn't nearly as ugly as I thought it was. I mean, in the rod, it is pale, sort of translucent and really, really yellow. I'm not usually drawn to yellow. The rod colour reminds me of Easter chicks, and I'll go ahead and confess that I've never really wanted to melt or wear an Easter chick, either.

I made these beads a few weeks ago, then got all caught up in the craziness of moving and didn't get around to posting them. I did get a really wide range of colour and texture from the Yellow Opalino. In Bead #8, it's sort of a mottled semi-translucent colour, which is very different from what I got in Bead #5 which is more of a butter yellow with a hint of pink, which is different again from the burnt mustard colour of Bead #2.

I nicknamed this colour 'Yop' while I was working with it, because I am apparently too lazy to even repeatedly think both of the words of its excessively long name. I am going to have to do a lot more messing around before I really feel like I know this colour, but here are some of the things I think I know about Yop after our first date.

Reduction
Yop darkens when you reduce it. (Bead #2)


Opacity
In a thin layer, Yop is translucent, but is still recognizable as itself. (Bead #7)

The reason this floral turned out so terribly is because when it's hot, Yop is invisible on Clear. It's not like White where it's invisible for a while but comes back quickly enough that you can see it before you poke the flower's center. Instead, the Yop plays hide and seek until the bead is too firm to poke, and you sort of have to do it blind. Infuriating! But I really like translucent flower petals, so I will no doubt give this another shot.

Reactions

Silver leaf seems to turn a pinkish brown colour when you melt it onto Yop and leave it on the surface. Something has also influenced the Yop and coaxed it into a more buttery, creamy version of itself. Now this is a yellow colour that even I can love! I'm not sure here if it was the silver that influenced the colour/opacity change or if it was the heating and quick cooling of pressing it that did that. Only more testing will yield that little kernel of knowledge.

In the bead on the right, the silver leaf under Clear and over Yop has taken on a sort of pinkish hue. This was interesting and a little unexpected. I understand from various sources that it's not generally considered a good idea to encase opalinos because of cracking concerns, but this little bead seems to have survived so far. I still don't think I'd risk it in a big, complicated bead though.

I'm going to conclude that there are better ways for me to use my silver glass than to pair it with Yop. Again, in the bead on the right, reducing the bead seems to have brought a more intense yellow to the Yop. Ick.

The reaction between Yop and Copper Green is pretty neat.  On the Copper Green side of the bead, the Yop lines and dots have a faint halo around them, and the Copper Green has settled into a kind of mottled, aged effect that is sort of strange. Between the two colours in the middle, a whitish line has formed. On top of Yop, Copper Green looks like a dull, mottled grey-green colour and has developed a dark outline. Under the Copper Green, the Yop is a cloudly yellow somewhat darker than the unmelted rod.

There are two interesting things about this Yop and Tuxedo combination. First, this is the bead where Yellow Opalino looks most like the unmelted rod colour. It's virtually unchanged, and I have no idea why because I don't recall working this bead any differently than I did the other ovals. Second, Tuxedo webbed into the Yop a little bit in the centre.

The reaction between Yop and Ivory is sort of greyish and dirty looking, but for some reason, it appeals to me. If it was an opaque colour, perhaps only the edges would be affected, but because the Yop is translucent, you can see the reaction through the dots and stringer. On the Yop side of the bead, the Ivory has separated and formed a thin, crack-like line through the centre.

I didn't bother to do a solo picture of Yop with White or Opal Yellow, because not much really went on in those ones.

I made some other beads with Yop -- at least I think I did.  They're sort of buried at the moment, and don't stand out in memory as anything you'd really want to look at anyway.  I am going on a bit of a palette junket and putting the Yop aside for a bit, but when I get back to it I will definitely try to post some decent beads. (Details on the junket to follow sometime soon)

Test Results :: Thüringen Herb

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain - reduced, 3 - w/ Silver foil, 4 - w/ Silver foil - reduced & encased, 5 - w/ Khaos frit, 6 - w/ Khaos frit, 7 - w/ Silver glass frit (Gaia, Nyx, Elektra) - reduced, 8 - w/ Leaky Pen, 9 - w/ Tuxedo, 10 - w/ Ivory, 11 - w/ Copper Green

Lauscha Thüringen Herb is a colour that has been languishing in my glass storage box for more than a year.  If only I had understood how interesting it is!  I only ever bought 1/2# of it, I only have just under two rods left, and Paula at Flame Dame, where I originally bought it, seems to be fresh out.  What a sad girl I'll be if I can't get any more of this.  It looks like Lauscha Lady still has some, so I guess my next glass order will be a Lauscha one.  Don't go buy it all on me, please.

General Impressions

Thüringen Herb is a "Milky Way" colour, which means that it is by reputation meant to be both semi-opaque and reactive.  I didn't have much luck keeping it semi-opaque -- all of the beads I've made so far are pretty small and I didn't do a lot of experimentation with striking it.  I do have lots to report on the reactive properties I discovered though. 

I really love the colour of it on its own. The best way to describe the unadulturated colour of the glass after annealing is a muted, pale yellow-green. It's pretty comparable in 'darkness' to Ivory (which, as we know, is not very dark at all), and less brilliant than Effetre Uranium Yellow Pastel.

I got all caught up with making Thüringen Herb do fun, reactive things and forgot to make a floral with it, but I'll do that next weekend so that I know how it behaves in a thin layer with Clear both underneath and above it, too.

Reduction

Reducing Thüringen Herb all by itself had absolutely no effect.  (Bead #2)

Reactions

Thüringen Herb is clearly a colour that absorbs and reacts with silver.  Other colours with which I have obtained similar results include Vetrofond Seashell Swirl, and to a lesser degree, Effetre Anise White and CiM Khaki.

In the bead (Bead #4) where I used the silver foil, reduced it and then encased it with Clear, the silver seems to have turned pink.  This is also fairly consistent with my test results with the other colours I mentioned. This indicates to me that there is significant fun to be had with this colour, both with silver and with other glass colours. 

I finally got some colour out of Khaos in Bead #6, and I think I am pretty close to figuring out where I've been going wrong. Bead #5 is just pathetic, but I didn't remember I was making a frit bead until I had already pressed it once, so that's why. It didn't get enough heat or enough cooling to do anything nice. If I can wrap my head all the way around my stupid Khaos problem, I will dedicate a post to it so that no one else has to struggle the way I've been fighting with it for months.  If I don't completely figure it out before my current supply of Khaos frit is gone, I'm going to shrug and move on.  Stay tuned to see which it will be.  lol.

The most interesting thing about these beads with silver glass is the colour change in the Thüringen Herb. I've never met a colour before that could go from a pale yellow-green to a vibrant French's mustard yellow before, but that's exactly what it seems to do. I didn't get as much yellow with the Khaos, but look at the mustardy strangeness of the Thüringen Herb in the bead with the silver glass frit reduced. (Bead #7)  I'm not super-fond of bright yellow, but I am all cooled out by the fact that it happens.

On a whim, I made a quick bead with Leaky Pen dots, and I'm glad I did because I would never have known, otherwise, that Thüringen Herb is an "acquirer". (Bead #8) I have given this nickname to colours who like to suck in and 'acquire' the colours of the other glasses they are used with. The whole surface (except for a small area around the holes) of this bead changed from pale green to a pale baby blue, having stolen colour from the Leaky Pen. Neat, huh? 

Ivory and Thüringen Herb are similarly light, and the Thüringen Herb seems to influence the Ivory slightly, curdling it a little. (Bead #10) It`s not easy to see the colours against each other, but in the picture below, the Thüringen Herb is on the left with Ivory dots and stringerwork on top, and the Ivory is on the right with Thüringen Herb dots and stringerwork on top. The Thüringen Herb is faintly green, where the Ivory is more of pale, pale peach/brown. 

The reaction between Thüringen Herb and Copper Green is subtle, but I think with more heat and manipulation, it could get quite dramatic. (Bead #11) Thüringen Herb spread a little over Copper Green and activated Copper Green's turquoise notes really strongly when placed over top of it. Where the Copper Green is over Thüringen Herb, it's gone quite metallic and formed an irregular dark line. This is really interesting to me because usually when a dark line reaction forms, both colours do it reciprocally. I am making a mental note to play with this some more in the future.

Here are some 'fun beads' made with Thüringen Herb: