Test Results :: Smurfy

Smurfy (CiM569) is a medium to dark turquoise opaque colour. I found it really creamy and nice to work with, and vastly prefer it to the other dark turquoise opaques (Dark Turquoise, Dark Sky Blue) from Effetre because it doesn't easily develop that greyish dirty patina that other turquoises get, although you can make that happen if you really try.

You can see in the bead on the left that when I reduced Smurfy it got a greyish haze on its surface. I reduced this bead a few times trying to get it to change colour. I was hoping for that solid red brick coating you can sometimes get on turquoises, but that doesn't seem to happen with this one.

Smurfy is darker than both Light Turquoise and Fremen, more of a shade with Dark Sky Blue. Unlike Dark Sky Blue, it doesn't easily develop that grey sheen, although you can make it happen if you hold it in a reducing flame.

On top of Smurfy, silver leaf looks a greyish green colour. When you reduce and encase it, it turns yellow.

Smurfy seems like it is probably a decent base for silver glass.

Like other turquoises, Smurfy gets a dark line with Ivory. Smurfy separates on top of Tuxedo and Copper Green. Apart from that, there weren't very many reactions in these beads.

Here are some other beads made with Smurfy.

Test Results :: Tahitian Pearl

Tahitian Pearl (CiM827) is a dark greyish purple that gets shiny in the flame while you're working it. As you'll see, I went into my relationship with Tahitian Pearl expecting it to be similar to Adamantium, but ultimately found it quite a bit more like Effetre Dark Silver Plum, only with more interesting variation in surface texture.

With repeated heating and cooling, the surface of Tahitian Pearl gets all shiny, wrinkly, and uneven. I was alarmed by this when I was making these two beads together on the same mandrel. Then, I reduced the bead on the right and thought that all of the neat surface finish had gone away and was alarmed by that.

And then I took the beads out of the kiln the next morning. It turns out, the wrinkly, textured shiny finish of the unreduced Tahitian Pearl is awesome, and reducing does not take away the surface finish, it just smooths it out. Also awesome.

At first, I thought Tahitian Pearl was like a shiny version of Adamantium. Then, I made this bead and realized that Tahitian Pearl is purple while Adamantium is not, and that silly first impression of mine popped like a soap bubble.

On top of Tahitian Pearl, silver disappears. When the silver is reduced and encased on top of Tahitian Pearl, it turns yellow. Ignore the peach and pink you see on the leftmost bead. This colour doesn't turn silver leaf pink the way Dark Silver Plum does. What you're seeing there is my hand and my T-Shirt in the shiny finish. Reflective!

Tahitian Pearl makes an interesting base colour for silver glass. I got neat colours and reactions from both frit treatments here without much effort.

Here, you can see that Tahitian Pearl separates on top of Tuxedo, but apart from that it seems not to be very reactive with other colours.

This bead was made with Tahitian Pearl and Raku Mottleshards.

Test Results :: Petroleum Green

Effetre Petroleum Green (EFF218) is a pretty teal green opaque colour. I had never really used it before I made these beads and some things about it really surprised me.

The things that I found surprising about this colour will maybe not come as surprises to you. For one thing, this colour is very, very streaky. You can see streaks in it when you make simple spacers, and it separates like mad on top of just about everything. It's also very soft -- much softer than using other opaque teals like CiM Mermaid and Effetre Marine Green will prepare you to expect.

I expected Petroleum Green to turn red when I reduced it, but it didn't.

Silver isn't very interesting on top of Petroleum Green until you reduce and encase it and it turns a bright mustard colour. Petroleum Green has this yellow-with-silver-under-clear thing in common with Copper Green, Light Teal, Light Aqua, and Celadon.

Unfortunately, encasing the reduced silver will crack your bead. If you've made beads before with Petroleum Green and silver and then encased your beads with Effetre Super Clear only to find they cracked... well... me too.

Silver Glass is interesting on top of Petroleum Green. Because the Petroleum Green is so very soft, it rises up and swallows frit pretty easily, which is why you might be wondering why I didn't put more frit on the leftmost bead. It is a decent base for striking silver glass colours - my TerraNova2 frit got a very nice starting strike.

As I mentioned already, Petroleum Green separates on top of everyhing. It also gets a creeping brown reaction line with Ivory that is not very uniform.

Opal Yellow and Copper Green both separate on top of this colour.

Here are some beads made with Petroleum Green.

Test Results :: Dark Turquoise Alabastro

Effetre Dark Turquoise Alabastro (EFF356) is a pretty, medium blue semi-opaque colour. It is reactive in ways that are predictable for a blue glass, developing a dark line reaction with Ivory.

I've decided that the Effetre Alabastros are going on my shit list. I don't hate this one nearly as much as I disliked Ivory Alabastro, but it is annoying to use because it bubbles and is a little shocky. When there are semi-opaques in the CiM line like Electric Avenue and Tardis that don't behave this way, I don't see any need to put myself through the pain and irritation of using these Effetre Alabastro colours.

Nothing happens when you reduce Dark Turquoise Alabastro. I was a little surprised, because I thought it might get that red copper reduction finish on the surface, but it didn't.

On top of Dark Turquoise Alabastro, silver is fairly inert. It's interesting when you reduce and encase it because that turns it yellow.

Dark Turquoise Alabastro makes a reasonable base colour for striking silver glass. I got a nice start from my TerraNova2 frit on top of this colour.

Dark Turquoise Alabastro develops a dark line reaction with Ivory. Because of its translucency, this dark reaction is also visible to a slightly lesser extent in the dots and lines as a whole, turning them a smoky brownish colour. Copper Green and Opal Yellow both separate on top of Dark Turquoise Alabastro.

I haven't done much with this colour because using it to make these test beads didn't make me love it enough to make even one more bead. If I do ever use it to make something more exciting, I'll come back and update this post.

Test Results :: Cotswold Blue

CiM Cotswold Blue (CiM554) is a medium teal opaque. It's a bit reactive with Ivory, but is otherwise fairly well behaved. My rods of Cotswold Blue were mildly shocky, but I liked it enough anyway to order a full pound of it, so I clearly didn't mind it all that much.

Cotswold Blue doesn't change colour when you reduce it.

Silver leaf on top of Cotswold Blue largely disappears, beading up in tiny little silver granules on the surface. When the silver is reduced an encased, it turns an odd mustardy colour.

The Cotswold Blue bead with silver on it cracked. You can't see the cracking in the photo very well, but it cracked on a diagonal under the clear. More and more, I am realizing that these darker teal blue colours (Petroleum Green, Rainforest, and this one among others) encase just fine until you add silver, but that the addition of silver somehow tips the crack balance. I'm not sure why this is the case, but am glad that I'm finding a pattern that will make this problem easy to avoid.

Cotswold Blue is a very pretty base colour for striking silver glass, and I got nice colours from my TerraNova2 frit on top of it. Its colour isn't really conducive to hosting the reducing silver glass colours since it is so similar, but you can see that there was some interesting spreading behaviour in that frit in the leftmost bead above, too.

Copper Green, Ivory, and Opal Yellow all separate on top of Cotswold Blue. Cotswold Blue is such a streaky colour that it separates on top of everything.

The only real reactions of note here were:

• Ivory and Cotswold Blue form a mutual dark line reaction
• The edges where Peace and Cotswold Blue meet get sort of fuzzy and translucent. You can see this in both beads.

Here are some other beads that include Cotswold Blue:

Test Results :: Camouflage

CiM Camouflage (CiM464) is a medium. green opaque glass. It's quite streaky, separating on itself in lacelike patterns, and this behaviour seems to be aggravated by the addition of silver, becoming more pronounced. It reacts with Ivory, and my experiment with encasing it met with some cracking failure. My rods of this colour were extremely shocky, and I didn't enjoy using them at all. I only tried three, though, so that should probably not be taken as indicative of the whole batch's behaviour.

Here, I've shot Camouflage and Amphibian spacers, side by side. You can see that Camouflage is darker and greener than Amphibian, which has a softer, slightly bluer and greyer hue.

In the leftmost bead here, you can see the strange crazing lines that this colour developed. The beads are both single-colour but I probably added to the larger one multiple times from the same source rod. I don't think the lines developed along the additions, though, the way we see with some colours.

The bead on the left in this picture has silver leaf added to it, and the crazing of the surface is much more pronounced than it was in the spacer bead. When this kind of crazing or reticulation happens in other colours (like Dark Ivory, for instance) we call it 'curdling', but for some reason I am having trouble associating that word with something this colour.

In the rightmost bead, you can see that my reduced and encased silver leaf developed a yellowish cast under the clear. You can also see some unfortunate cracks that seem like they are incompatibility. I encased here with Effetre 006 Clear.

I sometimes have this problem with greens after I've added silver to them and encase, but then I'll try to encase another bead the same size and shape without the silver but with the same clear and get a better, crack-free result. I am not a chemist, but my working theory is that the silver changes the CoE or viscosity of either the colour or the clear (or both) in just the right amount to cause this problem.

In the bead on the left, I got some pretty colours from my reduction frit, and there is interesting fuming on the base bead underneath it. My TerraNova2 frit got a nice starting strike, but no magic happened.

Camouflage seems to separate on top of every other colour - it's not a very cohesive colour.

It develops a gentle brown line reaction with Ivory, both when over or under it. In addition to the brownish outline, when Ivory is used on top of Camouflage, it separates quite dramatically.

Using more reactive colours over Camouflage like Copper Green or Opal Yellow seemed to exacerbate its separation/crazing.

Here are some additional beads made with Camouflage.

Test Results :: Middle Blue

Reichenbach Middle Blue (RL3018) is a pretty light aqua. The rods I had seemed to be seeded with itty bitty bubbles, which I found a little odd. There were too many, too consistently through the rods for it to be an accident (or maybe not?) and the result is sort of pretty, unless what you want is a smooth, bubble-free transparent aqua.

This colour, or at least this batch of this colour, was very stiff -- much stiffer than the other transparents I've tried from this line. Possibly because of this difference in viscosity, I had some dramatic incompatibility issues with this colour, which you'll see as we go through the tests.

Middle Blue darkens a little if you reduce it. I was trying to get it to turn red, but it refused to do that.

The left half of this bead was Effetre Light Aqua, and the right half was Reichenbach Middle Blue. You can see a compatibility crack around the middle of this bead where the two colours meet.

Middle blue is not terribly reactive with silver, although I got some yellow fuming in the middle bead which may be as much due to the Clear as the Middle Blue.

The middle bead is a core of Middle Blue, rolled in silver, and encased with Effetre Clear after reducing the silver. I'm not sure you can see all of the cracks in the bead from the picture above, so I included a photo of the bead in the two pieces that it divided itself into, below.

This kind of cracking can only be from incompatibility, so this batch of Middle Blue is clearly not a great fit for using with other 104 CoE colours unless you can find some with a comparably stiff viscosity. If you do plan use this colour with other glasses, make sure you do some pre-production testing first.

Middle Blue was not particularly interesting with either my reduction frit blend or my TerraNova2 frit.

Middle Blue is not a very reactive colour, but I did get some dark line reaction with Ivory. The most interesting thing about this reaction was that it happened when I used the Middle Blue on top of the Ivory, but not when I used the Ivory on top of the Middle Blue. I think this is because the reaction is fairly gentle and happens where the two colours meet, but isn't strong enough to wrap the edges. It's only visible through the Middle Blue because it is transparent.

I didn't make any surviving beads with this colour. I tried a goddess with some frit, but it is cracked all through. here's a photo of it anyway.