Test Results :: Purple Red

Effetre Purple Red (EFF438) is a very dark burgundy red colour. It can be a bit prone to boiling, so if you are using it in stringer form and are not really looking to have any air bubbles in your dots and lines, work it cool. It's a difficult colour to photograph, looking a bit lighter and a bit redder in person than you'll imagine it is from my photographs in this post.

Purple Red doesn't change when you reduce it.

Like some other reds, silver can turn blue when used on top of this colour. You can see some blue in both the unencased and encased bead above.

On top of Purple Red, my reduction frit pieces got interesting yellowish outlines and developed pretty colours in the reduction flame. This colour was also a surprisingly effective base for my TerraNova 2 frit. I got beautiful colours from the frit on top of Purple Red.

CiM Peace separates on top of Purple Red but, on the whole, this colour not very reactive with other colours. It can thin out and looks a bit transparent when used in thin layers over a lighter colour like Opal Yellow or Peace.

Here are some additional beads that contain Purple Red.

Test Results :: Golden

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

I have a soft spot for the Kugler Beadmaking 104 colours, and Kugler Golden is one of those colours that is so pretty to look at in the rod that you don't even really want to melt it. Golden is the only 104 COE Pink that I have found so far that does not turn Ivory black. I think that this means that it doesn't have any silver or copper in it, but what exactly -is- in it is anyone's guess.

Golden is a pretty soft colour, and is butter-smooth to melt.

Golden strikes darker, the longer you work it. The bead on the right here was reduced after cooling.  I don't think it's the extra propane that causes the colour change, but rather the repeated heating. My goddess bead (below, after the colour tests) holds up this theory.

Here, the silver leaf has made the Golden itself go really dark, and then in the bead on the left, it's turned a brown, coppery colour but in some places has also turned blue or slightly iridescent. In the bead on the right, you can see that if the silver is encased you get a smooth, silvery blanket  under the Clear that is fumed blue at its edges. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, it's not a good idea to encase Golden, and that bead cracked in multiple places.

I got beautiful colour from both reducing silver glass frit and striking silver glass frit on top of Golden.

 

I also got great results with my Golden silver glass frit stringer here in the bead on the left. I love the colours I got and the weird grunginess of the effect. However, this bead also cracked in numerous places. I used Golden in the core, then frit stringer made with Golden and Double Helix frit, and then encased the bead with either Effetre 006 or the new Vetreria Soiva Clear. I'm not sure which Clear, but it doesn't really matter, because Golden has cracked every time I have ever encased it with any Clear, even just in dots.

In the bead on the right, you can see that Golden over Silver Foil results in a beautiful, shiny, pinkish coppery colour. I used Golden as the core of this bead, burnished on a couple of layers of Silver Foil, and then encased it with Golden.

So, in spite of how cool and reactive Golden is with silver, it is dull, dull, dull in terms of reactions with other colours. I don't think there's a single thing about these beads that I could pin on a reaction between Golden and one of the other colours.

This goddess bead is made with Golden.

I also did some messing around with colour mixing, because I wanted to prove to myself whether Golden just has an encasement problem or if it's a deeper, more concerning compatibility issue.  I haven't done any fancy polariscope testing, but after my colour mixing experiments below, I tend to believe that the problem with Golden is a problem with encasing it, because, weeks later, none of these beads have any cracking issues.

KUG Golden : EFF Dark Aqua (1:1)

This came out stranger than it looks. First, the Golden and Dark Aqua have only sort of blended together, so you can see clouds of pinkishness lurking in the depths of the bead when you look at it in person. Then, there's all the bubbles, which must have been my fault... but, why don't all of the other colours have bubbles, too, if that's the case? I don't think I did anything differently here. 

KUG Golden : EFF Ivory (1:2)

All of the other pinks I have used with Ivory have turned Ivory black. I wonder why Golden doesn't? I really expected this mixture to be terrible, but instead, it is very pretty and streaky, sort of like cotton candy.

KUG Golden : EFF Opal Yellow (1:1)

Of course. Light yellow plus pink makes a reddish black. I knew that.

KUG Golden : EFF Copper Green (1:1)

Strangely both not green and not golden. If anyone knows why the combination of these two colours creates a gross streaky black/grey colour, I'm interested.

KUG Golden : KUG Light Beige (aka ASK Moroccan Swirl) (2:1)

The rod I used was labelled 'Moroccan Swirl' with an ASK color number. Moroccan Swirl is apparently not all that opaque, but certainly lightens the colour of the Golden when combined with it this way. I also like the weird streakiness.

I need to work on my colour mixing technique, because I must have captured a lot of air mixing some of these colours.

Mixing colours is fun! If you haven't yet attempted it, though, here's a warning. Mixing colours takes a while. I wasted hours screwing around with these at the torch, and it's oddly addictive, so I'm sure that I'll be toileting more time on this type of activity again soon.

Test Results :: Ivory (Vetrofond)

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 - w/ Raku, 8 & 9 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory & Peace, 10 - w/ Gaia Stringer (reduced)

Vetrofond Ivory is a very nice colour. it has a beautiful, creamy consistency and is less violently reactive than Effetre Light Ivory. It's more of a true off-white, whereas some batches of Effetre Light Ivory (which I also have deep love for) has tendencies to a more orangey, light caramel colour. Vetrofond Ivory curdles and spreads less than Effetre Light Ivory.

Vetrofond Ivory is a pale, neutral opaque colour. It can look somewhat translucent in thin layers, and in stringer form, it is more transparent than its Effetre cousin. Some batches of Vetrofond Ivory are more translucent than others, and there is a verry sheer batch out there that is known as 'Translucent Ivory' that is very nice indeed.

Here, you can see that the reaction with silver is ever-so-slightly different with Vetrofond Ivory than it is with Effetre Light Ivory. On top of Vetrofond Ivory, silver does a little less spreading, and has more of a grey/brown appearance without the ethereal blueness that I got on top of the Effetre. When the silver is reduced and encased, the portions of the Ivory that fumed brown with silver revert back to a more Ivory appearance, and the silver portions remain more or less the same colour.

Silver glass is nice on Vetrofond Ivory. Here, my reduction frit got ever-so-slightly ringed with brown, and the TerraNova2 frit struck to blues and purples, also with a brown outline. Reducing the silver glass frit in the bead on the left fumed the Ivory to a slightly warmer colour -- sort of like toasting a marshmallow.

Vetrofond Ivory reacts with other colours very similarly to Effetre Light Ivory.

Ivory separates slightly on top of Tuxedo, and Tuxedo bleeds into it when used on top of it in stringer designs.

Copper Green and Ivory have a reciprocal dark line reaction.

A dark, greyish line reaction appears between Ivory and Opal Yellow. This reaction is darker and more pronounced when Opal Yellow is used on top of Ivory.

Vetrofond Ivory makes Effetre Ivory separate. You can see this slightly in the bead on the right where the Light Ivory dots and stringer lines have darker pinpoints and streaks of colour in their centres. In the bead on the left, you can see the pronounced different tone of Vetrofond Ivory on top of the darker, more orange hue of the Effetre Light Ivory.

There are no noticeable reactions between Ivory and Peace. The colours are so close that it's very difficult to even see where one begins and the other leaves off.

Test Results :: Mulberry

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

CiM Mulberry is a juicy shade of purple with a bit of a magenta leaning to it. It's dreamy to use - so buttery soft and nice to melt, but a few of my rods also had a tendency to splinter, which is a sharp jolt back to reality when a piece lands on the back of your hand.

In terms of its colour, it seems to me like a combination of Plum and Eggplant. It's more opaque than Plum (more like Eggplant) but it is pinker than Eggplant, with more of the soft pinkish-purple of Plum.

Silver goes an odd brownish colour on top of Mulberry, but otherwise pretty much stays put. When the silver is reduced and encased, it gets blue patches in it. This encased Mulberry/Silver Leaf bead on the right cracked, but it cracked right down the mandrel line which means it might just have been my own stupid fault. However, it also might mean that Mulberry doesn't like being encased with Effetre 006 Clear. More experimentation would be required to know for sure which.

On top of Mulberry, silver glass develops colour really well. Mulberry also seems to do a weird thing that pushes the silver glass away from the edges of the bead. If you look at these two beads, I rolled them in silver glass frit exactly the same way I usually, do, but there is almost no silver glass bits near the bead holes at all. Strange.

The TerraNova2 got beautiful colour on top of Mulberry. I sort of already said that, but I feel like saying it again. It's hard to find these good 'accelerating' bases for silver glass, so when I find one I get pretty happy about it.

Mulberry is sort of reactive, but the reactions are not very interesting when other colours are used on top of it. It has a dispersing, watercolouring impact when stringerwork is done on top of it which makes the reactions sort of hard to read.

Mulberry is very interesting, though, on top of Copper Green and Opal Yellow. In the bead on the right, you can see how the dots of Mulberry on top of Copper Green resulted in a dark transparent outline, then a whiteish ring and finally the purple of the Mulberry shyly peeking out of the middle. It causes Opal Yellow to curdle underneath it fairly violently and spring up in big halos. These two effects are very cool and worthy of additional study.

Here are some fun beads with Mulberry.

This is Mulberry over a core of something blue (don't remember) and then subsequently encased with more things blue. The rose murrini are Effetre Bubblegum and Kugler Golden.

Mulberry is used in the base of this bead, over top of a base of Dark Violet and is then encased with Light Aqua (I think).

Here I've mixed Mulberry with other colours, however I don't remember which ones. I think some Kugler Golden was involved, and some Bubblegum or Pink Alabastro.  The resulting hand-mixed colour was used to encase a dark violet core. The stripe of purple down the right-hand side of the bead is Mulberry.

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)