First Look :: Scotch Broom

I am intrigued by this new, beautiful orange-yellow opal colour from Creation is Messy called Scotch Broom (CiM327). It's like nothing else I've ever tried, and everything I made with it so far is pretty ugly because I just don't have it figured out yet. The only thing a girl can do in this situation is buy a full pound of it and really buckle down to figure it out, so I just messaged Nortel to ask them to add a pound of Scotch Broom to my order.

OK, so why, if everything I've made with it so far is icky, have I just ordered a pound of Scotch Broom? Because I love the colour so much in the rod and in the plain spacers I made that I really need to figure it out. It's completely unique and crazy beautiful.

This is Scotch Broom in spacers. It seems like it is slow to strike back to opalescence, so these beads just look transparent. What a gorgeous, warm colour!

These little beads are Scotch Broom with silver leaf. The bead on the right is encased with Effetre 006 Clear.

The only surviving things I have made with this colour are truly ugly, and out of those, this is the least embarrassing one that made it past the water jar, so this is the one I'll put here:

This bead has Kniphofia in the core, encased with Scotch Broom. I made an incorrect assumption when I started using this colour that it would end up more opaque like the rod, and that was not the case. I got more opacification of it in this bead than in the little spacers, so it seems like working it longer can help with that if opacity is what you're after.

No one will ever know what possessed me to put blue and aqua flowers on top of this colour, and I did not expect the flower petal colours to let so much orange through. The flower effectively looks brown. 

I will repost about this colour when I've been able to give it a better workout. My results here definitely don't seem reflective of its potential.

Test Results :: Summer Haze / Lemongrass

CiM Summer Haze (CiM321) and CiM Lemongrass (CiM320) are essentially the same colour, except that Lemongrass is a little more opaque. They work up a gorgeous, smokey lemon yellow. The glass in these test beads is Summer Haxe, but there are beads with both Lemongrass and Summer Haze towards the end of this post. Because these colours are essentially the same formula according to CiM, I only did the colour test with one of them but I am sure that there are some subtle differences.

Reducing Summer Haze didn't really alter its colour. It might have gotten a bit darker, but I also need to remember that it is a smaller bead on a dark background, which probably explains the colour difference in the two beads above all by itself.

Silver develops a slight 'mistiness' on top of Summer Haze, and when the silver is reduced and encased it shows some areas with blue halos under the encasement layer When you use Summer Haze over silver foil, the foil turns bright gold. This means that Summer Haze has interesting potential as a base colour for silver glass frit stringer.

Summer Haze is an unusually good base colour for silver glass. My reducing silver glass and striking silver glass both really bloomed on top of it.

Summer Haze is not a very reactive colour, but it did cause separation in Opal Yellow, Ivory, Peace, and Copper Green in my test beads.

Here are some other beads made with Lemongrass and Summer Haze.

Lemongrass

Lemongrass

Summer Haze

Test Results :: Light Lemon Yellow

Effetre Light Lemon Yellow is a beautiful, bright yellow opal. I call it an opal rather than a pastel/opaque, because it is transparent when pulled out into stringer and used in thin layers. It's a bit of a pain because it is quite boily, so you need to be careful not to work this colour too hot.

Light Lemon Yellow does not change colour when you reduce it.

Silver develops a greyish crust on top of Light Lemon Yellow with blue haze throughout it in places. When the silver is reduced and encased, it loses some (but not all) of this interesting colour. This is fairly consistent with other colours in the ivory/red/orange/yellow family that contain sulfur.

Light Lemon Yellow is a surprisingly good base for silver glass.  The colour of it is not really that appealing with the silver glass colours, but I guess we can't have everything. These beads make me think of the Northern Pikes song 'Nice Legs, Shame About Her Face'.

Light Lemon Yellow and Copper Green develop a reciprocal dark line reaction. Apart from that, this colour did not react strongly with any of my other standard test colours.

This bead is Light Lemon Yellow swirled with my Firefly 104 CoE frit blend.

Test Results :: Lemonade

CiM Lemonade (CiM318) is a pale ivory semi-opaque colour. I had the same kind of unluck with it at first that I had with Egg White, and wish it was less prone to streaking and boiling. I did look on CiM's page though, and see that other people (probably ones who work cooler than I do) had much better luck with it.

The best results I got with Lemonade came when I covered it in silver glass. Also, it separates Copper Green, and I love that effect a lot.

Here you can see how ham-handed my initial approach to Lemonade was. This colour scums and boils very easily, and I work sort of hot, so I got a lot of scumming in my test beads.

Silver disappears on top of Lemonade, and when it is reduced and encased it sits like a solid whitish blanket under the clear.

Lemonade makes a pretty base colour for reducing silver glass frit on top of.

Copper Green separates on top of Lemonade, and Ivory thins out and almost disappears on top of it. The Copper Green thing is cool, the Ivory thing is a bit odd. I don't think I've seen this effect before.

When I used Lemonade on top of Copper Green, the edges of the stringer work curdled.

I don't seem to have any pictures of other beads made with Lemonade, but if I find some or make more, I"ll come back and update this.

Test Results :: Egg White

Egg White (CiM319) is a pale yellow semi-opaque colour. It's beautifully translucent and only a little reactive with silver. I found some sort of magical reactions when I went through my test set.

I found that once I got the hang of working it a bit higher up in the flame and with less intense heat that I got much fewer of these little white snail trails in the glass. It's good that they're easy to avoid, because they don't really improve the colour.

Silver spreads out and beads up in little circles all over the surface of Egg White. If you encase silver foil with Egg White, you can expect for the silver to turn a bright golden yellow. The bead furthest to the right is the big star here, with my encased and reduced silver leaf over egg white turned lacy, silvery, and blue in a very interesting way.

In the bead where I used and reduced silver glass reduction frit, the Egg White underneath fumes a greenish yellow. My TerraNova2 frit started to strike, but this glass is not an accellerant.

On top of Egg White, Copper Green stays very clean looking and separates into two very different colours. The dots and lines of it look almost like they have depth because of the amount and seriousness of the separation.

Opal Yellow separates on top of Egg White.

Using Egg White stringer on top of Opal Yellow and Ivory creates an interesting amount of depth and colour shift to the base colour underneath. I'm going to need to experiment with this some more.

Here are some other beads made with Egg White.

Test Results :: Baked Alaska

CiM Baked Alaska (CiM317) is a beautiful pale yellow colour that strikes in the flame. I thought it would be like Effetre Opal Yellow, and it is a very similar colour alone, but the reactions with other colours are quite different.

Baked Alaska is a striking colour, and the longer you work it, the more yellow/peach it becomes.

Baked Alaska really shines here. In the leftmost bead, I applied silver leaf and burnished it in, and then melted it down. I love all the silver that is visible on the surface and how in places, the Baked Alaska has fumed a deep salmony colour. In the rightmost bead, the silver leaf is greyish blue over pink, which I find interesting and unique.

Unlike its Effetre cousin Opal Yellow, Baked Alaska doesn't energize the reactions in silver glass.

When you use Tuxedo on top of Baked Alaska, it doesn't seem like it will be reactive, but if you switch it around so that the Tuxedo is on top you can see that the Baked Alaska separates, with a translucency to the outside of the stringerwork that is sort of milk-mustachey. Baked Alaska does not bleed with Tuxedo the way Opal Yellow does.

When you put Baked Alaska on top of Opal Yellow, it gets an interesting yellow and yellow/green halo around it that is pretty rare. When the Opal Yellow is on top, nothing very interesting happens.

Ivory separates on top of Baked Alaska with a wide, darker centre stripe/dot in the middle of the stringerwork. When the Ivory is on top, nothing happens. I love the way the Ivory separated much better than the greyish dark line I got from Opal Yellow with Ivory.

On top of Peace, Baked Alaska looks oddly green.

Here are some other beads that include some Baked Alaska.

Test Results :: Banana Cream

CiM Banana Cream (CiM316) is a pale, opaque yellow. It's similar in colour to Effetre Opal Yellow, but is less reactive and less prone to separate on top of and underneath other colours.

Here you can see that when I reduced the Banana Cream, it got a hair darker. I didn't notice any very significant striking behaviour in the other beads that I made with this colour, so I'm guessing that the colour change is just because the reducing flame is less clean, so the colour got dirtied up a bit.

Silver on top of Banana Cream fumes it a deeper colour of yellow. The silver sits on top of Banana Cream in a fairly even layer, and when the silver is reduced and encased, it takes on a pink, shiny appearance.

Banana Cream makes a pretty base colour for both reducing and striking silver glass. Because the colour is pale and warm, it makes for good contrast with the darker and cooler colours of silver glass. I got a very nice starting strike from my TerraNova2 frit.

Weirdly, Opal Yellow on top of Banana Cream turns a pinkish colour and develops a bit of a grey line around it. Apart from that, there wasn't much to speak of reaction-wise with Banana Cream when used with other colours.

Here are some other beads that include Banana Cream:

Test Results :: Buttermilk

CiM Buttermilk (CiM315) is a very pale, opaque yellow. It strikes in the flame, blushing a little more yellow as you work it, but doesn't darken significantly. The consistency of it is beautiful, and my rods of Buttermilk were not shocky. Like Bone, this colour fills a gap in my palette that has been open since Vetrofond stopped making us nice pale neutrals.

Here you can see that where I gave Buttermilk an extra shot of heat in a reduction flame, it got a little more yellow. I don't think this is due to the reducing nature of the flame I reheated it in - it warms in colour in a neutral flame as well.

The addition of silver yellows Buttermilk substantially. When the silver is reduced and encased, it does not develop any unusual colours or effects.

Silver glass is pretty on top of Buttermilk. Because Buttermilk is not particularly reactive with silver, it makes a good base for reducing silver glass frit on. I also got a nice starting strike here on my TerraNova2 frit, which tells me that this colour has some promise as a base for striking silver glass as well.

Copper Green separates on top of Buttermilk, ,becoming darker in the middle of stringer dots and lines. Buttermilk separates on top of both Tuxedo and Copper Green. On the whole, this colour is not very reactive and I found it to be quite stable.

Here are some other beads that include Buttermilk.