Test Results :: Lilac

Reichenbach Lilac (RL6221) is a medium to dark purple that has blue overtones. It is a little less purple and a little less bright than its close cousin Purple Rose, but has better workability since it doesn't boil, pit, and devitrify the way that colour can. It's very, very streaky.

In the leftmost bead here, you can see how crazily streaky this colour is, with the streaks looking both bluer and darker than the rest of the bead. When this colour is reduced, it goes dark and slightly shiny.

Adding silver to Lilac turns it a weird greenish yellow colour. When the silver is reduced and encased, it turns white with a faint blush of blue here and there. Any Lilac still visible through the silver continues to look greenish yellow.

Lilac rocks silver glass. Around my reducing silver glass, it's gone brownish and shiny, and even reddish in places, and it has developed really cool delineation around the fritty bits. The frit itself in the leftmost bead has developed colour and shine really well. In the rightmost bead, you can see that I also got very pretty colours from the TerraNova2 frit.

Lilac separates Copper Green, Opal Yellow, and Peace. It develops a reciprocal dark line reaction with Ivory, and it spreads and goes somewhat translucent when used over White and Opal Yellow. It separates on top of Tuxedo.

Here are some other beads made with Lilac:

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 :: Pastel Blue

Reichenbach Pastel Blue (RL3203) is a gorgeous medium turquoise colour.  It's extremely soft, so maybe not the best and least frustrating choice for sculptural work, but it seems to be magical with silver glass and it's very reactive and fun with other colours.

Here's a bunch of tricolour beads that give you an idea how it compares to the other turquoises out there colour-wise.  I made these when I was playing with CiM Quetzal, which is also gorgeous. Kathy, if you're reading this, make more Quetzal please :D

Like some of the other Reichenbach glasses (Raku, Iris Dense Blue) it is very, very "fast" and I've found that it is important to be vigilant with these super-runny colours to make sure that the bead goes into the kiln very cool, otherwise it sticks to other things in there.  It's always important, of course, to be careful of this, but these supersoft, supersaturated colours remain tacky longer than most.

If you reduce Pastel Blue you get a brick red colour.  I found that this effect developed in a blotchy way, but I only did it the once and so that might have been anomaly.  Something that happened with the reduction that I was not expecting is the iridescence that developed on the surface. Most turquoises get the red patina, although it is not always this dark and rich of a red, but this is the only one I've tried that also got a shiny oilslick finish.

This colour turns silver yellow, both when it is and is not encased. The silver isn't very visible on the surface of the unreduced bead because it has dispersed across the surface, but if you reduce it and encase it, you can see that it's still very much there.  Not maybe the most attractive combination, but I like to see how all of the glasses behave with silver :)

Like other turquoises, reducing silver glass is a bit of a wash on this colour because it doesn't provide much contrast, but I got some beautiful colours out of my TerraNova2 frit.

Pastel Blue sort of lost its opacity when used on top of Tuxedo and I'm not sure how to describe what happened. My Pastel Blue dots and lines on top of Tuxedo have a translucent, battered appearance and look almost purple in places.  And then in the rightmost bead, you can see that when I used Tuxedo on top of Pastel Blue, nothing interesting happened at all. Weird.

Pastel Blue separates on top of Copper Green, and Copper Green separates on top of Pastel Blue. Reciprocity!

Pastel Blue loses some of its opacity and develops a dark vein of blueness through the centre of stringer lines drawn on top of Opal Yellow. On top of Pastel Blue, Opal Yellow separates and looks distinctly yellow. Much yellower than it looked when I used it as the base colour.

Pastel Blue and Ivory develop a black line reaction between them. As an added bonus, Pastel Blue takes on a mottled appearance on top of Ivory which I rather like. This is worth doing more of.

I had a bit of a brain fart when I made these beads and after making the one with the Pastel Blue base, I couldn't figure out whether I'd used Opal Yellow or Peace where I was meant to be placing the Peace stringer lines and dots.  To compensate, I made an extra bead that had Peace on top of Pastel Blue, just in case. In that extra little bead, you can see that on top of Pastel Blue, Peace does not really react at all.  On top of Peace, Pastel Blue spreads and looks translucent.

I only had a small amount of this colour, so I haven't been able to do much with it.  I made these beads with Pastel Blue, Purple Rose, and something else that I don't remember.

 

Test Results :: Purple Rose

Reichenbach Purple Rose (RL2202) is an almost shockingly vibrant purple. It's a very, very soft colour and it boils and pits really easily if you repeatedly heat and cool it while working it.  It seems best, when using this colour, to apply it, quickly shape whatever you're working on, and then get it in the kiln as quickly as possible with minimal reheating.

This colour is very, very reactive.  Because of this colour's super softness and because of its dramatic, black reaction with Ivory, I want to guess that this colour contains lead.  It is pretty common for pinks and purples to contain lead, and you can only be sure that there is no lead if it does not do this to Ivory.  Some other colours that react similarly include Effetre EDP, Effetre Sedona, Effetre Rubino Oro, CiM Cranberry, Reichenbach Opal Raspberry, and Reichenbach Flamingo.

In the self-coloured spacers above, you can see that Purple Rose can have a lot of colour variation. The spacer on the left contains a lighter bright purple as well as a dark purple blushing.  Reducing Purple Rose brings the metals to the surface and makes it a shiny, duller greyish purple.

Purple Rose is tremendously reactive with Silver. In the bead on the left, my silver turned a bizarre blend of mustardy colours. When this reaction is reduced and encased, it is paler yellow and has really interesting texture under the clear.

It's sort of difficult to see what's going on in the bead on the left because the silver glass has been reduced and the Purple Rose reduced right along with it. It has a greyish purple mirror finish that is mottled with yellowish reaction clouds from the silver glass.  In the bead on the right, my TerraNova2 frit went sort of crazy on top of this colour. It has pinkish borders around all the little pieces, and then the fritty bits went all green and yellow.  I don't know what other colours would have appeared if I continued to strike it, but I'm pretty interested in doing this again.

Purple Rose makes Copper Green separate pretty dramatically into dark and light turquoise. When the Purple Rose is used on top of Copper Green, it makes the Copper Green float into broad halos around it, giving it a sort of cellular look. Copper Green does not develop its customary metallic sheen when used with Purple Rose.

Purple Rose also reacts really dramatically with Opal Yellow.  In the leftmost bead here, you can see that the Opal Yellow has blushed a deep yellow around the edges of the separated dots and stringer lines. This is remarkable because Opal Yellow almost never looks truly yellow. It's usually the colour of butter, and can sometimes turn pink, but I think this is the only time I've ever seen it go bright yellow. On top of Opal Yellow, Purple Rose looks more pink than purple.

Purple Rose turns Ivory into a black mess.  In the bead on the right, the Purple Rose looks almost crumpled with dark blotchiness.

Peace separates on top of Purple Rose. On top of Peace, Purple Rose spreads slightly and looks a little translucent in places.

Here are some beads that I made with Purple Rose.  I didn't have a lot of this colour, so I didn't get to have as much fun with it as I might have liked.

This goddess bead was etched because of the serious amount of devitrification, boiling, and pitting this colour did on me.  You can see the really fun variations in purple that you can get with a single rod of Purple Rose.

Test Results :: Silver Pink

Whenever I use Effetre Silver Pink, I am struck by what a nice, calm colour it is. The rods can be a touch shocky because it is hand-pulled, but it plays nicely with so many colours and is so subtle and pretty that any fleeting irritation from the shockiness can be gotten over pretty quickly.

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, Peace

Some batches of Silver Pink strike more readily than others, but the batch I currently have seems to strike fairly dramatically. I need to do a bit more experimenting because when I look at my test beads I can see that whether or not the Silver Pink strikes seem to depend somewhat on what it has been layered over top of.

Silver Pink fumes a yellowish colour when silver is added to it.  In the bead on the right, you can see that the Silver Pink struck to a deep purplish rose colour under the silver when I encased it.

Here you can see the Silver Pink looking sort of yellow around the silver again.  The yellow is more pronounced in the bead on the left, which was reduced with silver glass reduction frit on it.  In the bead on the right, my TerraNova2 frit didn't really strike very nicely (probably a "me problem"), and you can see that the edges of the frit look distinctly yellowish.

The silver pink struck to a dusty rose colour on top of Opal Yellow and to a gentle baby pink on top of Tuxedo, but refused to strike at all on top of Ivory, Copper Green, and Peace. I wasn't expecting Silver Pink to strike at all, so this turned out to be a bit of a surprise as well as a puzzle that needs to be solved. I wonder why it strikes so much more strongly and readily on top of Opal Yellow?

The only other two reactiony things I observed in these test beads were that a dark line forms between Opal Yellow and Silver Pink which is much more pronounced when the Opal Yellow is used over the Silver Pink, and that Peace has no staying power over top of Silver Pink and goes almost transparent. So very strange.

Below, you can see in the goddess bead that she is a mottled pale and powder pink because the glass has struck irregularly. I like this effect, but I wasn't really expecting it, and if what I had wanted was to make a bead that was a uniform colour, this would have been disappointing.

The set is a trio of kitchen sink organics that also feature Laushca Hawaiian Purple and Fine Silver Leaf, as well as a bunch of other stuff that I don't remember.  The goddess bead was made last year but the organics are from April 2010.

Test Results :: Sedona

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 & Peace

Effetre Sedona is a temperamental, dusky pink that has occasional tendencies towards lavender. It is a blotchy, organic, beautiful colour.

Sedona has a tendency to devitrify. Like Effetre Purple (Evil Devitrifying Purple, or EDP), the secret to staying free of the devit is to get the bead glowing hot and then not heat it again. It's the incremental heating and cooling that are a real problem for these colours. I learned from Kimberly Affleck that you can also kill the devit on Sedona by lightly reducing the bead in a dragon's breath flame, which is a strong, no-oxygen flame, but I'm a wuss and I don't like turning my torch that high, so I rarely bother. I sort of like the devit, so I'm figuring out ways to make it work for me.

Try making a bead with Sedona and letting it get a really disgusting amount of devitrification. To maximize the amount of devitrification, gently re-heat and cool the Sedona bead at least five times. Then, when you think you've probably made the absolute ugliest thing ever, encase it completely with Light Aqua, melt in the encasement layer and then stick it in the kiln. Let me know what you think.

Sedona in its natural state ranges anywhere from a deep dusty rose, to a hot pink, to a pinkish lavender. You never quite know what you're going to get with Sedona. When you reduce Sedona, it turns a shiny dark purple.

Where I have added silver leaf to the Sedona, it has developed oily-looking black webbing, and has also blushed a strange orangey pink colour. Around the edges, it has yellowed. When the silver leaf is reduced and encased, a lot more yellow is evident, as well as a livid lavender colour.

Adding reducing silver glass frit to Sedona and then reducing it is not a very attractive path to go down. The silver glass frit turns a dead mustardy colour, and all around it the Sedona reduces to a dark purple. Ugh. On the other hand, Sedona is brilliant as a base for striking silver glass, if you don't mind how the Sedona gets a little orange around the frit. My TerraNova2 frit here has bloomed beautifully.

Sedona is one of the more reactive colours I've tested, and the reactions are almost identical to those I got with EDP. Copper Green, Opal Yellow and Peace all separate on top of Sedona. When Sedona is used on top of Copper Green, Opal Yellow and Peace, the base colour rises up around the Sedona in halos.

There is a reciprocal orangey reaction between Opal Yellow and Sedona - Opal Yellow on top of Sedona looks a richer, deeper yellow than usual, with a tint of Orange. Sedona on top of Opal Yellow seems to spread a little and take on an orangey hue. This reminds me of the reaction between Opal Yellow and Rubino Oro.

Ivory blackens when used with Sedona, developing a webby dark line reaction. When the Ivory is used on top of Sedona, The reaction is densely contained within the Ivory stringer dots and lines, but when Sedona is used on top of Ivory, the reaction is much less localized, and spreads like wildfire.

On top of both Tuxedo and Ivory, Sedona looks far more purple than it does pink.

Here are some fun beads with Sedona.

  

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.