Test Results :: Mermaid

1 - Plain, 2 - Reduced, 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Striking Color Frit, 5 - w/ Triton, 6 - As a floral, 7 & 8 - w/ Dark Violet, 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - w/ Petroleum Green, 11 - w/ Ivory, 12 - w/ Black

O Mermaid... how vivid and streaky you are!  How beautifully greener than turquoise yet bluer than petroleum!

General Impressions
CiM Mermaid is a perfect teal opaque.  It's creamy and smooth, it is pretty stable, and it's got an interesting streakiness to it that many of the CiM colours have.  It reminds me of a just slightly bluer version of the  Elphaba Dark Unique that so many people are having trouble finding right now.  Most teals and turquoises spark and pit in the flame, but Mermaid seems for the most part to resist this.

The picture below shows a close-up of Bead #9 (Copper Green and Mermaid) and Bead #10 (Mermaid & Petroleum Green).

There are slight reactions in both cases, but what is most interesting to me about this is how much more pitting there is on the Copper Green vs. the Mermaid in the same bead, worked in the same flame for the same length of time.  I really expected it to pit easily, because if memory serves me, Fremen and Celadon both pit fairly readily.  It will be nice not to have to worry as much about those little holes, although I don't technically mind them - I make mostly organic beads and I'm happy for the glass to do whatever weird surface thing it fancies, most of the time.

Reduction
Reducing Mermaid (Bead #2) results in a brick-red coating.  I don't like it, so I'll probably never do this again.  Some people might think it's attractive, though, and it's a deeper red than the coating that forms on turquoise.

Reactions
With silver, Mermaid is pretty stable and while I got a slight reaction with Silver Leaf (Bead #3), it was just a slight yellowing of the glass colour.

Mermaid seems to make a good base colour for silver glass.  I want to play with it some more, but the Triton I reduced on Bead #5 looks a little greener than Triton usually does.  I think that Mermaid will look really great with Raku.

With Ivory, Mermaid develops the customary Green/Ivory dark line reaction.  (Bead #11)

With Dark Violet, Mermaid doesn't seem to do much at all apart from make the Dark Violet lighten ever-so-slightly around the edges.  I was pretty disappointed because usually green + purple = weirdness.  Not with Mermaid - or maybe just not with Dark Violet.  I was craving some crazy reaction action so much that I made two beads with this combination instead of just one.  I'm really not a big fan of these two colours coexisting in the same bead without any buffer. (Bead #7 & #8)

I feel like I should have more to say about this colour, and I guess I probably will as I go along.  I will definitely be buying and using more Mermaid, even though it isn't ideal for the kinds of beads I customarily make.  It stays put, which I'm sure I can find a use for.

This bead is made with Mermaid as well:

Winter Colour Diet - Session 4

Session 4 marks the halfway point of this colour diet, if I actually decide to stop it at eight sessions.  I may well decide that I just want to keep working this way, it's that fun.

Overall I had a pretty good day last Sunday, but the studio is only usually open for 4.5 hours on Sundays so it wasn't a really productive day.  It takes a fair bit of time to make test beads, and then the large focals I'm making take a while too.  In any case, here they are.  I am feeling unusually rambly tonight, so bear with me.

This bead is a base of Mystic Beige, rolled in silver foil and some Striking Color frit.  The creased silver glass you can see is Triton, there's silver mesh in there and then SiS on the ends.  After making this bead, I'm even sadder that I have no more Mystic Beige.  I'm not sure how well you can see it in the bead picture, but the base where the silver foil is on the Mystic Beige went all funny.  It's hard to explain, so here's a close-up.  It looks all weird and slimy and not like anything I'd want to touch.

This one is Seashell Swirl, silver leaf and Striking Color frit on the base.  There's also some Aion, silver mesh and a lot of Clear and SiS.  It looks a little yellow by the silver because that's how Moretti 006 clear seems to want to treat my beads.  I do much prefer it to the way the other Clear was treating them though, so I will find a way to deal.

Next up is a core of Light Brown Transparent, rolled in Striking Color frit, encased in Clear.  Then it was wrapped with fine silver mesh and encased again, this time with both Clear and Pale Emerald and decorated at the ends with SiS.  I think this is my favourite bead from last weekend, but I'm a little bothered by how stiff and lifeless the dots are in the right-hand image.  I am awful at surface decoration.  My next class needs to be about surface decoration techniques.

Oddly enough, none of the silver in this bead turned yellow even though I didn't consciously do anything different.  I'm not sure I get what's going on, but maybe I'll figure it out over the next couple of weeks now that I'm paying attention.

This last bead is a base of Mermaid with Striking Color frit, Adamantium ends and SiS scribbly decoration.  I really love the designs that the frit made as I was letting gravity have its way with it.  And I will mourn my Striking Color frit like a dead pet when it's all gone... which will be soon.  *cries*

So far, so good... I'm having less trouble staying focused than I feared I might.  And it's feeling really good to use up some of this glass.

Here's my colour testing queue, if you're interested in what's coming up over the next little while:

1. CiM Mermaid
2. CiM Great Bluedini
3. EFF Dark Violet
4. EFF Anise White
5. CiM Tamarind Unique (-1)

Test Results :: Mystic Beige

1 - Plain, 2 - Reduced, 3 - Encased, 4 - w/ Striking Color frit, 5 - w/ Triton, 6 - w/ Silver Leaf, 7 - As a floral (Copper Green core), 8 - w/ Ivory, 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - w/ Black

It's killing me that I only had two rods of Reichenbach Mystic Beige (RL0701), and this colour has catapulted straight to the top of my rebuy list.  I haven't used very many Reichenbach colours yet, but there are a few so far that I really like and this is one of them.

General Impressions

The rods are a transparent yellowish colour and look a little like Effetre Straw Yellow, but they look nothing at all like Straw Yellow once you get them into the flame.  Even though the rods I had were pretty thick (~8-9mm diameter) the glass was surprisingly not-shocky.  Even after reheating the tip of a previously melted rod, there was minimal popping and flying when it was reintroduced into the flame.

The glass melts like butter, is really reactive and has a shiny shampoo-like streakiness deep inside that is different from almost everything else in the 104 palette.  It's unpredictable though... I haven't yet figured out how to get it and keep it looking opaque on purpose.  It seems to make this decision for itself randomly, so until I figure it out, I'll be using it mainly in organic kinds of beads (Ha!  As though I make any other kind) where it's fine for it to just do whatever it likes.

Colour Density

Mystic Beige is a colour that hasn't entirely decided whether to be transparent or opaque.  It is streaky, shampoo-like and weird.  I really like this about it.  It's too inclined to be transparent to be used effectively as flower petals though –– I tried it and they just disappeared.  You can't even really see them in the picture.  (Bead #7)

Reduction

Bead #1 and Bead #2 are both solid Mystic Beige, but Bead #2 was reduced.  Reducing it seemed to bring back some of the transparency, but then you can see in Bead #3 that encasing it did that too, so maybe it was just the heating and cooling in between initially forming it and then reducing it that made that happen.

Reactions

Silver glass develops a fine dark outline on top of Mystic Beige, and it seems like the more silver-loaded the glass gets, the odder and shinier that outline becomes.  (Beads #4, 5 & 6) Silver leaf on top of Mystic Beige goes a coppery, metallic colour.  Here's a close-up of these reactions:

The silver glass seems to develop colour well on top of Mystic Beige, but I think that the more it's heated, the more brown it will turn.  It's a little like Vetrofond Yellow Ice this way.  I would love to experiment with this a little more, but as I've already mentioned, I don't have much of this colour left so I probably won't get a chance to do that for a while.

Mystic Beige can either look yellowish or pinkish, but I haven't completely figured out the rules for when it looks one way vs. when it looks the other way.  It looks more pink with reduction silver glass and black (Beads #5 & 10), and more yellowish with Ivory and Copper Green. (Beads #8 & 9).  But that doesn't really tell us very much without widening the testing a little.  Here's an example of what I mean:

Mystic Beige reacts with Copper Green in a way that's really similar to how Ivory reacts with Copper Green, but the reaction is subtly different.  The dark line that develops is really thin, and the way the Copper Green separates is pretty dramatic (and somehow more exciting) than what happens between Copper Green and Ivory.  (Bead #9)

Mystic Beige doesn't really react with Ivory, but it does look almost like pale green when put over top of it. (Bead #8)

All in all, I think this is a pretty great colour.  It's a joy to use and does some fun and unexpected things.  To close, here are some examples of other beads made with Mystic Beige.