Test Results :: Adobe

1 - Plain (reduced), 2 - Plain, 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit (reduced), 7 - w/ Tuxedo, 8 - w/ Copper Green, 9 - w/ Opal Yellow, 10 - w/ Ivory, 11 - w/ White

It's surprising that I was even able to melt any CiM Adobe Limited Run, since all I've done with my Butter Pecan Unique #3 is gently lift it out of the box, pet it lovingly and then put it away again... over and over.  This colour reminds me a lot of my Butter Pecan #3 in rod form, but since I haven't actually used any of that colour yet it's hard to say for sure. 

My favourite combinations with Adobe so far have to be when it's under Copper Green or over Steel Blue.  Adobe etches beautifully, too.  I love the soft, medium peachy brown tone of this colour and I'm sad that there doesn't seem to be any more left for sale anywhere.

I put these on the mandrel in the wrong order, which is why the reduced one is left of the plain, unreduced one.  Reducing Adobe turns it a slightly pinker, duller version of itself and makes it faintly shiny. 

Silver leaf on top of Adobe turns a bronzey colour and fumes the Adobe to a rich brown.  When the silver leaf is reduced and encased, it turns quite blue under the Clear.  The silvered Adobe is a little lighter once its been encased, but not much. 

On top of Adobe, silver glass isn't really that interesting.  I got decent colour (for me) out of both the striking and reducing silver glass frit, but you can see on the left the dirty grey halo that surrounds the fritty bits, and in the bead on the right, reducing the Adobe resulted in it taking on a slightly dirty sheen, as it did above in the disc spacer.  I can imagine circumstances where this is a desirable effect, but I'm not sure I like it much.

It's not very evident in the picture, but the Adobe has faint, shiny thin lines around it on the side where the Adobe lines and dots are on top of the Tuxedo.  The Tuxedo has bled over to the Adobe side a bit, making it look sort of dirty.

With Adobe, Copper Green takes on a darker persona.  The Copper Green dots and lines also have a subtle brown outline to them, making them stand out slightly from the rest of the bead.  The Adobe lines and dots on top of the Copper Green do not seem to do that at all, and the Adobe on top of the Copper Green looks much lighter than it did anywhere else I used it in these test beads.  These colour reactions are funny. 

Opal Yellow spreads like crazy on top of Adobe, although I think I helped it along by being sort of inept with my bead roller and mushing the bead a bit.  The Opal Yellow also has the odd look of 'floating' on top of the Adobe.  Adobe on top of Opal Yellow isn't as interesting, but the two colours are sort of pretty together, or at least they would be with an accent colour to tie them together.

Ivory spreads on top of Adobe, too, but not as much.  And on top of Ivory, Adobe bleeds a little.  You can see thin little prickles poking out from the Adobe stringerwork.  There's a bit of a reaction where the two colours meet, almost like they're afraid to touch each other.

White also spreads on top of Adobe.  I must have been tired when I made this bead because the stringerwork is unusually erratic, even for me. :P

And here are the fun beads with Adobe.  I may still be able to squeeze one or two more out since I've got one rod of this left and am forcing myself to use up all of my odds and ends before moving on to the new palette I've got planned.

 

  

Test Results :: Adamantium Unique #1

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 - w/ Tuxedo, 8 - w/ Copper Green, 9 - w/ Opal Yellow, 10 - w/ Ivory, 11 - w/ White

Let me just start off by saying that these are not the pictures I've been holding my breath for as I get my photography issues under control, but that they are better than some I've been taking and I've decided to just go with it.

CiM Adamantium Unique #1, like Adamantium, is a smooth, creamy dark grey-brown.  It's less dark than its cousin, and more greyish.  I love brown way more than the average person does, and this one scores high points with me because it plays nice with other colours, isn't red at all and has some fun reactions with silver.

Adamantium #1 with silver reacts very similarly to how Adamantium reacts with silver.  When left unexposed on the surface, it forms a yellowish crust that blushes to an orangey colour in places.  When reduced and encased, it forms a sold silver layer which tinges blue at the edges.  I used leaf with these beads, and foil with the test beads I posted last January for Adamantium, resulting in a little less crusting and bumpiness but essentially the same reaction.

This colour is also like Adamantium in that it is a nice base for striking silver glass.  The effect is subtle, because of the grey darkness of the base, but you can see on the left where I got some gorgeous blue and purple from the TerraNova2 frit.  The reduction frit in the bead on the right didn't photograph very well, and it hasn't done anything particularly exciting anyway.

When I tested Adamantium, I was using Effetre Black.  I am sort of excited about the silvery, shiny line that crops up around the Adamantium #1 when its used with Tuxedo -- and intensely curious about whether or not the same effect would come between Adamantium and Tuxedo, or between Adamantium #1 and Effetre Black.  These go on the endless list of things to try.  Neat, right?

Adamantium #1 does not behave with Copper Green in the way that I expected it to after testing Adamantium.  My Copper Green, here, has an odd murkiness to it that I did not anticipate, and the Adamantium #1 on the Copper Green looks sort of washed out compared to how it looks in the other beads.  I spent some time worrying that there was a problem with my torch before I realized the other beads looked much more normal.

I am aggravated by a lot of my earlier colour posts because I had not yet come up with the process I'm now using to test the beads, so again, my basis for comparison is sort of screwed up.  I didn't test Adamantium with Opal Yellow, and I haven't tried that combination lately, so I don't have anything to compare this bead to.  However, Adamantium #1 looks dark and competent on top of Opal Yellow and the two colours seem fairly tight with each other, with not much bleeding or fraying of the edges of the lines and dots at all.  On top of Adamantium #1, Opal Yellow spreads a little.

Adamantium #1 does not seem to bleed into Ivory the way its parent Adamantium does.  The lines aren't super-crisp, but they also don't have as much spiky bleed as I saw in my test beads with Adamantium.  In the centre of the bead where the two colours meet, a dark line seems to separate the Ivory and Adamantium #1.  My Ivory dots and lines spread a little bit, but not as much as Opal Yellow did.

And blast it all!  I didn't test Adamantium with White either, so I have no idea if this complete lack of any reaction whatsoever is also common to that combination.  Grrr.  Oddly, the White dots and lines did not spread much at all -- less than either Ivory or Opal Yellow did.

Here are some fun beads with Adamantium #1.  I'm a fan of this colour, and love it just as much as I loved Adamantium-proper.

 

Test Results :: Charcoal

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - Over Clear, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf, 5 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced and encased), 6 - w/ Reduced Silver Glass Frit, 7 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 8 - As a floral (over White), 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - w/ Opal Yellow, 11 - w/ Ivory, 12 - w/ White, 13 - w/ Raku 

General Impressions
It is really hard to tell CiM Charcoal rods apart from Black if stuff gets mixed up.  In fact, during its time in my working box, I have lost a rod of Charcoal and I think it has covertly combined itself with my bundle of Tuxedo, which will no doubt screw me right up down the road. Grrr. The four other rods I have are all subtly transparent letting just the tiniest amount of light through them, but in spite of my careful and repeated examination of all of my Tuxedo rods, I can't find that missing rod of Charcoal and it seems to be a goner.

Charcoal had some weird white spots on the rods that smoked in the flame, but this didn't result in anything weird being evident in the finished beads. It looks green when it's hot, especially in thin layers, which is really strange. Holly says that it looks green cooled down too, but I have to admit that I just don't see it. Maybe just a little on top of Opal Yellow?

Charcoal is much softer than I thought it was going to be. It's wonderful to encase with, and doesn't bubble while working. I like this colour.  A LOT.

Alone, Charcoal is a pretty dark grey. It looks black, really... you can't see through it at all. Over Clear, it lightens up a little, but if you look at the lentil below you can only barely see the mandrel line through the centre of the bead, so it's still a very dark colour.

In a thin layer over White, Charcoal lightens up much more, and is a pleasant dark grey colour. Ignore the odd orange bits in the bead above... those seem to be Charcoal reacting to my camera flash because they aren't present in the bead when it's right in front of you.

Reactions
Lots to see here!  This is a really fun, reactive colour with some new things to bring to the table that I haven't encountered yet in my colour tour.

In the bead on the left, I melted silver leaf onto the surface of the Charcoal.  That simple step has resulted in a variegated blue finish that is pretty cool... I have had silver turn blue and green on top of other colours (CiM Mink comes to mind) but never this colour of blue before.

In the bead on the right, I reduced and encased some silver leaf on top of Charcoal, under Effetre 006 Clear. The result is that shiny silver blanket I so often get, but accompanied by vibrant blue staining on either side of the silver. Awesome.

Silver Glass loves Charcoal, and Charcoal totally seems to love it back. These pictures are sort of dark, but even with my crummy photography, you can still easily see how awesome both the reduced silver glass frit (on the left) and the TerraNova2 frit (on the right) look on top of Charcoal. This glass has shot up to the top of my wish list in terms of ordering more.

I got weird colour out of Raku on top of Charcoal. Instead of the washed out brownish blue and brownish green I usually get, I got reds, pinks, blues and yellows. Neat.

On top of Charcoal, Copper Green separates so that it is lighter on the outside than it is in the middle of the dots and stringer lines I applied. Charcoal also seems to help Copper Green stay beautiful and unsheened with that silvery grey stuff.

When I put Charcoal on top of the Copper Green, the Copper Green got sort of striated and odd-looking and a lighter line formed around the Charcoal lines and dots.

In the middle of the bead, a lot of the darker colour in the Copper Green seems to have fled away from where the Copper Green and Charcoal meet.

Opal Yellow seems to separate a little when used on top of Charcoal, and on top of Opal Yellow the Charcoal takes on a greenish hue. It also seemed to spread a little.

Charcoal spreads a little on top of Ivory, too. It's a little strange because I'm used to transparents being denser and not really all that prone to spreading on top of the softer opaque colours. Charcoal also looks a little more blue on top of Ivory, especially when you compare it to how it looks on top of Opal Yellow above.

Ivory lines on top of Charcoal look crisp and beautiful and get just the faintest amount of separation that makes the edges look really well established in my stringer lines and dot work.

White and Charcoal don't really have much of a reaction and I got lazy here in the bead on the right.

I made a pretty cool clear-encased bead with Charcoal and reduced silver glass frit, and I meant to take a picture of it, but someone bought it from me while I was having lunch at the Fraser Valley Bead Show in Langley last weekend. I've remade it, so here it is with a friend.