Test Results :: Chocolotta Verde

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

Effetre Chocolotta Verde is a dark, greenish-brown opaque. It doesn't really look green when used in a solid bead, but you can really see how green it is when you put it on top of black. If I search back through my childhood memories for another colour like Chocolotta Verde, I come up with the 'stuff' that was at the bottom of the pond on my great aunt's farm. I didn't really like that 'stuff' very much, but Chocolotta Verde really appeals to me with all of its rare-earth-coloured weirdness.

In the bead on the right, I've reduced Chocolotta Verde, and it has turned a burgundy colour and developed a bit of a metallic coating. I think that this means that there is copper in this colour, and that reducing it brings the copper to the surface. This is confirmed somewhat by the fact that it forms a dark line reaction with Ivory (you'll see, below).

When silver leaf is applied to Chocolotta Verde it fans and spreads out, taking over the whole surface of the bead. It also develops a faint blueish cast to it. This is a pretty nice effect. However, when the silver leaf is reduced and encased, it turns a sickly, gross mustard colour.

Chocolotta Verde makes a better base colour for striking silver glass than it does for reducing silver glass. In the bead on the left, most of the colours reduced, however for some reason all of the little bits of frit in my frit blend that are Psyche did not reduce. Weird, right?

In the bead on the right, the TerraNova2 colour got a really attractive first strike. I never wait long enough when I'm testing the striking silver glass frit, but I can tell from the colour I did get that these two colours play well together.

Here is where we can really see the "Verde" (green-ness) of the Chocolotta Verde. For some reason, the odd green-ness of it really pops out at me when it's against other colours.

When Tuxedo is laid on top of Chocolotta Verde, faint halos pop up around the dots and stringer lines. The Chocolotta Verde dots and stringer lines on top of Tuxedo don't display a lot of separation but there is something a little odd about them, like the edges aren't quite uniform and are maybe a bit lighter.

When you use Copper Green on top of Chocolotta Verde, it goes sort of grey and dull and the edges of the dots and stringer lines look faintly three-dimensional. Not quite 'separation' but close.

Chocolotta Verde develops a brown dark line reaction with Ivory when it is used on top of it. Oddly, this reaction isn't much in evidence when Chocolotta Verde is the base colour.

There isn't much of a reaction between Peace and Chocolotta Verde, however on top of Peace the Chocolotta Verde looks almost transparent. All of the weird lines in it smooth out and it looks softer and greyer on top of Peace than it does on any of the other colours.

 Some fun beads with Chocolotta Verde:

 

Test Results :: Indigo

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

CiM Indigo is a dark, rich royal blue transparent. It's a very densely saturated colour, looking almost black in small self-coloured spacers. Even over Clear, the colour of Indigo is almost black-dark. In thin layers, however, Indigo lightens up enough for us to see it when it is used over other colours.

Silver leaf burnished into the surface and then burned off results in just the faintest spray of dusty-looking silver across the surface of the Indigo. When the silver is reduced and encased, it forms a greyish, translucent, ethereal blanket over the Indigo. I was a little aggressive here with my encasing rod across the too-soft surface of the bead, which resulted in 'rod tracks', but it look sort of cool the way the tip of the encasing rod dragged the silver in ripples. That might be worth doing on purpose.

Silver glass likes Indigo very much. The reducing silver glass frit shined up and got a beautiful brightness to it, and the TerraNova2 frit got some nice colour as well.

Indigo develops a light line around it when you use it on top of Copper Green. When Copper Green is used on top of Indigo, gets a bumpy look to it that is not quite what I'd call separation, but there's definitely something going on there.  Opal Yellow behaves very similarly.

With Peace though, there's definite separation, and it rises up in halos around Indigo dots and stringer lines. Indigo also bleeds into Peace - you can see how the halos that have popped up around the stringer lines are light blue instead of white.

Oddly enough, there is no dark line reaction between Ivory and Indigo.

Here are some fun beads with Indigo.

 

Test Results :: Rubino Oro

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

Effetre Rubino Oro is a rich, medium to dark pink transparent colour, and is extremely reactive. It's a striking colour, which means that it is generally clear when first melted, and then strikes to its rich, pink hue through repeated heating and cooling.

Rubino Oro is a colour that is persnickety about how much heat it gets and how oxygenated the flame is that it is heated in. Too little oxygen can result in the Rubino Oro getting ugly, dark streaks in it. Too much heat can result in the colour getting burnt out  of it.

I have read reports that Rubino Oro does not like to be encased and can cause cracking, however I did not experience that problem with my particular batch of it. I did find that my batch was sort of streaky though, and that the colour is not very uniform. This is most visible in my first plain spacer in the picture above, and on the quint-coloured bead that has the Rubino Oro stringer decoration on top of it.

Reducing Rubino Oro results in a dark grey-pink shiny patina developing on the surface of the bead.

Silver leaf on top of Rubino Oro turns dark grey and a strange mustardy brown. When the silver is reduced and encased, this effect lightens considerably and the silver develops pinkish patches and odd green halo effects. The reaction is actually sort of attractive, if you can get the silver to uniformly cover the Rubino before reducing and encasing it (which I didn't).

Rubino Oro is not particularly attractive with reducing silver glass frit. You can see here that it has leeched most of the colour out of my frit blend and turned a yucky brownish colour around the edges. I think that it's the reduction that causes this, because the silver glass frit in the bead on the right (unreduced TerraNova2) is far more attractive. I didn't do my frit stringer test with Rubino Oro, which now seems like a sort of giant oversight. I guess I can put it on the huge, growing to-do list.

Rubino Oro brought out very nice colour in the TN2 frit, and seems to make a pretty good base for striking silver glass.

Tuxedo didn't really seem to react with the Rubino Oro or vice versa, but it is the exception, not the rule.

Rubino caused my Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace to separate when I used those colours on top of it to make stringer dots and lines. In addition to separating Ivory, Rubino also turns it brown.

Using Copper Green and Opal Yellow underneath Rubino Oro stringer dots and lines caused the base glass to pop up in halos around the Rubino. I love this effect. It is extra weird in the Opal Yellow because the Opal Yellow changes the colour of Rubino Oro from pink to orange. I didn't get the same kind of popping halo effect with Peace, which sort of surprised me.

On top of Ivory, Rubino Oro is just sort of a smeary brown mess.

Here is a bead where I layered Rubino Oro over Ivory as the bead base colours. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but it definitely has provided some contrast.