Test Results :: Ivory Alabastro

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

Effetre Ivory Alabastro. You know that sound that vampires make in movies when light is shone on them?  That's the sound that I want to make now when I think about this colour. This one really fits 'Alabastards', the nickname generally used for this group of colours.

Adjectives to describe it?  Finicky, Shocky, Explosive, Boily, Vexing

It's too bad, because some of the reactions are really interesting, and it would be fun to explore them further. Except that it wouldn't be.  Grrr.

This picture is reminiscent of a polar bear in a snowstorm in that you will have to take my word that there are beads in it at all.  The reason they're so white is because this glass boils really easily, and the resulting white haze is permanent.

I made these beads first, and so I learned a little about how high in the flame I had to keep this colour. As a result, I had a bit better success with the remaining beads.  This helped me keep the colour from boiling, but between the slow melting and the shockiness, these beads took forever to make.

Ivory Alabastro seems to turn silver golden, which is sort of neat.

And the bead on the left really popped with the reducing silver glass frit.

In terms of reactions, the only things that were really interesting about Ivory Alabastro were the way it separated when used with Tuxedo and Copper Green,  If you look at the left-most bead, you can see the little halos around those two colours.

Here are the spacers I made from Ivory Alabastro, Dusty Rose Coral, and Effetre Very Cherry. I wouldn't have even made these, except that by the time I realized what I was in for, I had already made the cane and was too stubborn to waste it.

Test Results :: Coral (Dusty Rose)

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 & 8 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace 

These beads are made with a particularly beautiful variety of Effetre Coral called 'Dusty Rose' from quite a few years ago. It seems like every time Effetre makes Coral, it comes out a different colour! I have versions that are red, versions that are pink, and versions that are orange. I'll be sad when this batch is gone and I have to find another Coral to love.

Even though I've used this ridiculously rare and frequently very expensive colour of Coral for this test, it is reasonable to expect that other, newer and cheaper varieties of Coral will have similar behaviour with other colours.

In the bead on the left, you can see how dark and brown the Coral has turned with the addition of silver. In the bead on the right, you can see that the silver has turned blue on top of the Coral, and the brown fuming has disappeared. It also does this with Reichenbach Mystic Coral.

Coral makes silver glass pop.  I got awesome colour in the bead on the right, where this test usually yields a pretty unexciting result.

Coral's reactions are pretty similar to Ivory's reactions with other colours.  None of the reactions you see here are very exciting, and the highlights are:

• A dark line forms between Coral and Copper Green. When the Copper Green is on top, the Coral pools in strange, blushing crevices around the Copper Green.
• Ivory separates on top of Coral
• There's a subtle dark line effect between Coral and Opal Yellow.

These beads were all made with Dusty Rose Coral:

 

Test Results :: Lapis

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 & 8 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace

CiM Lapis is hands-down the best blue-purple opaque colour I've yet used. It is interestingly reactive, vibrant, and relatively inexpensive (compared to other purples and indigos) to boot.

On the surface of Lapis, silver spreads out and balls up in tiny little bits, mostly. What doesn't break up turns an interesting turquoise colour. If you reduce and encase the silver, the mottled bluish, turquoisey green effect can cover the whole bead surface under the clear. This effect is also faintly shiny, like mother of pearl.

Because Lapis is reactive with silver, it rises up in light halos around silver glass. You can see the light halos around all of the fritty bits in this picture. You can see also that all of my TerraNova2 frit turned purple, which is stage one of striking for it. Had I cooled and reheated the bead a few more times I would have gotten more interesting colours. To me, this means that Lapis is potentially a pretty decent base colour for striking silver glass colours.

I do this silver glass test with every colour just to see the differences in how the frit behaves when I run the test the same way each time. Some colours seem to magically accelerate the striking of silver glass while others seem to inhibit it. Lapis seems like a good one, but not a great one.

Here, you can see that just like with silver glass, Lapis rises up in halos around Tuxedo, and Lapis separates very dramatically when used on top of Tuxedo.

Copper Green separates on top of Lapis, with the lighter more turquoise bits in the middle of dots and stringer lines and the outside lines looking sort of dark and dingy. On top of Copper Green, Lapis separates so that it has a dark line in the middle of stringer lines and dark pinpoints in the middle of dots.

When Opal Yellow is used on top of Lapis, the Lapis at the edges of the dots and stringer lines fades and looks a bit mottled.  Lapis separates very slightly on top of Opal Yellow.

Ivory separates and curdles on top of Lapis. Lapis separates on top of Ivory.

Like with Opal Yellow, Peace causes a light Lapis outer line to form around its edges. When Lapis is used on top of Peace, it bleeds and the Peace takes on a lavender appearance.

All of these beads contain Lapis: