Test Results :: Adamantium

1- Plain, 2 - Reduced, 3 - w/ Silver foil, 4 - w/ Silver Foil - reduced & encased, 5 - w/ Terra frit, 6 - w/ Silver glass frit blend (Gaia, Elektra, Nyx) - reduced, 7 - As a floral, 8 - w/ Ivory, 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - w/ Black

General Impressions

CiM Adamantium is smooth, creamy and a dark grey brown.  It's gorgeous with silver glass, and it's beautiful paired with both silvered Dark Ivory and Copper Green.  It doesn't do unpleasant things with either colour, so it also seems very stable.  Adamantium doesn't do nasty things when you reduce it.  What's not to love?

Adamantium is my new very favourite glass for making the ends of my organic bicones.  I'm sure it has other uses, but I've been looking for an alternative to black, which always looks too stark. The colour of Adamantium is just slightly softer, and fabulously complements the silvered Ivory stringer I can't seem to stop using.

I need to apologize for the pressed beads in the big picture, above... and I think I'll need to apologize for the Leaky Pen ones I haven't posted yet, too.  I've been rushing these test beads and not being all that careful about how much glass I am pressing.  How embarrassing!  I will try to be better, since most of the reason I'm using the press for these at all is to practice getting the correct shape.

Reduction
Reducing an Adamantium spacer did not seem to change the colour or the appearance of the bead surface at all. (Bead #2)  Someone on LE told me that Adamantium got all shiny when they reduced it, but that was not my experience.

Reactions
One of the beautiful things about Adamantium is that it doesn't seem to be all that reactive, but the colour of it is so appealing that it doesn't need to be.  Being a fan of organics and loving what reactive colours do to each other when they get all hot and bothered, it's a strange position for me to take, but I stand by it in this case.

Like Tamarind Unique, Adamantium seems to repel silver rather than suck it in like a lot of other glasses, which I need to experiment with a little more.

When I put silver on it, reduced it and encased it, the silver got a bluish ethereal glow around it.  (Bead #4) And when I just left the silver on the surface, it developed a mottled yellowish orange/green crust.  (Bead #3)

I am a little silver-glass-challenged, but I was able to strike Terra frit on Adamantium, and being so dark, it's a great canvas for designs with reduced silver glass, too.  (Beads #5 & #6)  You can see some minor reaction halos around the edges of the silver glass, similar to what I experienced with Tamarind Unique, only a little less violent.

Ivory is one of the softest 104 glasses and the Adamantium bleeds with it a little bit when it's applied to Ivory in stringer.   If I wanted to do stringerwork with a design that was melted flush, and I wanted that design to stay crisp, I'd probably choose a different colour combination to use.

The Ivory spreads a little over Adamantium.  It gets just the faintest amount of translucency in the middle, like when you put Ivory on Black, only less so. (Bead #8)

Adamantium and Copper Green did not react with each other at all for me. (Bead #9) I was a little surprised because of how Copper Green reacts with Lauscha Cocoa -- for some reason, I expected all dark grey browns to be created equal.

When I'm out of Adamantium I am replacing it with Cocoa in my current palette, so I'll make similar beads with both Ivory & Cocoa and Copper Green & Cocoa for comparison purposes.

Some beads with Adamantium:

Winter Colour Diet - Session 8

It's strange you know... after I made this bead, I was almost certain I was going to hate it.  Now, looking at everything I made last Sunday I think it's my favourite bead of the bunch.  My impressions of my work at the torch almost never match my impressions post-cleaning.

This bead is a base of Effetre Okey Dokey Artichoky, rolled in silver foil with random trails of some silver glass, which actually struck.  (Yay!).  The end caps are CiM Admantium, officially my very favourite colour for sticking ends on my tube and bicone beads.   The end transitions are hidden by random squiggles of SiS, I've swirled the heck out of it and added some Ivory dots here and there.

This bead has superpowers.  I dropped it on the kitchen floor yesterday, which is tiled in stone, and it didn't even chip.  I'm going to keep it as a good luck charm, at least for a while, because I could use some more of that kind of luck.

Its base is Seashell Swirl that has been rolled in Silver Leaf, rolled in Terra frit, reduced and then encased with Reichenbach Clear.  There are some Aion plunges and some creased Aion that came out looking very interesting and ghost-like.  The ends are decorated with SiS swirls, and the picture is huge because the bead is huge.  I am slowly, but not surely, getting over my addiction to my massive lentil press.

More Seashell Swirl, with silver foil and Terra frit.  More SiS all over the place, and Ivory dots.  Adamantium end caps.

This would have been my favourite bead from this batch except that I got a big chip in one end (on the side that I didn't photograph) when I took the bead off the mandrel.  I really hate it when that sort of thing happens, although I know it's my own fault.  I've gotten a lot more consistent with my heat control in larger beads, but apparently I still occasionally forget to give the ends enough heat before garaging.

This is Okey Dokey Artichoky with a twistie made from Okey Dokey Artichoky and a couple of different silver glasses.  It's a little like a broken record, but there is SiS on the ends and in the middle, there are some giant swirls and the ends are made of Adamantium.

Weird, right?  It's Sasha's Silver over Pale Green Apple.  I plunged it, reduced it, dotted the plunges with Clear, reduced it a little more and then encased the whole thing and decorated the ends with SiS.  Oh, and I cut it.  The stupid thing was too big for the lentil press and needed to be punished.  Does anyone else see the puppy peering out of it?

And finally, this has a core of Pale Ink Blue, and I wrapped a homemade shard around that which I over-reduced.  Over-reducing it seems to have made the whole bead a little dark and icky, although it is slightly more attractive in person than it is in the pictures.  The ends are Adamantium because I needed to beef it up a little for the press, and it's finished with SiS. The big plunges are Aion.

I've already posted about the palette transitions I'm making, so I won't bore anyone with that again, but I will post my testing plan for the next few weeks.

1. CiM Adamantium
2. CiM Leaky Pen
3. EFF Red Copper Green
4. EFF Light Brown Transparent
5. EFF Avocado
6. EFF Fossil Dark

Test Results :: Khaki

1 - Plain, 2 - Reduced, 3 - w/ Silver Foil, 4 - w/ Silver Foil, reduced & encased, 5 - w/ Khaos frit, 6 - w/ Terra frit, 7 - w/ Silver glass frit blend (Elektra, Gaia, Nyx), reduced, 8 - as a floral, 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - w/ Black, 11 - w/ Ivory

General Impressions
CiM Khaki is way more appealing than I suspected it would be, which is good because finding a new colour to love is a beautiful thing... but it's bad because my test results are so mixed and I'm feeling pretty conflicted about them.  In the rod, in my glass storage box, I suspiciously regarded it as a boring elephant-coloured opaque.  And it is still elephant-coloured to me, but I'm sure not bored by it the way I thought I might be.

Reduction
Reducing Khaki alone darkens the colour slightly.  (Bead #2)

Reactions
With Black, Ivory and Copper Green, Khaki is a pretty stable colour and doesn't do much that's unexpected in terms of colour reaction, although these colours all seem to spread on it a little, and the Khaki seems to sink into them.  (Beads #9. #10, #11)

Khaki does do lots of fun things with silver and silver glass though.

It's reactive with silver in such a great way, getting all kinds of good, fumed colour.  (Bead #3, #4) Reducing and encasing the silver fades that "caramelization" out, but Khaki is fairly silver-friendly.

The interesting thing about these two beads (Bead #5, #6) is the way the Khaki sort of curdles at the edge of the silver glass.  Hey look!  More failure to strike silver glass.  This is not Khaki's fault though -- it's all me!   I've got other things to think about, so I'm not worrying about it for now.  I had good colour going into the kiln, but I've still got the kiln turned up a bit high, and I think that's unstriking my glass.  I know it's me and not the Khaki when I look at the frit bead I reduced. (Bead #7)

Khaki, Triton and I are going to have some fun this Saturday.  I can't wait!

Compatibility?
The only other observation I have about Khaki is that it really seems not to like Effetre Black.  (Bead #10)

I've been using the same 1/2# of Effetre Black for the last six months, so I don't think the Black is at fault, and I don't think there's any way these cracks are my fault. The bead is practically crumbling. I've spent a lot of time this week thinking about whether or not to keep using Khaki after seeing this, but I think I've resolved to proceed with caution -- and certainly to avoid using these two glasses together again.

Out of all the beads I made with Khaki last week, this is the only one exhibiting this unfortunate problem, so I don't want to just quit using it... but if I have any more problems with it I'll have no choice.  I'm really hoping that this was because of some clumsy or stupid thing I did and that it won't happen again.

Update - 25.01.2010

I talked to Kathy / CiM who said one of the original production runs of Khaki was shocky and could have led to the breakage I experienced.  The problem has since been corrected and she said anyone who thinks they have that original shocky batch of Khaki can feel free to trade it in for a better batch.  Just email her at info@creationismessy.com.  I intend to re-run my tests when I pick up some Khaki from a newer production run.

 

Update - 10.03.2010

I want to post another quick update, because I re-did my test with Khaki and Effetre Black with a newer batch of Khaki and had no problems at all.  The newer batch is more workable, and less prone to splintering and shocking, too.  Good news, because I need this colour.     

 Here are some fun beads with Khaki: