Test Results :: Antique Green

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

I love this colour. Effetre Antique Green is Copper Green's paler, smoother, less socially awkward cousin. It is smoother in that it isn't grainy like Copper Green, and therefore does not pit while you're working it. What I mean by 'less socially awkward' is that while it has a lot of the same sorts of reactions with other colours that Copper Green has, those reactions are less dramatic, and therefore less likely to take over any given bead. It is milder in colour, being a light seafoam green and never the vivid turquoise that we can get from Copper Green. Oh, and the best part? It does not scuzz up in a neutral flame the way Copper Green can.

You can see the smooth seafoam colour of the Antique Green in the bead on the left. On the right, the reduced bead has a mottled red coating. This beautiful brick-red colour is not very even, but I feel sure that it could have been if I'd been trying for that effect and was very methodical in my reduction.

You can see in the bead on the left that reducing silver on Antique Green gives a soft, pinkish haze around the edges of the silver. This is a beautiful and completely exploitable effect that is particularly beautiful when you make dot beads with Antique Green and a silver-rich glass. 

In the bead on the right, you can see that there is some cracking along the mandrel line. I'm not really sure what caused that - it may be that Antique Green doesn't much like being encased, but I also may have waved this around in the air and stared at it for too long before putting it in the kiln. I need to do a bit more research here.

In the leftmost bead, you can see the same kind of pink blushing around the silver glass frit as you saw in the silver-encrusted bead (above).  In both beads, I got beautiful colour from the silver glass frit I used -- I was particularly excited by the pretty rainbow that I got in the TerraNova2 frit in the bead on the right. Antique Green is clearly a colour that loves silver.

Antique Green is a bit funny in its reactions, too, in that it appears to be reactive with just about everything. For the most part, it behaves like Copper Green -- reciprocal dark line reaction with Ivory, separation reactions with other greens/blues, but it also has some interesting differences. For instance, it is reactive in a dark pink line way with Opal Yellow, and it separates when used with Tuxedo.

All in all, I find this colour beautiful, wonderful to work with, and exciting to combine with other colours. I wish more vendors carried it, because eventually my supplier is going to run out and then I am not sure where I will get more!

Here are some fun beads with Antique Green.

 

 

Test Results :: Emperor

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 - Over Silver Foil, 8 - In Silver Glass Frit Stringer (encased), 9 & 10 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace

CiM Emperor, to me, is like a slightly subdued, purplish version of CiM Cranberry. The reactions are basically the same as Cranberry, and the basic hue of it is Cranberry-like. Also, this colour gets purpler the more you strike it, which Cranberry doesn't do. The main technical observation that I have about working with Emperor is that it is difficult to get Emperor to strike when it is used in thin layers, but that's not terribly unusual for a striking color.

In this picture, you can see that the bead on the right (which has been reduced, and struck repeatedly in a neutral flame) is far purpler than the bead on the left. Both beads are plain Emperor.

Like Cranberry, Emperor turns silver a yellowish colour. Reducing and encasing silver on Emperor results in a beautiful, blue-mottled iridescence under the clear coat.

And just like with Cranberry, when you put Emperor over silver foil (being careful not to melt it as you melt the top layer in) you get a strange golden brown from the foil underneath the pinkish purple of the colour.

Emperor makes a good base for silver glass. I got nice colour and behaviour from both the reducing and striking colours here.

And as frit stringer with reactive silver glass frit, Emperor does a good job of bringing out the blues and greens of the frit, but the effect is sort of dark and not as dramatic as it is when this technique is used with Effetre Straw Yellow or Light Brown Transparent.

I did not observe anything of note happening between Emperor and Tuxedo

Copper Green separates into two different colours of turquoise when used on top of Emperor.

Opal Yellow separates on top of Emperor and develops a faint three-dimensionality to its look as a result.

On top of Ivory, Emperor turns brown. When Emperor is used as the base colour, Ivory gets a brownish look to it and separates. This reaction is the same as what happens between Ivory and Cranberry except that it is far less wild.

Peace separates quite dramatically on top of Emperor.

These beads are Emperor with Lizard and Wood.

Test Results :: Mosaic Blue

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 Mosaic Blue is an extremely dense medium blue colour that looks darker and darker, the thicker it is layered. Unlike its friend Mosaic Green, this colour is not terribly reactive, and does not spread or web at all when used on top of other colours. I found this a bit disappointing on a mental level, since I wanted there to be something similar about two colours with such similar names.

This colour is very stiff, and very dense. It's not a great colour for overdotting flower petals (at least I don't think so) in encased florals because the result doesn't have a lot of depth because not much light gets through the Mosaic Blue.

Where this colour really shines is when it is used with silver. You can see here that both of my silver leaf beads are interesting-looking. The bead on the left has a greyish silver film over it that is made up of hundreds of little microdots of silver. The bead on the right was reduced and encased, and the silver has gone bluish where it touches the Mosaic Blue, and silvery and shiny where it does not. Pretty!

Mosaic Blue is also a good base colour for silver glasses. It doesn't compete with them, and the reduction colours and striking colours do well on top of it.

And weirdly, there is not a single thing to say about these beads. Usually there is a lot of action here, but I can't detect a single reaction between any of these colour combinations apart from (maybe) a little bleeding of Mosaic Blue into Peace, and a gentle separation of Peace over Mosaic Blue. These are pretty typical reactions for Peace, and not in any way unique to, or spectacular with, this colour.

Here are two sets using Mosaic Blue (I didn't bother making a goddess bead, since it would have just been an almost-black bead because this colour is so dense). One is with Antique Green, and the other is with Ivory.