Test Results :: Yangtze

CiM Yangtze (CiM457) is a pale yellow that is supposed to be a streaky colour, but in my beads ended up looking a bit more 'murky' than 'streaky'. It is interestingly reactive, in the same colour family as colours like Effetre Straw Yellow, Light Brown Transparent, and Pale Green Apple and CiM Mojito. It's wonderful with silver.

Overall, I'm not a huge fan of this colour. If I were wanting to use something this shade of yellow, I'd much sooner use the pretty, smooth, semi-opaque Cornsilk or the entirely transparent Effetre Straw Yellow. The streakiness of Yangtze is not very pronounced, and the streaks are not a very interesting colour. I wonder if I would like it better if the streakiness were a pretty warm colour like pink or orange?

Reducing doesn't change the colour of Yangtze.

With silver, Yangtze is sort of awesome. In the leftmost bead, you can see that my silver leaf really crusted up and took on a bluish appearance. When I reduced and encased the silver leaf in the middle bead, the lumpiness of the silver went away and it smoothed out into a greyish blanket over the Yangtze with blue fume in the gaps where no silver covers the base.

In the rightmost bead, where I encased silver foil with Yangtze over a base of Yangtze, my silver turned a deep golden colour.

In the bead on the left where I reduced silver glass frit on top of Yangtze, my silver glass fritty bits threw an iridescent outline around themselves in addition to sheening up themselves. I got a pretty starting strike from my TerraNova2 frit on top of Yangtze in the purple ranges, but not anything outstanding.

In the bead on the right, you can see that Yangtze can be used to create a fun subterranean streakiness when it's pulled into stringer with reducing silver glass frit, used to encase a bead, and then encased with clear. I love this effect. The colours I got with Yangtze are less bright than the colours I've achieved with some other colours in the same colour family, but I am always excited when a colour will cooperate with me and do this.

While Yangtze is fun and reactive wtih silver, it's not particularly reactive with other colours. I got some separation with Copper Green, Opal Yellow, and Ivory but that's about it.

I didn't make any other beads with Yangtze.

Test Results :: Nile Green

Effetre Nile Green is a pretty, vibrant spring green. It's super-soft, making it a fast melter. It's also quite reactive with other colours.

Here, you can see that in the bead I reduced (the one on the right), a cloudy greyish sheen has appeared on its surface, not unlike the greyish sheen that we sometimes see on turquoises and teals. I think this means that this colour has some Copper in it, although it's hard to be sure.

Here, I've compared Effetre Pea Green, Effetre Grasshopper, CiM Shrubbery, CiM Elphaba, Effetre Nile Green, and Reichenbach Olive.  Nile Green is more of a true green than many of these, not containing much yellow at all.  Now that I see what I've done here, I could wish that I had also included some teals to show how much greener Nile Green is, but I didn't, so you'll have to take my word for it being a pretty middle-of-the-road, minty green and not really tending towards blue, either.

On top of Nile Green, silver seems to just settle and shine in a fine lacy pattern. When it is reduced and encased, it gets a silvery sheen to it under the clear.

In both of these beads, you can see that the silver glass frit has been shunted into the middle of the bead is a very pronounced way. This is because of the softness of the Nile Green.  I like the pretty splash of blue I got from my reducing silver glass frit on top of this colour, but don't have much use for it as a base for striking silver glass.

Nile Green and Ivory form a reciprocal dark line reaction. When Nile Green is used on top of Ivory, the line is light brown and sort of fuzzy. When Ivory is used on top of Nile Green, the line is a bit darker and more distinct.

Nile Green is a very soft colour, and seems to both spread and separate on top of almost everything. Oddly, everything I used except for the Tuxedo separated on top of Nile Green as well.

Here are some beads that contain Nile Green.

Test Results :: Light Red

Effetre Light Red is a gorgeous colour. I don't know what took me so long to try it, but I am glad I have found it eventually :)  It's sort of in the middle of the red hues, and seems like a real, true red until you pull it out thin over white or use it in thin layers over white, when it looks more orange.

Here, you can see that Light Red doesn't change when it is reduced. It also seems not to alter much with repeated heating and cooling, maybe darkening just a bit.

One of the benefits of all of the anal-retentive planning I do is that I occasionally get to recycle a picture instead of taking a new one, and this is one of those times.  Here, you can see that Light Red is very slightly darker than Reichenbach Lipstick, and is substantially lighter than CiM Maraschino, Valentine, and Hemoglobin.

On top of Light Red, silver clouded up and visibly bunched on top of the base colour. It also fumed the base colour a dark, bluish colour. When the silver was reduced and encased, it turned blue.

Silver Glass is very pretty on top of Light Red, both the reducing kind and the striking kind.

In terms of reactions, this colour was surprisingly volatile.

On top of Tuxedo, my stringer dots and lines are decidedly mottled and blotchy.  I also got a reciprocal dark line reaction with Copper Green, and then some separation inside my stringer dots and lines of Copper Green, Ivory, and Peace when used on top of Light Red.

Opal Yellow, when I used it on top of Light Red, got a strange, irregular blotchy brownish edging to it, and where I used Light Red over Ivory, the Ivory has crept over its edges in places to do that milk moustache thing it sometimes does to other colours.

I think the very weirdest thing though is that when I used Light Red on top of Peace, so much of the red bled into the Peace that it looks pink.

Here are some other beads that contain Light Red.