Test Results :: Lilac

Reichenbach Lilac (RL6221) is a medium to dark purple that has blue overtones. It is a little less purple and a little less bright than its close cousin Purple Rose, but has better workability since it doesn't boil, pit, and devitrify the way that colour can. It's very, very streaky.

In the leftmost bead here, you can see how crazily streaky this colour is, with the streaks looking both bluer and darker than the rest of the bead. When this colour is reduced, it goes dark and slightly shiny.

Adding silver to Lilac turns it a weird greenish yellow colour. When the silver is reduced and encased, it turns white with a faint blush of blue here and there. Any Lilac still visible through the silver continues to look greenish yellow.

Lilac rocks silver glass. Around my reducing silver glass, it's gone brownish and shiny, and even reddish in places, and it has developed really cool delineation around the fritty bits. The frit itself in the leftmost bead has developed colour and shine really well. In the rightmost bead, you can see that I also got very pretty colours from the TerraNova2 frit.

Lilac separates Copper Green, Opal Yellow, and Peace. It develops a reciprocal dark line reaction with Ivory, and it spreads and goes somewhat translucent when used over White and Opal Yellow. It separates on top of Tuxedo.

Here are some other beads made with Lilac:

Test Results :: Opal Orange

Reichenbach Opal Orange (RL6214) is a not-quite-but-almost-opaque bright orange. Used on top of other colours in a single layer, the resulting dots and lines have good opacity, but if you reheat this colour, the very topmost layer gets a slight translucency that is quite interesting.

Here, you can see that Opal Orange is a bit of a striker. The bead that I reduced (on the right) is a deeper orange than the one that did not receive the additional heat exposure.

Silver fumes Opal Orange to a darker hue. On top of Opal Orange, silver leaf takes on a golden-iron appearance. The bead on the right where I reduced and encased the silver is a snowy white with touches of blue under the clear layer.

On top of Opal Orange, my silver glass frit seemed to migrate a bit towards the bead's centre in both tests. My reducing silver glass frit looks darker on top of this colour than on others I've used the same blend on. I got nice colours from TerraNova2 frit on top of this colour.

The only real reaction I observed in these beads was the dark line that formed between Copper Green and Opal Orange, and a very slight amount of separation in it on top of Tuxedo.

Here are some beads made with Opal Orange:

Test Results :: Venus

CiM Venus (CiM911) is meant to be a transparent coral, and I can see on the CiM page that some people had that experience with it, but for me this colour ended up a light peach rather than a coral and lost its pink blush while I was working it. Since I tend to work a little on the hot side, I'm guessing it is the blasty heat that kills the pink.

I found Venus quite difficult to work with. While I tend to struggle with a lot of the light transparent colours, this one was a real monster for me, bubbling no matter how high in the flame I tried to work with it. So, heat it slowly and carefully, and maybe you will have better luck than I did.

Silver leaf fumed blue for me on top of Venus, and when I encased Silver Foil with Venus it turned gold. Reducing and encasing silver leaf on top of Venus didn't yield anything particularly interesting - the silver turned a greyish colour with hints of blue here and there where there was a break in silver coverage.

I found Venus to be an unexpectedly nice base colour for silver glass. My reducing silver glass got all ethereal and billowy on top of this colour, and I got a pleasing starting strike from my TerraNova2 frit. My reduction frit stringer test was also moderately successful, with lots of swirling blues and turquoises.

Venus is not very reactive with other colours, although Copper Green and Opal Yellow both separate on top of it.

It does a similar thing over Copper Green to what I observed with Dark Lavender, really picking up any red streaks in the CG and showing quite deeply coloured on top of it. This is a fun effect that isn't really a reaction, and I am pondering ways to exploit it. I wonder if flowers made with Copper Green petals overdotted with Dark Lavender or Venus would be pretty?

I didn't have much interest in making additional beads with Venus after the way it misbehaved on me, but I still have almost a full rod and may revisit it in the next few weeks. If so, I'll come back and update with pictures.