Test Results :: Olive (Creation is Messy)

CiM Olive is the second glass by the name 'Olive' that I have tested now, and the third that I am aware of.  We can hope that it's the last one and that other manufacturers, seeing that there are already three (or more) glasses by this name, will choose some other thing when and if they move ahead with plans for another olive green-coloured glass.  Don't get me wrong... I welcome any and all colours to the 104 COE palette.  Even when they are named the same thing, they are all deliciously different and interesting to play with.  It's just confusing to talk about them when one name could reference multiple different actual colours.

Olive is darker and 'greener' than what I would normally think of when picturing olives, and reminds me more of the colour of the frogs we used to catch when I was a kid when my parents would take us camping.  For that reason, I would have named this particular glass 'Kermit' or 'Tadpole' or something else frog-related had it been left up to me.

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 - w/ Tuxedo, 8 - w/ Copper Green, 9 - w/ Opal Yellow, 10 - w/ Ivory, 11 - w/ Peace

So... all whining about the name aside, CiM Olive is a gorgeous green.  It's got a unique texture to it, being very smooth and streaky at the same time. It is also, for lack of a better word, somewhat more gelatinous than the other opaque CiM colours and way less 'grainy' than some of the Effetre greens (e.g. Pea Green, Nile Green, Grass Green).  Used in a thin layer over Peace, it lightens in colour significantly.  Because it is a little less saturated than some of the other greens, it gives an interesting effect when used as the core of vine twisties and canes, lending a bit of an inner glow. Cane made by using a thin layer of Olive over a thick base of Clear gives an interestingly semi-opaque result.

Silver leaf melted into the surface of Olive leaves a greyish/brownish residue behind. The silver discolours slightly, ranging from grey to a blueish tinted grey to a yellowish/brown. In the bead on the right, you can see that when the silver is subsequently reduced and encased that it seems to form an ethereal film over the Olive, and retains some of the blueishness (new word!) but otherwise does not much change the Olive underneath.

My TerraNova2 frit didn't strike very well in the bead on the left, but I think that was my fault.  The thin green halos that have sprung up around it are a bit of a clue that Olive is capable of greater things with silver glass frit than I was able to coax from it in this particular bead.  In the bead on the right, the reducing silver glass also has an interesting curdling effect on the Olive where it touches the base colour and has thinned out in weird and wonderful ways.

When used on top of CiM Tuxedo, Olive develops a thin silvery line around itself in dots and stringer work.  When Tuxedo is used on top of Olive, a greyish green halo pops up around it.  This is a very interesting set of reactions for a couple of reasons.

First, Tuxedo bleeds with a lot of the other greens I've tried it with, so it is very refreshing for Olive to be a green that it does not bleed into. Second, a lot of the colours I have tested with Tuxedo recently have had this silver halo effect, but this is the first time I've gotten this reaction between Tuxedo and a green.

Olive makes Copper Green not want to be green at all.  The darkness of the Copper Green here is very out of character, and the interesting brownish mottling in the centre of the bead is an effect I've not seen before.  Where I've used Copper Green over Olive, it seems to have caused a little curdling chaos in the Olive underneath.

Opal Yellow and Olive do not have any noticeable reaction apart from (possibly) a minor amount of bleeding of the Olive into the Opal Yellow when Olive us used on top of it.  You can make out a faint greenish halo around the Olive dots and stringer lines in the left side of this bead if you click on the picture to see an enlarged version of it.

With Ivory, Olive develops an interesting, irregular brownish dark line reaction.  It does this both when Ivory is used on top of it and when it is used on top of Ivory.  The reaction when Ivory is used on top of Olive is the more dramatic of the two.

Peace and Olive do not have much of a reaction with one another, but it is very interesting to me how much lighter the Olive looks on top of Peace than it does on top of any other colour. The Peace on the left-hand side of the bead seems to have acquired some of the colour from the Olive without leaving any noticeable evidence of 'bleeding'.

I let one of my friends walk off with what was left of my Olive before I'd made many beads with it, and all I've used it in so far is vine cane.  That vine cane is attached to beads I'm not ready to show anyone yet, so I"ll end this here.

Test Results :: Olive (Lauscha)

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit Blend (reduced), 7 - w/ Tuxedo, 8 - w/ Copper Green, 9 - w/ Opal Yellow, 10 - w/ Ivory, 11 - w/ White

General Impressions
Lauscha Olive looks almost black when it's hot. It is also a very stiff, very dense colour. It is a pleasure to use in stringer form because of its stiffness.

This colour is also very reactive, and does crazy things with other colours. I have not done my tests yet for CiM Olive (This is a thankless, endless job I've set myself! Someday I'll get to it) but I don't think the two colours, apart from both being a similar olive-y shade of green, have much in common. I don't expect CiM Olive to do the same kinds of weird, spready reactive things that this Lauscha Olive does, but I'm sure that it has compelling secrets of its own for me to discover.

My Lauscha Olive rods are pretty thick - possibly around 9mm in diameter. The glass is surprisingly not-shocky for its girth, which was also my experience with Lauscha Cocoa. After you've melted some of the rod and you reintroduce it to the flame you're likely to lose the tip of it, but apart from that it's smooth sailing with this colour.

Reactions

One of the things I'm discovering is that a lot of the colours that are full of endless organic fun do this blue thing with silver that you see in the bead on the right. On top of Olive, silver leaf melted in sort of disappears and forms some blue-ish blotches. Once the silver is reduced and encased, it forms a shiny armour-like patina over the Olive with a fumed blue haze around it.  Awesome.

The reactions with silver are NOT one of the ways Lasucha Olive and Lauscha Cocoa are similar. Olive is WAY nicer with silver and striking silver glass than Cocoa is.

I got better colour out of my TerraNova2 frit on top of Olive than I have with almost any other colour. Lauscha Olive is much nicer with the striking silver glass frit here than with the reduction frit blend.

Lauscha Olive is odd with Tuxedo only in that almost every other green that I have tried with Tuxedo has stirred Tuxedo into a crazy, webbing frenzy. With Olive, Tuxedo is simply a nice, crisp Black. The only strange thing I see in this bead is that where the Tuxedo and Olive portions of the bead met in the middle, the Olive is a bit lighter.

Whoah. I thought that Lauscha Cocoa was cool with Copper Green, but as cool as that reaction was, this one blows it away. On top of Olive, Copper Green develops a light outline, and then a silvery inner outline with a concentration of a darker teal colour in the centre.  Three rings for the price of one :)

On top of Copper Green, Lauscha Olive seems to spread a little and take on a faint translucency, and a light turquoise watercolour outline surrounds the Olive dots and lines.

On top of Opal Yellow, Lauscha Olive loses its vibrancy, and it does weird things to the Opal Yellow underneath it. The Opal Yellow on the right side of this bead almost seems to have a crack in it, but that's just a transparent crease formed by this reaction.

On the left side of this bead, the Opal Yellow dots and lines have developed a light yellow outline and the inside of them has blushed a pinkish orange colour. Another really cool reaction here.

On top of Lauscha Olive, Ivory develops a fine, translucent line in the middle of its dots and lines. On top of Ivory, Lauscha Olive loses its cohesion a little and bleeds. This reaction is pretty similar to what happened with Lauscha Cocoa and Ivory, although Cocoa is a little better at it than Olive is.

And finally, White separates a little on top of Lauscha Olive (but not as much as Ivory does) and Olive spreads on top of White (but not as much as on top of Ivory).

Fun beads with Olive:

  

Test Results :: Mosaic Green

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 & Peace

Effetre Mosaic Green is another crazy colour. I seem to be writing up test results for quite a few of those lately.

Mosaic Green is a pure dark green. You can't really get greener than this colour. I'm a little confused about whether it's an opaque or a transparent, because it has a transparent colour number and is sold at Frantz as a transparent, but I have also seen it sold as an opaque colour (on Delphi's website, for one) and it seems not transparent at all to me when I use it. When pulled out into stringer, it's very transparent (but DARK), although as you can see, it is not transparent in any of these test beads.

You can see in the self-coloured spacer on the left that Mosaic Green is a crazily streaky, mottling colour. When Mosaic Green is reduced, all of the bits between the dark streaks develop a rich red copper patina.

When Silver Leaf is melted into the surface of Mosaic Green, it just kinda disappears, except for some silvery bits that seem to get stuck in the 'cracks' formed by the mottled webbing of the surface. When the silver is reduced and encased, it goes a weird blueish grey colour, in a lacy, low-surface-coverage kind of way.

Silver Glass is not particularly effective on top of Mosaic Green, although the results are sort of interesting. My reducing silver glass frit has been somewhat swallowed by the Mosaic Green so there's not much left on the surface, but for the frit that IS left on the surface, an interesting separation has occured so that the edges of the frit are far lighter than the middles of each little bit. My TerraNova2 frit struck to blue on top of Mosaic Green, but the Mosaic Green so aggressively swallowed so much of it that it's not all that evident.

On top of Tuxedo, Mosaic Green separates so that it is lighter and more opaque around the edges, and is dark and seems completely transparent in the middle of the stringer lines. This might just be an illusion because it's on black and Mosaic Green is so dark, but it's odd. Tuxedo doesn't do much on top of Mosaic Green, although the Mosaic Green underneath it in the bead on the right looks more crazily mottled than it does under either Copper Green or Opal Yellow.

Copper Green separates on top of Mosaic Green, and the separation is a lot like what it does on top of EDP, Sedona, Steel Blue, Olive, Cocoa, Flamingo, Opal Raspberry (and I'm sure I'm missing some), but there is a slight difference. The dark line in the centre of the Copper Green lines and the dots in the middle of the Copper Green dots are more of an intense blue colour than they are turquoise, and they are also super thin/small. The edges of the Copper Green stringer work look almost frayed, because of the Mosaic Green bleeding into them.

When Mosaic Green is used on top of Copper Green, a light turquoise halo pops up around the Mosaic Green stringer lines, and a darker turquoise veining remains underneath, looking kind've like grout. The Mosaic Green separates so that a dark line runs down its centre, less dramatically than with Tuxedo but still pretty intensely.

Opal Yellow on top of Mosaic Green is a pretty similar story to what I just explained about the Copper Green reaction, except that the Opal Yellow takes on a lot of the Mosaic Green colour. You can see around the edges of the Opal Yellow stringer work that there has been a crazy amount of bleeding and almost all of the yellow has some level of green contamination. Also, the line down the middle of the Opal Yellow stringer work looks black rather than blue. When Mosaic Green is used on top of Opal Yellow, the Opal Yellow rises up around it in self-coloured halos, and the Mosaic Green bleeds into it.

When Ivory stringer work is done on top of Mosaic Green, it doesn't develop a dark line reaction. It just turns a dark brownish black completely. When Mosaic Green is used on top of Ivory, all of the Mosaic Green stringer lines and dots are surrounded by a dark brown miasma, that sort of reminds me of what happens in SimCity when your industrial buildings cause ground pollution.

In order to not repeat myself too much, I'm going to cheat and say that Peace reacts with Mosaic Green in almost the exact same way as Opal Yellow when it is used on top of Mosaic Green. However, when Mosaic Green is used on top of Peace, it doesn't really get those cool raised 'halos' that the Opal Yellow gets, and the Mosaic Green bleeds into it a lot. So much that the edges of the dots and stringer lines are sort of hard to look at because of their neon green-ness.

Mosaic Green is unexpectedly beautiful in sculptural work. It looks like Malachite in my goddess bead.

Test Results :: Sherwood

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain (reduced), 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit Blend (reduced), 7 - w/ Copper Green, 8 - w/ Tuxedo, 9 - w/ Opal Yellow, 10 - w/ Ivory, 11 - w/ White

General Impressions
When I saw the rod colour of CiM Sherwood, a few other CiM colours popped into my mind as things that might behave similarly. It is a blue-ish green, darker and greener than Celadon. It is greener and lighter than Mermaid, bluer and darker than Split Pea and both lighter and bluer than Elphaba Unique #2.

Sherwood, in spite of those comparisons (and all of the other ones I'm likely to make as I write this) is sort of its own animal. The annealed beads are somewhat lighter and brighter than the rod colour, which is always an interesting surprise, and the reactions with other colours weren't quite like any of the other greens I've tested, but I've got something nagging at me, telling me that when I test Split Pea this weekend I will see some of the same reactions. I did a little work with Split Pea last year, before I was doing this testing thing, and the reaction Sherwood has with Ivory in particular gave me a feeling of deja vu.

The consistency of Sherwood is stickier and less stiff than a lot of other CiM colours. It's not as soft as Poi, it's not gelatinous like Desert Pink, and it's not uber-stiff like Mermaid, Celadon, Adamantium or a lot of the other CiM opaque colours.

Sherwood is full of interesting reactions. It really bears more study, but sadly, I don't have any left.

I keep toting this picture out, and it doesn't have any Sherwood in it, but it's the only bead picture I have with Petroleum Green in it, so I need to show it again. The bead on the left is Mermaid and Copper Green, and the bead on the right is Mermaid with Petroleum Green. The reason I am showing it is to illustrate how much brighter and greener Sherwood is than Petroleum Green, because someone looking at these pics might otherwise think that Sherwood is just a new Petroleum green, but it's not really the same, either in colour or in how it feels when you work it.

Reactions

Silver balls up and disappears on the surface of Sherwood the same way that it did for me with Celadon and Mermaid (although Mermaid also discoloured, which Sherwood did not do). When I reduced and encased the silver, I got a little bit of yellowing. This was faintly reminiscent of my experience with Celadon, only far less dramatic. It's an interesting effect, and when combined with other kinds of encased elements might be really interesting.

Sherwood makes a surprisingly good base for Silver Glass. I say surprising only because my personal experience has not led me to expect greens to be really cooperative when used this way. I got great colour (for me) out of my TerraNova2 frit on the bead on the left, the halos that appeared around it are pretty cool.  I also really like the way the reduction frit spread out on the bead on the right. These reactions were a little reminiscent of what I got with Elphaba Unique #2, but better.

Sherwood isn't so nice with Copper Green. The Copper Green went all pinky-silver and strange-looking, and the Sherwood developed a thin dark line down the middle. This bead could probably be improved by etching the Copper Green yuck away though. Celadon and Elphaba Unique #2 made Copper Green do this too, but both had some redeemingly interesting reactions in the bargain which Sherwood didn't manage.

Tuxedo bleeds just the faintest bit when it's put on top of Sherwood. You can see some halos around the stringerwork on the right-hand side of the bead. Sherwood does that thin green line separation thing on top of Tuxedo. Sherwood, on the whole though, holds its own against Tuxedo, where Celadon let more of the Tuxedo in, and Elphaba Unique #2 rolled over and let the Tuxedo dribble all over it.

Sherwood is the first colour I've tested to do this weird thing with Opal Yellow, but I wasn't using Opal Yellow in my baseline when I tested Mermaid or Celadon. The Opal Yellow on the left side of the bead has developed a neon green outline, and in the centre of the bead where the two colours meet, there is some decided webbing. You can see on the right-hand side of the bead, too, where there is a small amount of bleeding of the Sherwood into the Opal Yellow -- just the faintest green halo around some of the lines.

On top of Ivory, Sherwood does a couple of interesting things. First, it got an olive green webby line around the lines and dots that I put on. I am accustomed to a brown line reaction, or a black line reaction, or even a grey line reaction, but this is the first time I've managed a green line reaction. On top of Ivory, Sherwood also got that dark green line down the centre of the stringerwork.

On top of Sherwood, Ivory separates and develops a thin, translucent line down the centre, and goes dark around the edges, but that darkness just looks like a deeper green without much in the way of discolouration. The Sherwood did, however, get really streaky underneath the Ivory.

The best part of the reaction between these two colours has to be the odd, olive-coloured webbing in the centre of the bead. I like this reaction an awful lot.

And finally, on top of White, Sherwood does that dark-line-in-the-middle thing. White on Sherwood isn't all that interesting, but the way the two webbed in the centre of this test bead certainly is.

I managed to make a couple of fun things with my Sherwood last weekend, and here they are.  

  

Test Results :: Olive (Reichenbach)

Reichenbach Olive (RL4203) is a very pretty medium green. It's an opaque colour in that you can't see through it when you use it in thick layers, but I think it would be more accurate to call this colour an "opal" because it is definitely transparent when pulled thin, and has a sort of glow to it even when used in solid, self-coloured beads.

This is a little odd, but it seems like maybe Olive gets lighter when you strike it. I am used to striking colours darkening with repeated heating and cooling, but this one seems to do the opposite. This only happened in the beads where I restruck the colour in a reduction flame, so maybe it only happens in a propane-rich environment.

Here is Olive with a bunch of lighter colours, and then with it's closest colour cousin, CiM Shrubbery. Unlike many 104 CoE greens, Olive is not even a little bit streaky. This is nice if you're going for a more solid-looking green and not looking for an organic effect.

Silver on top of Olive doesn't change its basic greenness at all. When the silver is reduced and encased on top of Olive, its edges turn blue.

I got pretty colour out of both my reducing silver glass and my TerraNova2 frit on top of this Olive.

Here, you can really see how Olive thins out to translucency when applied in a thin layer.

Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace all separate on top of Olive.  Out of these, only Opal Yellow separates when Olive is used on top of it.

When Olive is used on top of Copper Green, a thin outline of a lighter turquoise is visible around the Olive stringer lines and dots.

Here is an Olive goddess bead. I want to make some additional beads with this colour because I still have some, but they aren't ready yet. I'll come back and update this post with them after they're made.

Test Results :: Apple Green

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 & Peace

Lauscha Apple Green (Green Apple?) is a pretty nice colour, but sadly, it's another colour in our 104 palette that doesn't really like to be encased. This is the first Lauscha colour I've had this problem with, and I am pretty sad about it. If you look back through the rest of my Lauscha tests, you'll see that I haven't had any issues at all with Cocoa, Olive, Thüringen Herb, Dusty Lilac, Faded Rose, Orchid, Latte Macchiato, Peach, Nuclear Brownie (Buckhorn w/ Silver) or Steel Blue.

This colour is so reactive and vibrant, though, that even not being able to encase it doesn't put me off it completely. Like a lot of the Lauscha opaque colours, Apple Green is actually more like a superdense translucent colour. In thin layers, you can sort of see through it. Also like a lot of the other Lauscha opaque colours, Apple Green is quite reactive and likes to thin out and spread on top of colours like Peace and Ivory.

Silver leaf on top of Apple Green sort of clings to the surface as a lacy, grey film. When the silver is reduced and encased, it forms a more solid whitish blanket over the surface of the Apple Green. However, about a week after I made the bead on the right, unpleasant spiderwebby cracks started to develop in it.

Silver glass develops colour well on top of Apple Green. My reduction frit got great colour on top of Apple Green, and I think the TerraNova2 frit has great potential on top of it as well.

Apple Green seems to be a fairly reactive colour. I've gotten reactions here in these test beads with every other colour except for Tuxedo.

On top of Copper Green, Apple Green develops a light outline, which I think is actually the Copper Green showing pale right next to the Apple Green. You can sort of see, in the bead on the left, how there is a thin band of turquoise surrounding the Apple Green and then a much darker turquoise in between the dots and stringer lines. This is because the Copper Green has separated. On top of Apple Green, Copper Green develops a darker outline, and looks very concentrated, dark and teal.

Apple Green also makes Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace separate. This reaction is much more pronounced in Opal Yellow, but is visible in Peace and with Ivory to a lesser degree.

I've made some beads with Apple Green, but it was quite a while ago and I'm not really sure where I've put them. Things will be back to normal here in a few weeks and I'll work on getting some newer results posted. I have some more of the new CiM Limited Runs ready to photograph, as well as test beads for Opal Yellow, Copper Green and CiM Phoenix.

Test Results :: Desert Pink Unique #2

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 - As a Floral (over Olive), 8 - w/ Tuxedo, 9 - w/ Copper Green, 10 - w/ Opal Yellow, 11 - w/ Ivory, 12 - w/ White, 13 - On Lauscha Olive

I was expecting to be really fond of CiM Desert Pink #2, because I really liked regular Desert Pink. I haven't tried Desert Pink Unique #1. On the whole, I do really like Desert Pink Unique #2 because of its reactions with silver and the way it looks with Copper Green. I should probably get some more of this colour before it sells out the way all of the uniques eventually do and there is no more of it to be had.

The colour of Desert Pink Unique #2 is a little warmer and a little darker than regular Desert Pink.  It is more reactive with silver than the original Desert Pink as well. In a thin layer, Desert Pink #2 is very translucent.  I haven't included an enlarged picture of Bead #7 (above) but you can see that the flower petals are so translucent that they almost vanish in that bead.

In the bead on the left, the Desert Pink Unique #2 has fumed a dark, rich brown from the application of silver leaf. When this effect is reduced and encased, the silver really shines up under the Clear and develops a bright, ethereal blue halo.  I like this effect a lot.

In both of these cases, the reaction is a lot like what happened with regular Desert Pink, but more intense.

Desert Pink Unique #2 does not score huge points in the silver glass department, but the reduced silver glass does look very interesting on top of it in the bead on the right, and there are some hints of colour on the bead on the left that indicates that if I'd been a little gentler with the striking of that bead I may have gotten better results.

When placed on top of Tuxedo, the Desert Pink Unique #2 develops a fine, shiny outline.  I've mentioned this a couple of times now, but a lot of colours seem to have this reaction with Tuxedo.  Regular Desert Pink, however, was not one of them.  The Tuxedo on top of Desert Pink Unique #2 doesn't have any noticeable reaction, but you can see in the middle of the bead where the two colours meet that there is a fair amount of Tuxedo bleed there.

Desert Pink Unique #2, when placed on top of Copper Green, helps the Copper Green to not develop that shiny patina. However, Copper Green on top of Desert Pink Unique #2 does sheen up.  Why?  Who knows... this glass chemistry thing is easy to observe, but more difficult to predict and diagnose.

  

I want to say something smart about these two beads, but I sort of shot myself in the foot by doing something stupid when I made them.  Unfortunately, I got my Opal Yellow and Ivory stringers mixed up and managed to completely bungle this, putting Ivory stringer on my Pink & Opal Yellow bead and putting Opal Yellow stringer on my Pink & Ivory bead.  Grrr.

Since there are no reactions I want to comment on, let's just move on to the next bead.

There is no real reaction between Desert Pink Unique #2 and White, but you can see how translucent the Desert Pink #2 is where I used it on White, because it's sort of hard to make it out.

Putting Olive on top of Desert Pink Unique #2 makes a curdled halo of Desert Pink Unique #2 pop up around the Olive stringer lines and dots.  Also, the Olive thins out a bit on top of the Desert Pink #2 and seems lighter and more translucent.  On top of Olive, mostly Desert Pink #2 just seems to disappear, but the Olive is uncharacteristically streaky underneath it.

And here is a fun bead with Desert Pink #2.  This bead is a base of Desert Pink #2, with silver leaf, TerraNova2 frit, A twistie made with Copper Green, Raku and Steel Blue and a bit of Opal Yellow and Mermaid dottage add some additional colour.