Test Results :: Purple Rose

Reichenbach Purple Rose (RL2202) is an almost shockingly vibrant purple. It's a very, very soft colour and it boils and pits really easily if you repeatedly heat and cool it while working it.  It seems best, when using this colour, to apply it, quickly shape whatever you're working on, and then get it in the kiln as quickly as possible with minimal reheating.

This colour is very, very reactive.  Because of this colour's super softness and because of its dramatic, black reaction with Ivory, I want to guess that this colour contains lead.  It is pretty common for pinks and purples to contain lead, and you can only be sure that there is no lead if it does not do this to Ivory.  Some other colours that react similarly include Effetre EDP, Effetre Sedona, Effetre Rubino Oro, CiM Cranberry, Reichenbach Opal Raspberry, and Reichenbach Flamingo.

In the self-coloured spacers above, you can see that Purple Rose can have a lot of colour variation. The spacer on the left contains a lighter bright purple as well as a dark purple blushing.  Reducing Purple Rose brings the metals to the surface and makes it a shiny, duller greyish purple.

Purple Rose is tremendously reactive with Silver. In the bead on the left, my silver turned a bizarre blend of mustardy colours. When this reaction is reduced and encased, it is paler yellow and has really interesting texture under the clear.

It's sort of difficult to see what's going on in the bead on the left because the silver glass has been reduced and the Purple Rose reduced right along with it. It has a greyish purple mirror finish that is mottled with yellowish reaction clouds from the silver glass.  In the bead on the right, my TerraNova2 frit went sort of crazy on top of this colour. It has pinkish borders around all the little pieces, and then the fritty bits went all green and yellow.  I don't know what other colours would have appeared if I continued to strike it, but I'm pretty interested in doing this again.

Purple Rose makes Copper Green separate pretty dramatically into dark and light turquoise. When the Purple Rose is used on top of Copper Green, it makes the Copper Green float into broad halos around it, giving it a sort of cellular look. Copper Green does not develop its customary metallic sheen when used with Purple Rose.

Purple Rose also reacts really dramatically with Opal Yellow.  In the leftmost bead here, you can see that the Opal Yellow has blushed a deep yellow around the edges of the separated dots and stringer lines. This is remarkable because Opal Yellow almost never looks truly yellow. It's usually the colour of butter, and can sometimes turn pink, but I think this is the only time I've ever seen it go bright yellow. On top of Opal Yellow, Purple Rose looks more pink than purple.

Purple Rose turns Ivory into a black mess.  In the bead on the right, the Purple Rose looks almost crumpled with dark blotchiness.

Peace separates on top of Purple Rose. On top of Peace, Purple Rose spreads slightly and looks a little translucent in places.

Here are some beads that I made with Purple Rose.  I didn't have a lot of this colour, so I didn't get to have as much fun with it as I might have liked.

This goddess bead was etched because of the serious amount of devitrification, boiling, and pitting this colour did on me.  You can see the really fun variations in purple that you can get with a single rod of Purple Rose.

Test Results :: Faded Rose

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/ White

Faded Rose is the first of a few Lauscha Milky Way colours that I tried last fall and quite liked. I have no idea how to keep these Milky Way colours opalescent, but that doesn't matter very much since I'm getting interesting results with them the opaque way.

Like Thüringen Herb, Faded Rose has an interesting relationship with silver and silver glass, and is beautifully reactive. The colour of it seems to range from a light, pinky peach to a darker, more purplish pink, depending on how much it is struck and the colour(s) it is used with. It also can acquire some yellow tones, as I'll discuss below.

The reaction between Faded Rose and silver leaf is not anything like what I got when I did my testing of Thüringen Herb. On top of Faded Rose, silver leaf webs and beads up in interesting, lace-like patterns. Reduced and under clear, this lace-like pattern with its dots and whorls is still very much in evidence, although softer.  The colour of the Faded Rose under silver leaf is a murkier, dark tan-rose. When the reaction is encased, it looks more like a soft pink.

With TerraNova2 frit, the colour of the Faded Rose is not much changed, although it is clear that one side of the bead has struck more here than the other. The right side of the bead is a little pinker, and I think it got a little more heat. In the bead on the right, you can see that reducing silver glass frit is very interesting on top of Faded Rose, and that the combination of the silver and the reduction has blushed the Faded Rose to an odd yellowish-orange colour.

There is no reaction to speak of between Tuxedo and Faded Rose, but the Faded Rose looks more purple when it is used with Tuxedo.

Like with Tuxedo, Faded Rose has a more purply-pink hue when it is used with Copper Green. There is also a very fun reaction between the Faded Rose and the Copper Green, which is a light turquoise outline that occurs between the two colours. Copper Green does not seem to sheen up when used with Faded Rose, either, which is happy.

On top of Faded Rose, Opal Yellow dots go sort of soft in the middle, and look like the centres of them have collapsed. The stringer lines get a faint, clear line down their centres as well. When Faded Rose is used over Opal Yellow, it curdles the surface, with an Opal Yellow halo rising up to surround the Faded Rose dots and stringer lines.

There is not a lot of reaction to speak of between Ivory and Faded Rose, which is nice, because a lot of pinks do not get along with Ivory at all. On top of Faded Rose, the Ivory lines and dots are nice and crisp. On top of Ivory, Faded Rose kind've gets lost and the Ivory goes a little funny and translucent in patches.

On top of Faded Rose, White separates and develops a clear line down its centre. Faded Rose is not very strong on top of White.

Faded Rose (and all of the other Milky Way colours I've tried, too) make a really gorgeous base colour for organics. This bicone has a base of Faded Rose. I made a nicer one, too, but broke it getting it off the mandrel.

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 :: Sedona

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 Sedona is a temperamental, dusky pink that has occasional tendencies towards lavender. It is a blotchy, organic, beautiful colour.

Sedona has a tendency to devitrify. Like Effetre Purple (Evil Devitrifying Purple, or EDP), the secret to staying free of the devit is to get the bead glowing hot and then not heat it again. It's the incremental heating and cooling that are a real problem for these colours. I learned from Kimberly Affleck that you can also kill the devit on Sedona by lightly reducing the bead in a dragon's breath flame, which is a strong, no-oxygen flame, but I'm a wuss and I don't like turning my torch that high, so I rarely bother. I sort of like the devit, so I'm figuring out ways to make it work for me.

Try making a bead with Sedona and letting it get a really disgusting amount of devitrification. To maximize the amount of devitrification, gently re-heat and cool the Sedona bead at least five times. Then, when you think you've probably made the absolute ugliest thing ever, encase it completely with Light Aqua, melt in the encasement layer and then stick it in the kiln. Let me know what you think.

Sedona in its natural state ranges anywhere from a deep dusty rose, to a hot pink, to a pinkish lavender. You never quite know what you're going to get with Sedona. When you reduce Sedona, it turns a shiny dark purple.

Where I have added silver leaf to the Sedona, it has developed oily-looking black webbing, and has also blushed a strange orangey pink colour. Around the edges, it has yellowed. When the silver leaf is reduced and encased, a lot more yellow is evident, as well as a livid lavender colour.

Adding reducing silver glass frit to Sedona and then reducing it is not a very attractive path to go down. The silver glass frit turns a dead mustardy colour, and all around it the Sedona reduces to a dark purple. Ugh. On the other hand, Sedona is brilliant as a base for striking silver glass, if you don't mind how the Sedona gets a little orange around the frit. My TerraNova2 frit here has bloomed beautifully.

Sedona is one of the more reactive colours I've tested, and the reactions are almost identical to those I got with EDP. Copper Green, Opal Yellow and Peace all separate on top of Sedona. When Sedona is used on top of Copper Green, Opal Yellow and Peace, the base colour rises up around the Sedona in halos.

There is a reciprocal orangey reaction between Opal Yellow and Sedona - Opal Yellow on top of Sedona looks a richer, deeper yellow than usual, with a tint of Orange. Sedona on top of Opal Yellow seems to spread a little and take on an orangey hue. This reminds me of the reaction between Opal Yellow and Rubino Oro.

Ivory blackens when used with Sedona, developing a webby dark line reaction. When the Ivory is used on top of Sedona, The reaction is densely contained within the Ivory stringer dots and lines, but when Sedona is used on top of Ivory, the reaction is much less localized, and spreads like wildfire.

On top of both Tuxedo and Ivory, Sedona looks far more purple than it does pink.

Here are some fun beads with Sedona.

  

Test Results :: Pastel Blue

Reichenbach Pastel Blue (RL3203) is a gorgeous medium turquoise colour.  It's extremely soft, so maybe not the best and least frustrating choice for sculptural work, but it seems to be magical with silver glass and it's very reactive and fun with other colours.

Here's a bunch of tricolour beads that give you an idea how it compares to the other turquoises out there colour-wise.  I made these when I was playing with CiM Quetzal, which is also gorgeous. Kathy, if you're reading this, make more Quetzal please :D

Like some of the other Reichenbach glasses (Raku, Iris Dense Blue) it is very, very "fast" and I've found that it is important to be vigilant with these super-runny colours to make sure that the bead goes into the kiln very cool, otherwise it sticks to other things in there.  It's always important, of course, to be careful of this, but these supersoft, supersaturated colours remain tacky longer than most.

If you reduce Pastel Blue you get a brick red colour.  I found that this effect developed in a blotchy way, but I only did it the once and so that might have been anomaly.  Something that happened with the reduction that I was not expecting is the iridescence that developed on the surface. Most turquoises get the red patina, although it is not always this dark and rich of a red, but this is the only one I've tried that also got a shiny oilslick finish.

This colour turns silver yellow, both when it is and is not encased. The silver isn't very visible on the surface of the unreduced bead because it has dispersed across the surface, but if you reduce it and encase it, you can see that it's still very much there.  Not maybe the most attractive combination, but I like to see how all of the glasses behave with silver :)

Like other turquoises, reducing silver glass is a bit of a wash on this colour because it doesn't provide much contrast, but I got some beautiful colours out of my TerraNova2 frit.

Pastel Blue sort of lost its opacity when used on top of Tuxedo and I'm not sure how to describe what happened. My Pastel Blue dots and lines on top of Tuxedo have a translucent, battered appearance and look almost purple in places.  And then in the rightmost bead, you can see that when I used Tuxedo on top of Pastel Blue, nothing interesting happened at all. Weird.

Pastel Blue separates on top of Copper Green, and Copper Green separates on top of Pastel Blue. Reciprocity!

Pastel Blue loses some of its opacity and develops a dark vein of blueness through the centre of stringer lines drawn on top of Opal Yellow. On top of Pastel Blue, Opal Yellow separates and looks distinctly yellow. Much yellower than it looked when I used it as the base colour.

Pastel Blue and Ivory develop a black line reaction between them. As an added bonus, Pastel Blue takes on a mottled appearance on top of Ivory which I rather like. This is worth doing more of.

I had a bit of a brain fart when I made these beads and after making the one with the Pastel Blue base, I couldn't figure out whether I'd used Opal Yellow or Peace where I was meant to be placing the Peace stringer lines and dots.  To compensate, I made an extra bead that had Peace on top of Pastel Blue, just in case. In that extra little bead, you can see that on top of Pastel Blue, Peace does not really react at all.  On top of Peace, Pastel Blue spreads and looks translucent.

I only had a small amount of this colour, so I haven't been able to do much with it.  I made these beads with Pastel Blue, Purple Rose, and something else that I don't remember.

 

Test Results :: Mulberry

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

CiM Mulberry is a juicy shade of purple with a bit of a magenta leaning to it. It's dreamy to use - so buttery soft and nice to melt, but a few of my rods also had a tendency to splinter, which is a sharp jolt back to reality when a piece lands on the back of your hand.

In terms of its colour, it seems to me like a combination of Plum and Eggplant. It's more opaque than Plum (more like Eggplant) but it is pinker than Eggplant, with more of the soft pinkish-purple of Plum.

Silver goes an odd brownish colour on top of Mulberry, but otherwise pretty much stays put. When the silver is reduced and encased, it gets blue patches in it. This encased Mulberry/Silver Leaf bead on the right cracked, but it cracked right down the mandrel line which means it might just have been my own stupid fault. However, it also might mean that Mulberry doesn't like being encased with Effetre 006 Clear. More experimentation would be required to know for sure which.

On top of Mulberry, silver glass develops colour really well. Mulberry also seems to do a weird thing that pushes the silver glass away from the edges of the bead. If you look at these two beads, I rolled them in silver glass frit exactly the same way I usually, do, but there is almost no silver glass bits near the bead holes at all. Strange.

The TerraNova2 got beautiful colour on top of Mulberry. I sort of already said that, but I feel like saying it again. It's hard to find these good 'accelerating' bases for silver glass, so when I find one I get pretty happy about it.

Mulberry is sort of reactive, but the reactions are not very interesting when other colours are used on top of it. It has a dispersing, watercolouring impact when stringerwork is done on top of it which makes the reactions sort of hard to read.

Mulberry is very interesting, though, on top of Copper Green and Opal Yellow. In the bead on the right, you can see how the dots of Mulberry on top of Copper Green resulted in a dark transparent outline, then a whiteish ring and finally the purple of the Mulberry shyly peeking out of the middle. It causes Opal Yellow to curdle underneath it fairly violently and spring up in big halos. These two effects are very cool and worthy of additional study.

Here are some fun beads with Mulberry.

This is Mulberry over a core of something blue (don't remember) and then subsequently encased with more things blue. The rose murrini are Effetre Bubblegum and Kugler Golden.

Mulberry is used in the base of this bead, over top of a base of Dark Violet and is then encased with Light Aqua (I think).

Here I've mixed Mulberry with other colours, however I don't remember which ones. I think some Kugler Golden was involved, and some Bubblegum or Pink Alabastro.  The resulting hand-mixed colour was used to encase a dark violet core. The stripe of purple down the right-hand side of the bead is Mulberry.