Test Results :: Light Gray

Effetre Light Gray (EFF248) is an elephantine opaque colour. It is somewhat reactive with Ivory, fairly inert with other colours, and makes an interesting base colour for silver and silver glass.

When you reduce it, Light Grey 'browns up' a little.

Silver on top of Light Grey turns yellowish and pinkish. When the silver is reduced and encased, it loses this interesting colour.

Reducing silver glass spreads and develops a nice sheen on top of Light Gray. I got a decent starting strike from my TerraNova2 on top of this colour, and like the pale halos that I can see around the TerraNova2 fritty bits.

Light Gray separates a little on top of Tuxedo.

Ivory and Light Gray develop a reciprocal dark line reaction. In the case where the Ivory is on top, the result is a dark line that almost looks like a shadow. When the Light Gray is on top, the reaction is crackly and intermittent, giving the stringer lines and dots a translucent, jagged appearance.

Here are some other beads that include Light Gray:

Test Results :: Black Marble

Effetre Black Marble (EFF774) is a streaky, dark brown-black colour that has the same consistency as Effetre Dark Ivory. Also like Dark Ivory, it does a crazy reticulation thing that looks like little cells of different shades of brown and ivory in between veins of darker colour. It's in this glass' reactions to other colours where some big differences lie.

On a bit of a side note, this colour does not look like marble, and it is also not really black. It's more of a 'rich farmland soil' kind of dark, streaky brown.

Black Marble doesn't really change much when it is reduced. It's possible that the bead on the right got a bit darker, but it's hard to be sure since this colour has so much variation anyway.

Here I did Black Marble as stringer (wrapped about three times) on the left side of the bead and then the same amount of Silvered Black Marble on the right side. The silvered stringer is darker overall (my best guess is that the silver reacted with whatever ivory-like glass forms the lighter streaks?) and has tiny flecks of silver in it that make me happy. I made the Silvered Black Marble the same way I make Silvered Dark Ivory.

I sort of expected this colour to behave the same way with silver as light and dark ivory glasses do, but I was wrong. The silver leaf on the surface of this colour is a more interesting light golden hue. When I reduced and encased the silver, the golden-ness went away and it blushed blue in places which I have not had it do with ivory glasses.

Silver glass is very beautiful on top of Black Marble, which seems to make a decent base colour for both reducing and striking colors.

Black Marble has a much milder version of the same reaction profile as Ivory - which is to say that it does a gentle dark line reaction with Copper Green, and it is also gently reactive with Opal Yellow. Because both colours are spready, you can see where Ivory and Black Marble were used together that there is some interesting bleed at the edges of the stringer dots and lines.

My most important takeaway from these beads is that Black Marble is really awesome as stringer.

Here are some other beads that include Black Marble:

Test Results :: Bayou

CiM Bayou (CiM469) is a beautifully reactive, light to medium grey opaque colour. On CiM's website, you will find it described as grey-green or as having a hint of green, but my experience of this colour is that it is grey. I didn't see any greenish tones in it at all until I tried it with silver.

Bayou is a bit of a striker, going a touch browner and a touch darker when I reduced it.

Silver leaf on top of Bayou makes it blush a greenish yellow colour. When the silver is reduced and encased, it looks white.

Bayou is a very interesting base colour for silver glass. I love the starting strike I got in my TerraNova2 frit with this colour.

Tuxedo makes Bayou rise up around it in little separation halos.

Bayou separates on top of Copper Green and Opal Yellow.

Ivory and Bayou have a mutual dark line reaction. On top of Ivory, Bayou both separates and develops a dark line against the Ivory. Putting Bayou on top of Ivory made it look darker and bluer.

Here are some other beads that contain Bayou:

Test Results :: Oracle Black

Double Helix Oracle Black is an interesting addition to our black glass options. It is a little freaky to work with, because when you pull it out into stringer it looks blue, not black and it continues to look blue while you are working with it in thin layers but it changes back to black in the kiln.

This colour is a magical base colour for silver and silver glass, and has some very interesting reactions with other colours, but it is not useful for stringerwork because it loses cohesion pretty quickly when it is heated and bleeds into other colours.

Nothing happens to Oracle Black when you reduce it.

Here I decided to test Oracle Black in comparison to CiM Hades and Reichenbach Deep Black to see how it performed as stringer.  The base colour of both beads is Oracle White.

Making the bead on the left, I heated it what I consider a 'normal' amount (your normal may vary) and then gave the rightmost bead what I would consider to be a 'ridiculous' amount of heat.  As you can see, Reichenbach Deep Black stayed together in both situations, but the Hades and Oracle Black both came apart. The Hades spread less and more evenly than the Oracle Black, which in the bead on the right looks like a black and blue smear.  Even in the bead where I thought my heat was 'normal' the Hades and Oracle Black did not entirely stay together.

This means that Deep Black is still my go-to black for when I need the black to behave itself, but as you will see Oracle Black has its own set of superpowers, so I imagine I'll be needing some more of it as well.

The leftmost bead here has silver leaf over Oracle Black, and has turned a mottled blue. It's a very interesting change, and I imagine that there are fun ways to exploit this effect. Reducing and encasing the silver makes it less beautiful, but it remains interesting and silvery under the clear.

In both of these beads, I got very nice reactions from the silver glass. The reducing silver glass got fun curdled edges around it and transmitted some of its silvery haze onto the Oracle Black. In the rightmost bead, I got a nicer-than-usual starting strike from my TerraNova2 frit making me think this colour might be a good catalyst for striking silver glass.

So I spent some time talking about how Oracle Black loses cohesion in that Oracle White example above, but if you look at the bead on the right you can see that it held itself together well on top of these other colours. On top of Copper Green it developed a very odd purple border, but that border is a faint greyish shadow on top of Ivory, Opal Yellow, and Peace.

However, absolutely bonkers things happened when I put Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace on top of Oracle Black.  The edges of my Copper Green got a little frayed by the Oracle Black base, but click into the image above and get a good look at the edges of the other three colours.

Opal Yellow looks like its edges are curdling, Ivory has a pale, mottled border, and the Peace is positively bizarre, developing a wide pale blue outline around all the stringer dots and lines.  I am imagining that some fun could be have with exploiting these reactions in a more intentional way, and I am very curious to see how Oracle Black behaves when used to handmix other colours from it.

I made a couple of other beads with Oracle Black, but unfortunately cannot figure out at this point which ones they were, so I will have to get some more and come back to update this post.

Test Results :: Oracle White

Double Helix Oracle White is a white, opaque glass. It is stiffer than either Peace or Effetre White, and reacts similarly to silver as other white glasses do, but its reactions with other colours are more unique.

Because this colour is stiffer, it is well-suited to applications like stringer and sculptural work. As you'll see, Oracle White is a little more translucent, so when it is used on top of a dark colour in thin layers, a tint of the base colour shows through. Because more light passes through it, Oracle White's colour is a little brighter than that of either CiM Peace or Effetre White.

This white  also seems like it is a little more difficult to smear than other whites, making it great for flower petals in encased florals.

Oracle White does not change when you reduce it.

Here is CiM Peace, Double Helix Oracle White, and Effetre White all side-by-each on top of Oracle Black. Oracle White is a bit less opaque than either Peace or Effetre White, but not so much that it doesn't show well over a dark colour. It still covers reasonably well, so if you happen to be looking for a cooler, lighter effect, it can be a good choice for stringerwork.

If you blow the picture up really big, you can see that Oracle White and Peace both get a slight border around them on top of the Oracle Black.

Here I mixed Oracle White and Effetre White with Effetre Light Cobalt. Light Cobalt is a really saturated colour, and I thought it would be a good test to evaluate whether Oracle White is more translucent than Effetre White and CiM Peace because it is less saturated, or if there might be some other reason. In my results, the blue that resulted from the Oracle White mix is a bit darker, which helps to support my theory that this White is slightly less saturated than the CiM and Effetre ones.

Oracle White's reactions with silver are very similar to what I experienced with other Whites. If you're interested, you can look back at my test results for other whites: Effetre White, CiM Peace, Ornela Chalk White, Lauscha Kryolith White, Reichenbach White.

In the bead on the left, I've reduced silver glass frit on top of Oracle White, and you can see that it has fumed the White yellow in places. The bead on the right has TerraNova2 frit. It is probably very possible to get silver glass to strike well on top of this colour, but what I am testing when I do this particular test is to see if the base colour has any magic in it that will make getting great colour out of the silver glass easier. Wait until you see my silver and silver glass tests on Oracle Black, and you will see what I mean by 'magic'.

Tuxedo spreads on top of this colour, bleeding into it, and Oracle White separates on top of Ivory. These reactions are not like the reactions I've had with other whites.

Here are some other beads that include Oracle White:

Test Results :: Porpoise

Porpoise (CiM828) is a medium grey opaque. When it is molten, it is disconcertingly green in colour. I thought for sure that the finished beads would be greenish, but they aren't in the least.

Reducing Porpoise turns it brown.

Porpoise seems to fall somewhere between Effetre Light Gray and Effetre Dark Gray in hue. It's much darker than Pearl Grey, and less blue/green than Bayou, another new CiM colour.

On top of Porpoise, reduced silver turns yellow under encasement.

Porpoise gets an interesting light border around TerraNova2 frit, and the colours really popped in my reduction frit bead. It seems like it might be an interesting base colour for silver glass.

Porpoise separates on top of Tuxedo, Copper Green, and Peace. It spreads out on top of Opal Yellow, and develops a brownish dark line reaction with Ivory.

On top of Porpose, Copper Green separates and Ivory develops a dark shadow line around its edges that looks like it has texture.

These beads contain some Porpoise.