Test Results :: Antique Ivory

Effetre Antique Ivory (EFF481) is a dark ivory-coloured glass that has a similar reaction profile to Light Ivory and Dark Ivory but it is just a little more muted in hue. Like the ivories, this reacts interestingly with silver and makes good Silvered Ivory Stringer.

Here, you can see that Antique Ivory doesn't change colour when you reduce it.

Silver darkens Antique Ivory and crusts up on its surface. When the reaction is reduced and encased, the darkening of the Antique Ivory goes away.

Like Light and Dark Ivory, this colour makes a good base colour for silver glass. The colour develops well on top of it, and it has interesting blackening/crinkling at the edges of the fritty bits, too.

Apologies for the dirt you can see on the Tuxedo end of the leftmost bead. It's been hard to find time to do anything bead-related over the last few months and I don't have the energy to retake that photo.

You can see in the rightmost bead here the Antique Ivory curdling underneath the other colours I used it with. Like Light and Dark Ivory, this colour gets a dark line around it when used with Copper Green, although the line is more subtle with this colour when the Antique Ivory is on top.  Ivory spreads out on top of this colour.

The edges of Tuxedo dots and stringer lines get all blurry on top of this colour but, interestingly, Antique Ivory on top of Tuxedo seems not to be a reactive pairing. 

Like Light and Dark Ivory, this colour forms a subtle brown line reaction with Opal Yellow.

Here are some fun little pairs that include Antique Ivory.

Test Results :: Camouflage

CiM Camouflage (CiM464) is a medium. green opaque glass. It's quite streaky, separating on itself in lacelike patterns, and this behaviour seems to be aggravated by the addition of silver, becoming more pronounced. It reacts with Ivory, and my experiment with encasing it met with some cracking failure. My rods of this colour were extremely shocky, and I didn't enjoy using them at all. I only tried three, though, so that should probably not be taken as indicative of the whole batch's behaviour.

Here, I've shot Camouflage and Amphibian spacers, side by side. You can see that Camouflage is darker and greener than Amphibian, which has a softer, slightly bluer and greyer hue.

In the leftmost bead here, you can see the strange crazing lines that this colour developed. The beads are both single-colour but I probably added to the larger one multiple times from the same source rod. I don't think the lines developed along the additions, though, the way we see with some colours.

The bead on the left in this picture has silver leaf added to it, and the crazing of the surface is much more pronounced than it was in the spacer bead. When this kind of crazing or reticulation happens in other colours (like Dark Ivory, for instance) we call it 'curdling', but for some reason I am having trouble associating that word with something this colour.

In the rightmost bead, you can see that my reduced and encased silver leaf developed a yellowish cast under the clear. You can also see some unfortunate cracks that seem like they are incompatibility. I encased here with Effetre 006 Clear.

I sometimes have this problem with greens after I've added silver to them and encase, but then I'll try to encase another bead the same size and shape without the silver but with the same clear and get a better, crack-free result. I am not a chemist, but my working theory is that the silver changes the CoE or viscosity of either the colour or the clear (or both) in just the right amount to cause this problem.

In the bead on the left, I got some pretty colours from my reduction frit, and there is interesting fuming on the base bead underneath it. My TerraNova2 frit got a nice starting strike, but no magic happened.

Camouflage seems to separate on top of every other colour - it's not a very cohesive colour.

It develops a gentle brown line reaction with Ivory, both when over or under it. In addition to the brownish outline, when Ivory is used on top of Camouflage, it separates quite dramatically.

Using more reactive colours over Camouflage like Copper Green or Opal Yellow seemed to exacerbate its separation/crazing.

Here are some additional beads made with Camouflage.

Test Results :: Chrysalis

CiM Chrysalis (CiM462)  is a very pretty, almost-opaque robin's egg blue. 

When Chrysalis is reduced, it loses some of its vibrancy. You can see that in the rightmost bead, the colour is subtly greyed out and muted.

Silver webs and turns a golden colour on top of Chrysalis. When the silver is reduced and encased, it turns whiteish.

It's amazing how different the same reducing silver glass frit blend can look, depending on what colour you put under it. If you look at my other recent blog posts, you'll notice that the frit looks much greener on top of this colour, and that there is a yellowish blush around the fritty bits that I don't see with a lot of other colours. Not that this result was particularly attractive to me, but it is certainly different. My TerraNova2 frit did not develop colour well on top of Chrysalis.

Chrysalis is very reactive with other colours. It separated on top of Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, and Ivory. And maybe Peace - it's hard to see because both colours are so light. Peace, Ivory, Opal Yellow, and Copper Green all separated on top of Chrysalis.

The other interesting thing is the blotchiness that Chrysalis seems to cause both when used on top of other colours, curdling them, and when used underneath other colours, curdling itself.

Here are some fun beads made with Chrysalis.

Test Results :: Bonnie Blue

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

I have deep love for this colour... the kind of love that drives people to hoard glass. Unfortunately, I talked myself out of participating in Frantz Art Glass' Black Friday sale, so I don't have a whole lot of it, and if you all agree with me that this is possibly the nicest blue glass ever, I will miss my chance to get more.  This colour really shines on its own, and is also really nice in a base bead, under clear where it won't react with anything. It is also weirdly compelling on top of Opal Yellow.

Effetre Bonnie Blue seems to be a light blue opaque layered with two different colours of blue transparent - one on the teal side, and the other more aqua. Whatever they did at the factory, the result is a magical, streaky and beautiful.

When you reduce Bonnie Blue, it develops a patchy reddish reduction coating. I won't ever do this on purpose again, but if you have a use for this effect it's nice to know how to make it happen.

When silver leaf is melted into the surface of Bonnie Blue, a couple of strange things happen. First, the silver turns sort of yellow in places. Second, where it is darker, almost a dark grey, the silver has beaded up on the surface slightly. When the silver is reduced and encased, no good comes of it - it's yellow and brown and really sort of gross-looking.

Bonnie Blue also isn't a big winner with silver glass. My reducing silver glass frit sort of turned brown in places, and while I got some decent shine out of it the blues of the silver glass frit don't really bring out the beauty of the base colour. My TerraNova2 frit didn't really develop nice colour on top of Bonnie Blue and looks sort of sad and brown in places.

In terms of colour reactions, there are some interesting things to report.

On top of Tuxedo, the edges of my Bonnie Blue seem to have curdled slightly, and the streakiness of the Bonnie Blue is really evident. Nothing so interesting happens when things are turned upside down and it is Tuxedo on top of Bonnie Blue.

Bonnie Blue causes Copper Green to separate when Copper Green is used on top of it, and when Bonnie Blue is used on top of Copper Green it helps Copper Green to looks pretty and turquoise and not develop that greyish sheen it seems to like having when used by itself or with other colours.

I am oddly attracted to what happens to Bonnie Blue on top of Opal Yellow - the streakiness of it is accentuated and the stringer lines and dots look almost weirdly rippled on top of Opal Yellow in the bead on the left. When Opal Yellow is used on top of Bonnie Blue, it just looks like Opal Yellow.

Bonnie Blue and Ivory have a reciprocal dark line reaction, which because of the streakiness and semi-transparency of the Bonnie Blue in places is echoed all through the stringer lines and dots in my test bead where I used it on top of Ivory. This reaction is fairly strong - even in the bead on the right you can see that the Ivory has a dark line around it but is also pretty thoroughly shaded and discoloured on the inside of the stringerwork.

Peace and Bonnie Blue co-exist without doing anything noteworthy.

Here are some fun beads made with this colour. I used Bonnie Blue in the base of the mushroom bead.

And here is a really bad picture of the goddess bead I made with Bonnie Blue. I'm posting it only because I'm too lazy to try to take another picture, and so that you can see how pretty the colour looks when used in a sculptural piece. Please excuse the lint.

Test Results :: Banana Cream

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

Vetrofond Banana Cream is, hands down, my favourite yellow opaque glass. When it comes to yellow glass, I am really picky. I don't like 'acid' yellows so much - I like my yellows sort of toned down. I also appreciate yellows that have interesting working properties.

Banana Cream is sort of weird while it's melting. It goes translucent and seems to have sparkles all through it. These sparkles and the translucency resolve themselves into an opaque yellow when it cools, but it's really fun to watch it while it's molten.

On top of Banana Cream, silver leaf forms an opaque, shiny layer that is mottled grey, blue and gold. When this reaction is reduced and encased, it forms a snowy, bluish blanket over the yellow underneath the clear.

Adding silver to Banana Cream fumes it a richer, brownish yellow colour -- particularly when the bead is reduced. It seems to make a nicer base for the reducing silver glasses than it does the strikers, if the results above are representative. The only issue I have with the reducing silver glasses on Banana Cream is that the blues and yellow sort of clash.

You can see in the bead on the left how Banana Cream can be a sort of mottled colour. Particularly on top of Copper Green, you can see how it is much yellower in some places than others.

There is a faint reaction with Tuxedo on both of the test beads, above, however it is very subtle. In the bead on the left, you can see that the edges of the Banana Cream stringer lines have curdled in places. In the bead on the right, there is a very faint, thin yellow outline surrounding the dots and lines of Tuxedo.
On top of Copper Green, in addition to the mottledness noted above (which is not specific to a reaction with Copper Green) you can see a dark outline around the Banana Cream. A similar dark outline appears when Copper Green is used on top of Banana Cream, however in that case the Copper Green also separates slightly, making the effect even more three-dimensional.

On top of Opal Yellow, most of the 'extra yellow' in Banana Cream seems to migrate to the edges of the lines and dots I made with the stringer, a subtle separation effect. It also seems to get a translucent line around it, making the dots and stringer lines seem to be lifted a little above the surface of the Opal Yellow. Opal Yellow on top of Banana Cream develops a brown line reaction.

There isn't much in the way of reaction with Ivory, which makes sense since Ivory and Banana Cream belong to the same family of sulfur colours.

Peace separates slightly on top of Banana Cream, and I also got some greyness although that might have been my fault rather than to do with any reaction. on top of Peace, Banana Cream's mottledness is very pronounced, and like with Opal Yellow, a faint translucent edge to the dots and stringer lines make them look like they are raised slightly off the bead.
Here are some fun beads with Banana Cream.

The more you work Banana Cream, the yellower it strikes.

Test Results :: Dark Ivory (Effetre)

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

Note: The picture above has an error. Bead #5 is made of Vetrofond Dark Ivory, not Effetre. I made the same error in the Vetrofond Dark Ivory test results. I no longer have the beads, so I was unable to retake this picture, but the problem is now corrected in the body of the post, below.

Effetre Dark Ivory is a light, neutral colour, and is very reactive with colours that contain silver or copper. It is a colour that spreads like crazy on top of other colours, particularly transparents. The more you heat most batches of Dark Ivory, the crazier it gets.

A couple of years ago, there was this (for lack of a better word) 'craze' about something called 'Curdled Ivory' that has still not completely fizzled yet. And apparently this most recent 'Curdled Ivory' craze is not the first one in beadmaking history -- I know people who have been around a lot longer than I have who say it's the third or fourth time history has repeated itself over the last twenty years or so.

I've made some beads with rods from the three different lots of Dark Ivory that I have gathering dust in my garage, which to be sure, represent only a tiny fraction of the different batches that have ever been made. Here is a picture of the three different batches that are in my possession.

The first bead is made with a batch of Dark Ivory that I got that does not curdle at all. It's annoying, hateful, crappy Dark Ivory if you happen to prefer the curdly kind, and if you use this batch to make silvered ivory stringer, after you use the silvered stringer on a bead it bears a disappointing resemblance to dirty, melted plastic. However... this batch of Dark Ivory is sort of nice as a base colour, can develop really nice caramel tones when fumed with silver and is not, on the whole, bad glass. Rods from this batch are totally smooth, are paler than normal Dark Ivory, have only a faint white fleck on the rod ends to indicate that they are even Dark Ivory at all, and mine are slightly larger in diameter than usual, more in the 6mm range.

The second bead is made with what is known as 'Curdled Ivory'. This is a pretty nice batch of Dark Ivory, and gets beautiful reticulation effects when it is heated. I bought this during the Curdled Ivory Rush. Rods from this batch are rough along one side, are often slightly oval in profile rather than round and have a pronounced white spot when you look at the ends. They can be sort of bumpy, look sort of sparkly and make great silvered ivory stringer.

The third bead is made with the newest batch of Dark Ivory, which has been available from Frantz Art Glass for the last few months, and may or may not have made its way yet to your local glass shop. It is gorgeous glass, and is at least as reticulating (my test beads say more) as what we knew as 'Curdled Ivory'. Rods from this batch look sort of oddly dark for Dark Ivory, are fairly rough in texture and have a pronounced white fleck on the cut ends. My rods from this batch all seem slightly smaller in diameter than what I am accustomed to from Dark Ivory.

So, at risk of just boring you completely to tears with my opinion on this whole Dark Ivory thing, what I think has happened is this:

• Dark Ivory curdled, sometimes more and sometimes less, for years and years prior to 2008
• Then, a great big batch of Dark Ivory that didn't do the nice things we were used to was sold to the distributors, and was carried to the four corners of the earth. Some places maybe didn't get any because they already had lots of previous batches. Some places maybe got a lot of it. (I know we still have some for sale here in BC at our local glass vendors)
• Then, when Frantz Art Glass finally ran out of that disappointing batch of Dark Ivory, they ordered more and good Dark Ivory was once again available to us here in North America. This caused a BIG STIR.
• Now, "Curdled Ivory" is more common than the other kind of Dark Ivory, but essentially, it's just the way Dark Ivory is supposed to be. It was the non-curdly stuff that was the anomaly.

So... If you are in the market for Curdled Ivory, you can definitely get Dark Ivory from Frantz Art Glass currently that is at least as nice as (and I think nicer than) the batch of Dark Ivory that has recently received all of this attention. And the good news is that it's dirt cheap.

Now, on to the test results. These test beads have been made with the most-recently available batch of Effetre Dark Ivory.

Reducing Dark Ivory brings out rich, caramel tones in the glass.

At first glance, one might say that Dark Ivory and silver don't get along at all. And that would be true. There's definitely a chaotic war going on across the surface of these beads. But it's such a cool, grey, brown, silvery, curdly war that it's practically impossible to not want to do this over and over again. The effect is largely unchanged when the bead is reduced and encased.

Reducing silver glass is pretty cool on top of Effetre Dark Ivory. I got some pretty, subtle curdling with the reducing silver glass frit. Like with Vetrofond Dark Ivory, the reduction frit has developed an interesting double outline of black + silver in a lot of places.

I am not as excited by what happened in the bead on the right with the TerraNova2 frit. The frit was sort of sluggish about developing colour.

On top of Tuxedo, the edges of Dark Ivory thin out a little like it is going to spread, but the centres of dots and stringer lines get a sort of concentrated Ivory dose. The middle of the stringer lines seem to have a faint, darker line running up the centre. When Tuxedo is used on top of Dark Ivory, it seems to bleed slightly. As well, you can see the Dark Ivory exercising one if its superpowers (spreading) where it's trying to climb up on top of the Tuxedo in a fuzzy, milk-moustache kind of way.

On top of Copper Green, Dark Ivory develops a thick, black outline. The Dark Ivory also develops an interesting brownish webbing effect, and like with Tuxedo, a thin dark line running up the middle of the stringer lines. When it's used on top of Dark Ivory, Copper Green seems to snuggle right in. The Copper Green dots and stringer lines are uniform and dark-ringed, but the Dark ivory outside of the outline that forms is a curdled, chaotic mess of brown webbing and weirdness.

On top of Opal Yellow, Dark Ivory looks sort of weird and congealed. It has developed a sort of dark line reaction, but it has also caused the Opal Y ellow to separate. As a result, it looks very three-dimensional, even though it is melted into the surface of the Opal Yellow completely. On top of Dark Ivory, Opal Yellow turns an odd shade of Grey and curdles with the Dark Ivory underneath it.

On top of Light Ivory, Dark Ivory spreads. The effect is interesting, because it seems to create crevices in the Ivory beneath it, although the surface of the bead in actuality is completely uniform. On top of Dark Ivory, Light Ivory seems to sink in, making the lines and dots look thinner. The stringer dots and lines have a greyish, darker centre to them.

Dark Ivory seems to separate on top of Peace, but it's just that dark line through the centre, that seems to happen  no matter what you put it on top of.

Here are some fun beads with Effetre Dark Ivory.

 

Test Results :: Sea Foam

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/ Silver Glass Frit (as stringer, encased in Clear), 8 & 9 - w/ Tuxedo, Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace

As you can see in the picture above, CiM Sea Foam is a pretty reactive colour. It is a Limited Run, and seems to be an odd lot of Kryptonite, although the reactions I got with Sea Foam are far more intense than the reactions with Kryptonite were. Sea Foam is a little greener and a little brighter in colour than Kryptonite. I didn't order any of this colour (and have since sort of put myself on a buying freeze) but I really wish I had because I think it is a colour with a lot of interesting possibilities. I did get some Mint Lozenge, though, so here's hoping that one behaves similarly.

Like Kryptonite, Sea Foam is one of those rare blue/green colours that does not get a dark line with Ivory, it does all kinds of exciting things with other colours, and it gets really weird with reduced silver glass. All of these things make it really appealing to me.

On top of Sea Foam, Silver sort of fizzles out and turns yellow. Reducing and encasing the silver gives you a strange, lacy web under a layer of clear with some brown and yellow discolouration.  Neat, right?

Sea Foam is neat with silver glass. My TerraNova2 frit, although I didn't get the most vibrant strike out of it, has bloomed in interesting ways, and there is a hint of a yellow halo around the frit pieces. When I used reducing silver glass on top of Sea Foam, the Sea Foam turned noticeably more green in colour, and an oilslick of brownish yellow reaction surrounds the frit bits. The frit has also broken up and marbled in a very interesting way.  Yum.

 

It is possible that Sea Foam is one of the most reactive colours I have yet tested. You can see in the two beads above that while Sea Foam and Tuxedo have no reaction at all, the test results with Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace are all crazy.

Copper Green

Copper Green on top of Sea Foam yields a rare three-ring reaction.  A light line forms around the Copper Green lines and stringer dots, and then the Copper Green separates into two distinctly different colours - a darker, shiny pinkish version of itself and a deep teal opaque version of itself. When Sea Foam is used on top of Copper Green, it breaks up and forces the copper green into a light turquoise vs. dark turquoise situation.

Opal Yellow and Ivory

Opal Yellow on top of Sea Foam separates into a dark, translucent yellow and a pale, ivory version of itself. The Sea Foam underneath it gets all kinds of strange cracquelure, which is visible in the Opal Yellow dots and stringer lines as well. This is similar to what happened when I used Opal Yellow with Ming. When the Sea Foam is on top of Opal Yellow, the same reaction happens in reverse, and the Sea Foam definitely looks more blue than green.

With Ivory, the reaction is exactly the same as with Opal Yellow except that the Sea Foam dots and stringer lines on top of Ivory look more aquamarine in colour than blue.

Peace

Sea Foam makes Peace separate into an opaque and translucent, both when it is under Peace and when it is over it. This reaction does not have the same kind of curdling craziness that the reactions with Opal Yellow and Ivory do.

I didn't really make anything fun with Sea Foam, but I think I still have a little bit. If I find it and something cool comes of that, I'll be back to do an update.