Test Results :: Medium Topaz

 

Effetre Medium Topaz (EFF014) is the colour of amber or maple syrup. Some vendors call it Root Beer.

This colour is part of a small family of topazes, which we can all appreciate because it is very nice to have a series of 3 or more tranparents that are all the same hue but at different saturation levels. We have to be more inventive to create this kind of graduated effect with other colours. I wish someone could do this with reds and oranges.

Because all of the great colours have more than one name, this one is also sometimes called Root Beer, so if you're looking for Medium Topaz and can't find it, that could be part of your problem.

Reducing Medium Topaz doesn't have any effect on it's colour.

In the rightmost bead, you can see Medium Topaz sitting smack between it's two cousins, Light Topaz and Dark Topaz.

Medium Topaz is a very vivid colour with reddish overtones, which is very appealing but maybe a little frustrating if what you really want is a medium brown colour. If you're facing this problem, consider choosing CiM Indian Summer  or CiM Maple instead, since they are less red but about the same level of saturation. Medium Topaz is brighter and more saturated than Reichenbach Amber, brighter than CiM Indian Summer, and significantly redder and darker than the old Vetrofond Streaky Topaz.

On top of Medium Topaz, silver spreads out and forms a brownish crust. When that crust is reduced and encased, it turns a bluish grey. Medium Topaz deadens silver. I encased silver foil in the rightmost bead, and usually I expect to see the silver glinting out at me with some intensity, whether the colour of it is changed or not. Medium Topaz seems to have eaten it.

Medium Topaz makes a very interesting base colour for reducing silver glass frit. I got interesting outlines around the fritty bits here, and I also got very nice colours in the frit. My TerraNova2 frit got some interesting colour in it, but everything is so dark in that bead that it seems like maybe the reaction between it and the Medium Topaz was too strong. I'll have to try this again and see what happens.

In my frit stringer test, I certainly got a reaction but instead of the blues and greens that I get with colours like Yellow, Straw Yellow, Mojito, and others I instead got a lot of grey and pale yellow with the barest hints of blue. This combined with its behaviour with silver makes me think that the Topaz family's reaction profile is a lot like that of an Ivory. That sort of makes sense based on the little I know about glass colouring and I can't help remembering that Ivory is sort of amberish when it's hot.

Medium Topaz lightens up considerably when used on top of other colours.

Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace all separated on top of Medium Topaz, but I didn't notice much in the way of reactions when the Medium Topaz was on top.

Here are some beads that include Medium Topaz:

Test Results :: Dark Emerald

Effetre Dark Emerald is a vibrant, pure medium green transparent. It is relatively inert with other colours -- even with Ivory it has only a very slight brown line reaction. I was expecting it to be more reactive than it is, so I was pleasantly surprised.

Here, you can see that reducing Dark Emerald makes no appreciable difference in itsappearance.

Dark Emerald does nothing with silver until you reduce and encase the silver - then you get faint bluish hints here and there that remind me of how silver interacts with the cobalt blues.

Dark Emerald seems to make a nice base for both reducing and striking silver glass.

And finally, here you can see how very non-reactive this colour is. You'll notice there's a weird, dark sooty line between the Ivory and Peace, but I think that is nothing to do with Dark Emerald and quite a lot to do with me needing to clean my torch head. Also, there was a batch of Peace that did this fairly easily a few years back, and it's possible that I still have a few rods of it mixed in with my newer stock.

And here are some fun beads with Dark Emerald.  On the whole, I think this colour is a bit brighter than I really like to work with. If I am going to use the rest of my stock, I think I will probably mix it with other transparent colours to see what I can do with it in blends.

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 :: 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 :: Pale Purple (Pale Amethyst)

Effetre Pale Purple (EFF046), also called Pale Amethyst, is a very pale purple transparent colour. It is not very reactive with silver or other colours, and is reasonably well-behaved in the flame, resisting my "expert" attempts at boiling it.

Overall, I quite like this colour. I don't use a lot of pale transparents in the beads I typically make, but I like having one in each hue group that I can call on reliably when I need one.

Pale Amethyst doesn't change colour when you reduce it.

Here you can see that silver stays silver under Peal Amethyst. When silver is reduced and encased on top of Pale Amethyst, it develops a bluish haze.

Pale Amethyst is a decent base colour for silver glass, but it doesn't cause any magic to happen. in the striking silver glass frit. I quite like the way the reduction frit looks.

On top of Pale Amethyst, Copper Green separates and Ivory spreads and looks 'floaty'. Ivory and Peace both spread like mad on top of it, but Opal Yellow stays crisp and thin. Other than those observations, there's not much more to see here. Pale Amethyst is not very reactive.

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 :: Light Lemon Yellow

Effetre Light Lemon Yellow is a beautiful, bright yellow opal. I call it an opal rather than a pastel/opaque, because it is transparent when pulled out into stringer and used in thin layers. It's a bit of a pain because it is quite boily, so you need to be careful not to work this colour too hot.

Light Lemon Yellow does not change colour when you reduce it.

Silver develops a greyish crust on top of Light Lemon Yellow with blue haze throughout it in places. When the silver is reduced and encased, it loses some (but not all) of this interesting colour. This is fairly consistent with other colours in the ivory/red/orange/yellow family that contain sulfur.

Light Lemon Yellow is a surprisingly good base for silver glass.  The colour of it is not really that appealing with the silver glass colours, but I guess we can't have everything. These beads make me think of the Northern Pikes song 'Nice Legs, Shame About Her Face'.

Light Lemon Yellow and Copper Green develop a reciprocal dark line reaction. Apart from that, this colour did not react strongly with any of my other standard test colours.

This bead is Light Lemon Yellow swirled with my Firefly 104 CoE frit blend.