Making test tiles of new colors to test their performance and to get a sense of their fired color ahead of creating a composition is an important aspect of any enamelist’s practice, as many enamels perform differently depending on what metal they are fired over, if a flux was applied between the metal and the enamel, and fire to look very differently than they appear as a powder in the jar. So, when Cool Tools brought on the new line of Pearly’s Enamels, the very first thing I did was cut up some copper so I could test the colors out and see how they fired over different surfaces. These test tiles are available for everyone to view on the product pages of the enamels, but I wanted to summarize the results and provide some insight into these colors that I gained by creating the test tiles.
First off, I was very pleased with the performance of the Pearly’s Enamels; they were vibrant, and even when unwashed they were very clear and transparent. Some of the colors are absolutely gem-like with lovely saturation, others subtle and lovely in their soft hue. I can’t wait to use them in future projects, in combination with metal clay or traditionally.
The first colors I wanted to test out were the transparent pinks, as it can be difficult to get a true pink when enameling, especially on silver. Like the pink enamels I have worked with up to this point, they turned slightly orange when applied to silver directly, especially when applied as a thin coat. All of the pinks, and Hot Pink (EPT-312) in particular, benefited from a clear flux being applied to the silver before applying the pink enamels. When a flux was applied, the pinks remained true to pink and I was very pleased with the resulting color. Up next I was eager to explore the purple Pearly Enamels. Purples are another tricky color to get on silver as they can turn yellow, but I was very pleasantly surprised to see that even when applied directly to the silver without a flux the purples remained purple and looked lovely over the silver.
There weren’t too many other surprises, and the enamels all performed well and as I would like an enamel to fire. The blues, greens, grays, and yellows all looked great directly on silver. One thing I did note while looking at the samples, is that the blues and grays benefit from a flux applied over copper, as that helps to tone down the orange undertone of the copper which can otherwise muddy the colors. That is typical of any transparent blue or gray over copper though, and was not a surprise.
Overall, I really enjoyed working with the Pearly enamels, and anticipate using them as my primary enamel for most of my upcoming projects. They are leaded enamels, so precautions such as wearing a mask when sifting, and firing in a well ventilated environment should be taken when working with these enamels. The minor inconvenience of working with a mask on, seemed to me, a small cost to pay for the resulting beautiful colors of these leaded enamels.
