New Raku Discoveries

I've discovered that Coyote Clay and  Color's  Gunmetal Green has some promising results with raku firing. It's a cone 6 glaze but seems to work decently at around cone 05 .  It reduces nicely and reminds me of Moretti copper green glass.  Now one thing I've noticed that even the blandest glaze ( i.e. black, clear, etc) can take on some iridescence when fired with quite a few items heavy glazed with "raku" glazes.  I'm sure this is similar to the idea of fuming glass beads with silver.  The  saturated iron glaze worked out pretty well too...at least it did what I wanted it to do, gives a nice rusty look.  I discovered this is not the case with the Really Red, obviously it needs a lot more heat.  I like the effect I got with  shino light  blue, gives sort of a rough silvery effect with pale blue.

So far I've tried Amaco raku glazes in Copper Patina, Matte Copper, Bluebell,  and Tarnished Silver.  I think my favorites have been the Copper Patina and the Bluebell.  Bluebell makes me think of verdigris and with some of the coppery reduction turns a bit pinkish.

<----copper patina

I approach raku with hopes of certain things, but very open minded to what comes out.   I had one batch where I think I should have let the temp get a bit higher but still I liked the effects of the beads. I like variation between shiny and matte.  I always gravitated to organic looks with my glass beads, I probably etched 80% of those I made.