CiM: Messy Color™ Ghee, A yellow opal that varies widely in results when worked, sometimes soft yellow, sometimes amber.

Messy Color™ Ghee

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A yellow opal that varies widely in results when worked, sometimes soft yellow, sometimes amber.

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"When worked for over an hour, Ghee changes color from its normal butter-yellow to a gold-amber-burgundy-purple." – Joy Munshower

Click here for other interesting Ghee discoveries.

Jolene Wolfe

Robert Jennik

Joy Munshower

Darlene Collette

Lori Bergmann

CiM Tester Feedback

Testers report that Ghee turns more caramel colored the more you work it.

"Ghee is amazingly beautiful! It looks like Amber. It strikes very rich tones of brown almost kind of caramely. This is also a switch from a HH. On a HH, Ghee is just yellow, no rich browns or caramels at all. I think the shift from yellow to amber colored is due to the heat of a Minor." – Genea Crivello

"Ghee is best worked in a neutral to oxidizing flame. I worked both hot and cool and felt that the only real trouble came from working in too much of a reduction flame rather than the heat. Ghee looks like toasted melted butter or light caramel under a reduction atmosphere." – Bonnie Polinski

"It goes when hot, it turns white, and then strikes back to yellow. It can be struck more or less - so if you do nothing to strike it - it will go a light colour, like the rod, and if you work it longer, it will develop more colour." Read more at DragonJools blog. – Dwyn Tomlinson

"And my other favorite color is......Ghee! I absolutely love all the different colors I can get from this glass. I was able to produce colors from dark brown to an almost mauve." – Jan Whitesel-Keeton

"It became more opaque and darker the more I worked it. The faster I finished with a bead and the less heat used, the more translucent and lighter yellow it was, compared to a darker, almost mustard yellow if I had to use a lot of heat and/or work it longer in a design." – Lori Bergmann

"Not a WYSIWYG color. It goes through lots of stages in colors but does stay in the vanilla yellow/cake batter yellow ranges unless worked for a longer time in the flame…then it can go brown. It seemed the less time worked and manipulated the softer and more opaly yellow it stayed. My best advice to keeping the yellow opal look is to work less time and in cooler flame. Encasing it also helps keep the color soft and opaly yellow." – Sue Stewart

"The longer you work this glass, the more opaque it becomes. If worked for a short time you can retain the opalescent color. The color gets darker when reduced." – Teri Yount

Testers report that Ghee is difficult to work with.

"I would call this glass difficult for the problems I had with carbon trap as well as the experience needed to get consistent or desired results. I think it requires patience and careful striking to get either the translucent golden buttered caramel color as opposed to the opal yellow or opaque butter color." – Bonnie Polinski

"I did not really like Ghee as the tendency to turn caramel was too different from the original color and was not a consistent color, making it difficult to develop consistent color combinations with other glasses. Also, the Ghee's color changes continue during annealing." – Carol Oliver

"It is tricky to keep the color I want in a design. I wish it could stay a consistent, light buttery color!" – Lori Bergmann

Testers report that Ghee changes depending on your annealing process.

"Annealed high, Ghee yields a deep earthy yellow rust tone. Capable of yielding warm yellow if worked towards the end of your session and annealed lower at 950-980 non encased. When encased, you must anneal at higher temps and the tone will go warmer, but little rust will appear. You need to work with this color to control the outcome of shade desired." – Starleen Colon

Special thanks to Genea Crivello-Knable, Bonnie Polinski, Vonna Maslanka, Lorraine Chandler, & Maija-Leena Autio for providing the photos in this section.

Join Trudi Doherty's FB group Lampwork Colour Resource Sharing Information for a catalogue of color study.
Claudia Eidenbenz’s "Vetrothek" (glass library) is a great resource for color comparisons.
See Kay Powell’s frit testing samples.
Browse Serena Thomas’ color gallery.
Check out Miriam Steger’s CiM color charts.
Consult Jolene Wolfe's glass testing resource page.

"Ghee, which I anticipated would look like a lovely carved stone, but now that I see it out of the kiln and it's a fish, what it evokes now is a fried fish! Not the look I was going for."

– Dwyn Tomlinson

"A streaky opalescent with colours ranging from butter to honey, with streaks of caramel." Read more at DragonJools blog.

– Dwyn Tomlinson

"Ghee is gorgeous glass with beautiful varieties of colors. I do about 4 to a mandrel, form a bead and move on to the next trying not to reheat the ones already made. They get struck just a bit from the ambient heat but my goal is leave them as translucent as possible. It is sort of a substitute for Effetre’s Carnelian Opalino which has not been produced in quite some time. Carnelian is more rosy colored than Ghee but I even got some of the Ghee beads to have a rosy tint."

– Gloria Sevey

“Ghee is a fun yellow, and a neat one to practice striking your glass. It can go from a super pale yellow to a deep rich amber-horn color, and if you go too far with the striking, you can bring it all back up to molten, and start again from scratch! Oh, and if you reduce it, it gets a purple sheen.”

– Jody Lee

"The main differences between Yellow Opalino and Ghee are: Ghee strikes to a more opaque/opal dark caramel colour, where Yellow Opalino strikes to become more opaque, but doesn't really change colour. The two glasses have different reactions with other colours, even though their reactions with silver and with Ivory are mostly the same." Read more at Melanie's blog.

– Melanie Graham

"When worked for over an hour, Ghee changes color from its normal butter-yellow to a gold-amber-burgundy-purple."

– Joy Munshower

"Without any fuss or special treatment from me, Ghee struck evenly to a rich caramel, looking melt in the mouth delicious and utterly lickable!" Read more at Kitzbitz Art Glass' blog.

– Jolene Wolfe

"My first combo is CiM Ghee with Z680 extra dark aqua blue. These are definitely jewel like, the silver has caused the Ghee base to darken from a rather meh! pale yellow-beige to a rather yummy tan toffee caramel covered in teeny silver droplets. Yum! The Z680 is a shimmering deep teal colour that has spread beautifully and gathered clusters of silver together to give textured lines where the frit has melted and met." Read more at Kitzbitz Art Glass' blog.

– Jolene Wolfe

"Bead is Ghee + Ivory and reduced + Psyche, raked, and then reduced again." Read more at DragonJools blog.

– Dwyn Tomlinson

"I suspect the annealing cycle is much cooler - and see how much lighter these came out. I did these about an hour before the ramp down. Interesting, eh? Let's say this glass kiln strikes - that's probably the easiest way to think of it. Hot temps mean darker colours." Read more about Dwyn's experiments with Ghee at DragonJools blog.

– Dwyn Tomlinson

"I think I'm going to have to try a lower temperature anneal. My long, hot annealing - which I default to because of the Lauscha colours and clear that I use - are apparently not what this glass likes. Except if you are encasing it. Hmmm." Read more about Dwyn's experiments with Ghee at DragonJools blog.

– Dwyn Tomlinson

“Out of the nine Messy opals that I tested, five of them remained translucent and they were Plum, Rose Quartz, Ghee, Chalcedony and Crocus.” Read more about keeping opal glass translucent at the Frantz Art Glass blog.

– Patricia Frantz

"Ghee makes a really nice base glass. It seems to really like silver reactive colors too."

– Sue Stewart

"I decided to try it with raku frit and I got some fantastic results. It is more of an organic shade of yellow, and it seems to become more caramelized looking the longer you work it." Read more at Two Glassy Ladies' blog.

– Amy Hall

"I found that Ghee became more translucent and more caramel colored the longer it was worked, but did neither when encased. In an encased bead, the Ghee turned brown at the ends where it was exposed to air while the glass under the encasement stayed an opaque pale yellow."

– Carol Oliver