MYSTERIES OF GELLYROLL PENS

NOTE:  Unless you are an art nerd, no need to read the text on this entry!

I have way too many Sakura Gellyroll pens that I haven't had time to use, and before today I didn't really know how the different types differed from each other.  So this afternoon I did the same tangle on 3 black tiles using 3 different types of Gellyrolls:  Moonlight, Metallic, and Stardust.  (The Stardust pens produced the big mystery)  My thinking was that if I used the same tangle, I'd be better able to see the differences in the pens.  I had a variety of colors in each of the 3 types, and hoped to use all the colors in each type on its own tile.

Results:

Moonlight Gellyrolls

Metallic Gellyrolls

Stardust Gellyrolls (each column has a different color pen...wait! where has the color gone?)

I learned a lot doing this (will spare you the lessons).  But the big mystery was...where the heck did the color go when I used the different color Stardust type on that far right tile?  Here's another look at just that tile, which turned out to be my favorite even though it did not have different colors...

Love that one.  But the colors--???  So I asked my CZT friends about it and Donald Wilka said yes, they do disappear on the black but they show up on the white tiles and the tan tiles.  Which meant, of course, I had to try them out on a white tile.  But before I show you that, I liked the look of the tile above so much that I decided to run it through the mirror app on my iPhone (if you've been reading you know I'm obsessed with playing with this app) and that produced this piece below, which I also love.

I admit I am a fool for that mirror app.

Finally I got around to doing a Stardust Gellyroll experiment on a white tile, and darned if Donald wasn't right.  I never really doubted him, but check this out.  I used the exact same pens in the same order of colors, and here is how they looked on white. 

On the actual tile, they are as glittery as they look on the black--but they do not photograph with any glitter showing at all.  You'll have to trust me on this.

So to sum up, here are the 4 of them all lined up.  All use color, but only 3 of them show color.  The Stardust Gellyrolls lose their color entirely on the black tile, but I ended up liking that tile the best.

Today's work made me realize I need to do a lot more of this type of comparison.  I'm inspired.