The Green That Turned Blue — Emerald Ice, Test No. 2

The Studio Journal, No. 2 — from the hunt for the Emerald Ice colorway

There is a particular kind of silence in the studio when a color does something it isn't supposed to do. Not disappointment, exactly. More like being corrected by the material — reminded that resin has opinions of its own, and that a pigment's name on the label is a suggestion, not a promise.

Test No. 2 in the hunt for Emerald Ice began with three greens on the bench: Alumilite Translucent Green, Piñata Rainforest, and Piñata Lime Green. Three candidates for the one colorway in The Ice Collection that has refused, so far, to simply exist. Emerald is the collection's only warm-metal piece — gold and brass hardware against deep green — which means the green cannot lean cool. It has to hold its yellow undertone inside a thick, glass-clear casting, the way real emerald holds light.

Two of the three turned blue.

Not blue-ish. Blue. The moment they met the resin and the stir stick moved, Rainforest and the Alumilite green shifted like they'd been waiting for the excuse. If you've never watched a green become a blue in real time, it is genuinely strange — a small betrayal in a plastic cup.

Why green becomes blue in resin

Here is the part I find beautiful rather than frustrating. Most "green" inks and dyes are not green at all — they are blends of blue and yellow colorants. In a thin layer on paper or tile, the blend reads as the green on the label. But a casting is not a thin layer. It's an inch or more of optical depth, and light behaves differently in there. The blue component in these blends is stronger and more persistent through thickness; the yellow scatters and washes out. So the deeper the casting, the more the blue wins. What you're seeing isn't the pigment changing — it's the yellow quietly losing an argument it was never going to win.

This is exactly why every colorway in The Ice Collection gets tested in full-depth castings before it earns a name. A color that photographs perfectly in a sample cup can vanish into something else entirely inside a dispenser body.

The one that held

Piñata Lime Green survived. Yellow-heavy enough to keep its footing through the depth of the cast, it stayed unmistakably green — and so it earned Pour No. 2: a heart, a crescent moon, and a soap dispenser, poured alongside crushed green crystal for the crevasse work.

It is not the finished recipe. At the concentration this test required, the castings pulled slightly cloudy, and cloudy is not what ice does. The next round is about restraint — how little ink the color can survive on, how much clarity it can keep. Emerald Ice has to look like light trapped in a glacier that happens to be green, not like sea glass.

So the hunt continues. This is Test No. 2 of however many it takes.

The deadline

The Ice Collection arrives September 2026 — Glacier, Sapphire, Aquamarine, Amethyst, Obsidian, and, if it cooperates in time, Emerald. Three colorways are still on the testing bench this summer, and I'm documenting every attempt, including the failures. Especially the failures. The colorway that finally makes the collection will have earned it.

If you want to follow the hunt — and shop the collection before anyone else — the email list is where that happens. Be First to the Ice.

Every piece in The Ice Collection is designed and made in my Pacific Northwest studio.
- Vika

Moss & Lantern Art Studio — Inspire Awe. One pour at a time.