Glass Testing: CiM 554 Cotswold Blue and 465 Oobleck

Aaaand we're back! It's been, yes, months since the last blog post, but I am finally back with the new batch of glass color from Creation is Messy. I got the sampler rods several weeks ago, but it's taken me some time to get testing this go-around due to some illness and medical issues. The good news is I have lots to tell you about the new colors.

It's a somewhat smaller batch this year so far, but these new shades have a lot of potential. All of the new colors are limited runs.

First I'm going to start with Oobleck, which CiM calls a neon green. I agree with the description - this color is a very vivid opaque yellow-green, kind of a chartreuse color. Oobleck is the perfect name for this fun shade that puts me in the mind of the slime from the children's book.

Oobleck is very opaque - not at all opal like other neon colors in the CiM line. This makes it pretty easy to layer. In fact, unlike any other bright green, Oobleck does not spread, bleed, separate or even create striations much. I had no issues with shocking, bubbling or pitting, either. Surprisingly, Oobleck works up like a dream. I say this only because the closest color I can come up with to Oobleck is Effetre Pea Green, which is pretty reactive, spreads, bleeds, separates, pits, etc. Pea Green is slightly more green and not quite as saturated as Oobleck.

The one major drawback for me (and this is personal preference, of course) is that when encased in clear, Oobleck loses some of its effervescent green shade and goes slightly more acid-yellow in tone. You can see that in the beads I am showing below. One color scheme (the one with the magenta) has Oobleck layered with clear and one (the teal/lime) has the Oobleck layered with Appletini. I like the greener version better. All in all, this is a wonderful color for spring and summer - super bright and fun.

Next we have a soft opaque teal called Cotswold Blue. Cotswold is kind of a middle of the road color - it's hard to really pin down. It's more muted than a real teal - too green to be blue and too blue to be green. To dark to be turquoise and too bright to be slate blue. Soft teal would probably be my description. As for the glass palette - this one seems to be relatively unique - it's darker than Quetzal, bluer than Sherwood or Elf, more muted and slightly lighter than Mermaid.

While it does melt nicely without too much shocking, I got a lot of striations with this color. It separates a lot, even when encased. The larger the bead, the more striations under the encasing I saw. Left un-encased, there were lots of striation marks and lines as well. This can have design potential for some, but for me it's not as desirable. What I did like about it was that it went well with Siren - the pale teal green I reviewed last year. Cotswold also didn't bleed or spread a lot, which was nice. I had no problems encasing it. This means it will likely be a really nice color to use underneath bright transparent teal shades to deepen the color.

The beads below showcase Cotswold Blue with lime and aqua shades.

More colors coming soon!

Glass Testing: CiM 425 Mint Chip and CiM 452 Peat Moss Limited Runs

Today I am blogging about my tests on a brand new CiM color and also on a CiM color that came out about a year ago (I think).  I liked how these two colors layered with eachother, so I decided to do them together.  Both are limited runs, as usual, so if you like them, get them soon!


First up is the older color (although still new enough to be in stock) Mint Chip. Boy does CiM like to make green! That's okay with me, because Effetre opaque greens are harder to work with, so I love a variety of nice, stable greens to choose from.

Mint Chip is a lovely shade of pale spring green that is less greyish than Dirty Martini, less bluish than It Ain't Easy Being, less yellowish than Primavera, and slightly less vivid than Cardamom. Here's a pic I took awhile back comparing some of the pale CiM green opaques.

This lovely shade of green is a joy to work with. No problems at all, and I have made several sets with it. It's not too soft, melts smoothly and doesn't shock (yey!!) I didn't notice any streaking, and it had no problems with bleeding and spreading when encased or layered. It's does lighten up a lot when encased in clear, which is why I primarily use this color to layer with medium and dark transparent greens. Using it with anything super light will wash the color out, so keep that in mind if you're going to make, say, flower petals that are melted in.

Mint Chip base is scrolled with encased stringer

Mint Chip does stay all the way opaque, so in that way it reminds me of Dirty Martini - nice and dense, even though it is very light. Also keep in mind that when this color is hot, it goes grey. It goes back to minty green when it cools off, so don't worry!










In my latest test, I used Mint Chip with the brand new medium transparent called Peat Moss.  It's really hard to classify this color - which is something I love, actually. I adore colors that sit between the norms - they excite me. Peat Moss is like a khaki mixed with olive - a pretty medium shade of green that has orange-y undertones. Layering it with Mint Chip brings out the green a bit more, making it more olive in tone.

I loved the clarity of this color. One thing to keep in mind though is that if you heat too fast, it might bubble a bit. Heat gently, and if haze or scum appears on your gather you can burn it off by gently heating more. That being said, I was able to make the sample and the spacers without much trouble. Once pulled into stringer, layering was simple.

You can see in the beads pictured below that Peat Moss appears much darker by itself than it does when layered with the Mint Chip. If you want a more vivid shade, I would recommend using a darker opaque to layer it with. This might be fun to use with Ogre or Dragon, since those two have the weird brown streaks that pop up.

Peat Moss is one of those shades that I think people are either going to love or hate - depending on how adventurous they are with color. I love how it looks by itself, personally. It's fun!

Beads below are made with Peat Moss, Mint Chip, Adobe and Sakura, with DH Zephyr Clear. More tests to come!

Glass Testing: CiM 529 Frost Ltd. Run, 535 Duck Egg Ltd. Run and 906 Sakura Ltd. Run

Over the holidays, I got a new box of color to test from CiM, and I finally had some time to break open the box and start melting! Let me tell you, there are lots of new colors, and a lot of them seem to have great promise. 

CiM seemed to fixate on aquas and blues this time around, and bright yellows as well. I am not so crazy about the yellow shades, but the blues are all really gorgeous. There are also quite a few translucent opals and moonstones. I will likely stick with the transparents and dense opaques, though, because I love layering glass. 

First up, we have a really pretty subtle opaque color called Duck Egg, which is a nice shade of pale blue/green. CiM stated on their website that this color was meant to be a bluer version of their Dirty Martini, and it fits that description pretty well.
This glass has a nice consistency - it melts smoothly and is not too stiff or too soupy.  It really behaves a lot like Dirty Martini does. 

As you can see in the spacers, Duck Egg can striate a little bit, but that will disappear when layering the glass. If you melt in dots and leave them uncovered, you may get lines of separation, which can be pretty as part of the design.

Beyond that, Duck Egg is a dense color, which means it stays opaque when layered, and holds the shade well. No bleeding or pitting from what I can tell, also. 

Duck Egg is used here as the layering color behind Frost (shown below)

Next up we have Frost, the lightest of the transparent aqua/teal shades in the latest batch of new color. from CiM. 

There are two things I like best about CiM's many, many shades of aqua/teal/blue.  First is that they tend not to scum or bubble or pit like Effetre/Vetrofond blues and teals. The second is that most of their shades are a step or two brighter or darker than any of the other brands' shades - which broadens the palette!

Frost is no different.  This shade of pale blue is a little more saturated and slightly bluer than Effetre's Pale Aqua, and behaves much, much better.  It's a gorgeous icy aqua color that stays clear of bubbles, and layers like a dream.

Frost has a wonderful consistency. It's stiff enough to hold its shape, but not too stiff.  It makes gorgeous encased stringer (used above, with Duck Egg), and equally lovely spacers. It even works well as an encasing color over a pale opaque.
 I'm buying more of this as soon as it's available (February, according to their website).

Lastly, we have a wonderfully odd color called Sakura. When I first saw this color, I thought it was just a medium pink transparent - but when I looked closer and when I melted the rod, I got a glorious shade that sits somewhere between peach and pink.  It's much more saturated than either the Vetrofond or the Effetre version of light transparent pink.  I would call it a kind of pale cantaloupe color.

Whatever you call it, it's freaking gorgeous. Sakura is Japanese for Cherry Blossom, I believe, so that fits the bill pretty well.

This glass is a little on the stiff side, but not too bad.  Just be careful when you layer it with any opaque pink - opaque pinks that are Effetre tend to be on the soupy side. I will still able to make flower petals with it, and they turned out really lovely. This shade also makes gorgeous encased stringer, because it's more saturated than any other transparent pink I know of, so the color doesn't wash out.

Like the Frost, this glass doesn't seem to bubble or scum at all, and stays perfectly flawless when melted.  

Sakura is going to be a spectacular spring color, I think, and I am going to buy a ton of this when it comes out, provided it's not too ridiculously expensive.

All of the new CiM colors I got this time (around 27) are limited run colors, which means you need to get them as soon as you can!

The bead sets shown in this post are made with the following colors:  CiM Frost, CiM Duck Egg, CiM Sakura, Effetre Petal Pink, Double Helix Aether and Vetrofond Black.

(I know I'm going to get asked - Effetre Petal Pink is a pale opaque pink that's not around anymore - you can replace it with pretty much any of the Effetre opaque pinks you like - they are all so close it really doesn't matter.)

Points to those who get the play on words with the name of these beads (Anna May)!  It's a Big Bang Theory show joke. :)

CiM Glass Testing: 765 Chai Ltd. Run and 204 Peachy Keen

So, a couple of weeks ago I got a new box of color samples from Creation is Messy.  I was surprised, given that there are only four new colors listed on the CiM color preview page.  Kathy usually doesn't send test samples when there are so few colors.  However, when I opened the box, there were quite a few colors bundled up, and I didn't recognize most of them.  I'm not sure if they are all new - or if maybe some of them are coming back after being out of production for awhile - or what.  But I am happy to test them, regardless!

The two colors I am testing today are not new colors - one wasn't even in the batch I just got.  But when I saw an opaque peach in the bundle (Chai), I had to bring out my stash of the transparent color Peachy Keen to put with it. So I am blogging about Peachy Keen and Chai today, because we have very few choices for peach in the 104 glass lines, and I LOVE peach.  I'll get to the newer colors soon, I promise!

CiM's Chai Ltd. Run was a color I never had a chance to try before.  I don't recall when it came out, but I do remember some of the odd lots that came from it. I am not sure which version this is, because it's just labelled 765 Chai Ltd. Run.  However, the rods are much lighter than the old version seems to be, so maybe this is one of the odd lot formulas.

At any rate, this color is a light opaque warm peach, that is lighter when melted than in rod form.  It's not a dense color, but almost has a consistency of a CiM opal.  Chai can go translucent, but not as much as an opal color does.  When encased in clear, Chai goes very very light - almost ghost-like. I prefer encasing it in Peachy Keen to bring out the deeper peach tones.

Chai is also slightly stiff, and can pit and shock a little bit if you're not careful. Make sure to melt it all the way, or it won't pull smoothly into stringer.
It can still be made into encased stringer, and looks good with Peachy Keen as the encasement, but does go a little translucent at times. 

Layering this glass in melted dots can be tricky because of its lack of density, so I recommend a couple of layers of it to make sure it doesn't wash out.

Chai can strike slightly darker if you take your time with it. The longer it's worked in the flame, the darker and warmer the color gets.

All in all, I think I like Adobe better as a choice for warm peach, but Chai isn't bad.  I prefer it over Peaches and Cream - the opal peach shade that CiM had awhile back.

The counterpart here is Peachy Keen - a color that came out at the same time as the Peaches and Cream opal, but that I hadn't tried yet (waited for a good peach opaque instead of an opal, so I could layer).  I'm happy to say that this color is not a limited run - it's in the regular line up and I hope it stays that way.

Peachy Keen is a stable, light peach color with more saturation than Lauscha Peach or Effetre Pink. It's a perfect shade of peach!

Not too stiff, not too soft, this color can burn/scum if heated too quickly. Other than that, it's a wonderful glass to work with.  It layers well, encases nicely and has a beautiful clarity and shine.

This is a great color for any time of year - especially spring and summer.  Here, I paired it with navy blue for a soft, neutral look.

You can see how the Chai goes a little translucent, especially when layered with the Peachy Keen and melted in, as is show in the bead on the far right.