CiM Testing : Sherwood

Sherwood is another brand new Messy Color glass an it's a forest green with a very subtle, slight blue hint to it. In the CiM palette I'd say it's probably closest to Split Pea.

The thing about CiM greens is that they really fill a gap in the 104 palette. Sherwood is a proper 'natural' kind of green. You could use it for vine cane and leaves and it wouldn't be too in-your-face and garish. (Yes, Effetre Grass Green, I'm talking about you!)

The photograph below shows Sherwood compared to other glass colours :

Beads from left to right : Sherwood, Sherwood etched, Sherwood thinly encased with Vetrofond clear, Sherwood thickly encased with Vetrofond clear, CiM Split Pea, CiM Commando, Effetre 216 Light Grass Green.

Here's a list of my Sherwood findings :

• Not at all shocky.
• Melts nice and smoothly - on a consistency par with Commando and Split Pea.
• A little streaky, as in it produces striations.
• Loses its crispness and definition and tends to spread when used as stringer.
• Etches really well.
• Has a tendency to bleed at the edges when encased BUT it is an opaque green and opaque greens do like to do that!

The photo below shows Sherwood as polka dots on a Dirty Martini bead encased with Vetrofond clear :

And the following photo illustrates what I mean about the stringer spreading thing. Of course, this effect isn't a bad thing - sometimes you can use this type of glass property to your design advantage. The Sherwood is used on top of Dirty Martini here :

So yes, Sherwood is a nice green. I'm not a massive fan of opaque green glasses (because they don't always do what I'd like them to do, but hey, that's probably just my glass control freakishness thing) but if I was going to make some realistic looking floral beads then this would be one of the greens I'd go for.

CiM Testing : Dirty Martini

I'm not a big drinker, in fact I hardly ever drink alcohol at all so when Creation Is Messy introduced Dirty Martini to their palette I had to have a Google to find out what makes a martini dirty. Turns out it's the addition of olive juice or brine to the normal gin and vermouth mix.

But CiM's Dirty Martini is alcohol free - it is a very pale green glass with just a hint of grey about it. Since it's been available it has been one of my favourite glasses as it is just so well behaved! It is a clean, crisp colour with a slightly stiffer consistency to it which makes it superb for encasing with transparent glasses as it holds its shape and doesn't drag about the place. The 'Apple & Blueberry' beads pictured below are Dirty Martini encased thinly with CiM Mojito - a proper cocktail of glass!

I've heard some people say that they think Dirty Martini is a little too grey. On its own it does tend to look a bit pale but all you need to do to 'lift' it is to add stronger greens to the mix and I promise that this will make the Dirty Martini sing - the pale green beads in the 'Springtime' set below are a good example of this :

I'm always on the hunt for new colours to use for my fine stringerwork. I actually have quite a limited palette when it comes to that because only a handful of glasses behave exactly as I need them to. I am super-pleased to discover that I can add Dirty Martini to my Perfect For Stringer List. The beads below have a core of CiM Oz encased in Mojito and the stringer is Dirty Martini. You can see that it keeps its definition, doesn't bleed or spread and it also yields that wonderful reaction line - the slightly darker line you can see running through the centre of the stringer on the scrollwork bead :

So all in all I would say that Dirty Martini is a must-have colour. It's unlike any other shade in the 104 palette and it is absolutely wonderful to work with.