CiM Testing: Goddess

Goddess is a bright blue misty opal. The glass is fine to work with and the only issue I had with it was some slight fizzy scumming. At first I thought it was devitrification but when I inspected the first bead I made with it, after annealing, I realised it was probably just a case of what I’m calling ‘Blue Fussiness’. Some blue glasses like to be kept hot (think Effetre transparent Dark Aqua 036, or CiM Leaky Pen) and they don’t appreciate the temperature fluctuations that go alongside sculpting. My constant faffing about upset the glass and it fizzed, creating patches of white scummy-looking bits.

I had a second attempt and made a conscious decision to constantly keep the bead as warm as I could and I had a much better result, so yeah, classic Blue Fussiness. You can just see a little bit of the white microbubbling in the second photo, on the right hand side of the bead in the midsection.

The bead was photographed indoors in natural daylight.

CiM Testing: London Fog

London Fog is the misty opal version of Unicorn. It’s more transparent and has that really beautiful opalescent colour flash thing when the sunlight hits it.

I encountered no shockiness, bubbling or pitting, but I found it is quite soft so don’t get working it too hot. The heart bead kept losing its shape as I was working on it but the glass stood up to repeated heating, cooling and shaping really well. Very pretty glass!

The beads were photographed indoors in natural daylight.

CiM Testing: Unicorn

Unicorn is a translucent opal white that plays nicely and works really well with stringer. The silver core bead here is decorated with scrolls in Effetre Periwinkle 220

Unicorn is a really good base glass and it would work well for sculpting too – not too soft, nor too stiff.

The beads were photographed indoors in natural daylight.

CiM Testing: Morgan

When I first saw this rod of glass I was intrigued by it. It looks like one of the other new cloudy transparents, with the coloured glass inside the clear (have a look at the the Vintage Rose glass I posted yesterday) but the rod has a very pale golden shimmer to it.

As soon as I started melting it I could see some sort of pearlescent effect happening. I’m not totally sure because I haven’t spoken to Kathy at CiM about it, so I’m just hunchy-guessing here, but I think it might be an attempt at that ‘shampoo’ glass.

EDIT: Morgan is NOT intended to be a slightly shimmery shampoo style glass; it was just a happy accident that occurred while trying to make another colour. Glass: it never stops weirding us out!

Morgan is clear teamed with a very pretty pale pink and I think the yellowy pearly tinge you can see is perhaps pale gold mica powder? Maybe? (Like I say, I’m totally Sherlocking here.)

Whatever Morgan is, I like it. The pearly effect is subtle but it’s definitely there and when you move the bead the light catches it in a beautiful glimmery way.

No shockiness, but there are a few tiny bubbles – nothing too obtrusive, though.

The bead was photographed indoors in natural daylight.

CiM Testing: Chocolate

Although you can’t really see any cloudiness here, Chocolate is one of CiM’s new cloudy transparents. It’s a true dark chocolate brown. The cloudy transparency allows a certain amount of light to shine through the bead but at the same time the glass appears mostly opaque. If you were to use a thin layer of it over something else it would act like a dark transparent and you’d get a less saturated brown.

What’s lovely about this glass is that when used on its own, like I’ve used it here, it’s a true dark brown and it has no streakiness like actual opaque dark brown glass often gets.

Another trouble-free glass. No working weirdness to report.

The scrolls on these are CiM Toto.

The beads were photographed indoors in natural daylight.