CiM Testing : Sepia Unique 2

I was delighted to find a rod of this beautiful glass in my testing package from Creation Is Messy.  As a fan of Sepia I was intrigued to work with this Sepia Unique.  It's not at all brown.  In fact it's a gorgeous smoky blue with a tiny hint of mauve about it. 

It was a total pleasure to work with and if you're a fan of blue you need, need, need to grab some of this while you can.  It's a Messy Unique so it's best to be quick before it's all gone.

This Sepia Unique looks fabulous with silver.  Here it is with  fine silver and Vetrofond Clear :

And it looks gorgeous when etched.  Here it is with Effetre 268 Pearl Grey polka dots and etched to a velvety finish :

As I say, if you love blue then I highly recommend this Sepia Unique.  It's just totally lovely!

CiM Testing : Sepia

I used to love Effetre's 018  Transparent Light Brown.  I say used to because I haven't used it for years as every time I buy a bundle it's not right.  I don't know if Effetre changed the recipe or formula but the 018 glass I've bought over the past couple of years has been more like Straw Yellow.  As a result I now have a massive stack of yellowy glass that is nowhere near as nice as the Transparent Light Brown of old.

But that doesn't matter because now we have Creation Is Messy's Sepia which is, dare I say, even nice than the Effetre Light Brown. Sepia is browner and has an ever-so-slight pinkness to it.

Sepia melts really well - it's smooth but not gloopy which makes it great for encasing.  The photograph below shows Sepia over a base of CiM Butter Pecan and they're decorated with Butter Pecan spots :

This beautiful brown also looks great when it's etched.  Here are some Sepia beads decorated with CiM Chai polka dots :

It's good to know that I no longer have to worry about ordering glass that is supposed to be brown but is more like a yellow as I know I can rely on Creation Is Messy's beautiful Sepia.

Hades & Peace

I got a delivery of glass for testing from Creation Is Messy on Thursday and I've been playing about with all of the delicious glasses.  I'm going to be adding a couple of colour testing posts to the blog this weekend so do stay tuned.

One of the CiM glasses I've been experimenting with is Hades.  This is a really intense black.  Black glass is actually transparent and is normally really saturated purple or blue and when you pull that into fine stringers the black is no longer black.  Hades, like Effetre's Intense Black, doesn't do that.  It maintains its blackness even when pulled into freakishly fine stringer.

This isn't the first time I've tried Hades - I've used it before but this time I set time aside and really watched how it works.  I've found that you have to treat Hades really gently.  The beads at the top of this post are CiM Peace (white) with Hades polka dots.  You may be able to see that the polka dots are not totally flush with the base bead.  They're really nearly almost smooth but I was erring on the side of caution when it came to melting the dots in.  I've decided that if you work the Hades slowly in a cooler flame it will keep its crispness.  If I'd melted these dots in at my normal rate they would have feathered and bled at the edges creating a murky grey-brown halo to the dots.  So I went slowly which paid off and the result is crisp jet black on plain white.  Simple yet striking. 

There's more to discover and say about Hades but I will save that for a proper CiM testing post.

Slight change of wedding plan

Yesterday Chris and I came to a decision about our wedding.

We've postponed it until next year.

I know.  You're probably thinking that it's quite a drastic measure?

Let me explain.

We got engaged and booked the wedding back in December.  Then we set about finding a house to buy which took longer than anticipated.  Then we found a house but the process of buying it also took longer than we thought it would.  We moved into the house in June and we're still getting into the swing of paying for it.

When Chris and I sat down and made our wedding to-do list we were crossing things off it that made us question if getting married this year was the right thing to do.  I had planned to have my hair put up and what flowers I'd be having in my bouquet.  But we had to cross both those things off the list in order to pay for food for the guests.  Also Chris was looking at ridiculously cheap suits and that's not right. 

It just felt wrong.  Do you know what I mean?  Every time I thought about or someone mentioned the wedding I just felt a sense of dread.  It wasn't going to be as we had planned and we were more sad about it than happy.  Obviously three weeks before your wedding a few nerves are okay but I tell you, it was making me feel sick just thinking about it.  I've even been off pudding and chocolate! 

The one thing we both knew was that we wanted to get married to each other but not in the way that we would have to in three weeks' time.  Also, we didn't want to look back on our wedding day and think 'That's not how we wanted it to be' just for the sake of waiting a little bit longer.

So Chris and I made the decision to postpone the wedding.  It was a difficult and upsetting thing to do but we both feel such relief.  The knot in my stomach is slowly undoing and I feel about a stone lighter.  Chris is happier too. We were both a little sad last night but this morning we feel a lot better about the situation.

Chris and I now have some breathing space and time to plan and budget to make our wedding the way we envisaged it back when we first got engaged and this time we won't have estate agents, train commutes and the whole new house thing encroaching on the wedding planning.

Many thanks to everyone who left such lovely comments on my last post.

Thank you for reading

Polka Dotty Interlude

At the end of my last post I told you I'd be back later with beads.

I didn't come back, did I?

I got sidetracked.

Our wedding is in about three weeks' time and my brain is all awhirl with wedding thoughts.  Chris and I sat down and wrote a to-do list on Monday and now we're setting about crossing things off that list.

As I've explained before, when I have things on my mind I find concentrating on beads quite a tricky task.  Yesterday all I could make was polka dot beads.  I think that the regularity and just-so-ness of them allows me to switch to bead autopilot and simultaneously think about wedding hair, wedding food and other wedding-related malarkey.

Even though our wedding is going to be a small one it's still stressing me out.  I seem to be in a constant bad mood at the moment and poor Chris never knows if he's going to come home and find a happy Laura or a whining snappy one.  It's a wonder that he still wants to marry me!

Please bear with me during this polka dotty interlude .....