CiM reds and creamsicle update

I’ve done a little testing of the new CiM limited edition reds, and I have an update to my Cim Creamsicle Disgruntlement post.

I’d emailed Kathy from CiM about the creamsicle being yellow: she said that batch should probably have been labelled as a Unique, and offered to send me a replacement. Which duly arrived, and is the correct lovely creamy orange! Hooray!

She sent me some of the current limited edition colours for testing too (I was acting as a one-stop shipping destination for UK testers to cut down on the postage costs from the US). Here I’ve done the reds and included the creamsicle too.

I took these pictures in overcast natural light, as some opaque reds have a tendency to look brown in artificial lighting. I still don’t have the full depth of colour here!

Ruby Slippers and Crimson are striking reds: I didn’t strike either of them properly. I didn’t really try, to be fair – I’m used to the reds striking well enough in the working process. Ruby Slippers came out faint and streaky, almost entirely unstruck. Crimson went cloudy and brown (probably browner than it appears here, oddly enough). I’ll be having another go and pay attention to the striking of these two.

Valentine is a dark red, and Auburn a dark reddish brown. Both are opaque. They are less similar in colour than they appear here: the auburn is definitely browner. I’m planning to make nuggets in the Effetre red browns as well, to compare them side by side.

Creamsicle in its old warm orangey shade!

Pimento is a nice bright orangey red that I like a lot. In the rod it appears a little less orange than Effetre carrot red, though it is a similar sort of colour. (I’ll be nuggeting that one too).

Lastly, Maraschino is a semi-opaque red, giving more depth to the colour than a fully opaque red. It’s a lovely juicy colour and similar to Lauscha transparent red: again I will compare, but I think maraschino comes out closer to opaque in bulk than the Lauscha does.

When I remember, I’ll take a pic under my normal photo setup and see how they compare.

Of earrings and business cards

I made some earrings last week that are now up for sale at HeatherKellyGlass on Etsy. They’re my own lampwork beads: green core encased with clear and with red-orange dots on the surface. I wire-wrapped the beads onto fine silver headpins (that I made with my soldering torch!) and dangled them from my handmade sterling fancy earwires, so they can dance about as you move. They *can* be festive if you like, but they’re also suitable for wearing all year round.

I finished doing my DTP for designing business cards and stickers last night, so my order to Moo.com has gone in. If you sell on Etsy, you can get a free pack of 50 full-size business cards from Moo – they have a small Etsy logo in the bottom left of the photo side. It’s worth going through to the image upload section before you design them fully so you can see where the logo will go, especially if you’re putting your business name on that side. I had to do a quick bit of moving things around, but I think they look rather good now, if I do say so myself! I refreshed my Mini Moo card designs at the same time and ordered a new pack, plus a sticker book. Cos I like stickers! Now I will have stickers with close-ups of my beads on them! Moo’s 30% off sale ends tonight – if you don’t have time to get in there, I’ve got a referrer link that should give you 10% off if you’re a new customer (and it gives me some points towards an order).

Lampwork: week 16

[June 7-13]

This week I was trying to use red, green and blue in the same bead. It’s tricky.

Fritties: Sangre lentil encased in clear with chameleon frit. BeadySam’s Gem Surprise frit over white, then over a sangre core that was encased in clear, then over dark lavender, then over periwinkle. Dragons Candy frit over sangre (way too dark!). Dark blue transparent over white with Gem Surprise.White core encased in teal, with robin’s egg blue frit. Another sangre core encased in clear with Gem Surprise.

Fritties

Jungle beads. I’m calling them that because the lentil looks like someone twisted a jungle! The bases are sangre, periwinkle and pea green, and I used some short ends of twisties from Jolene to decorate each bead. The lentil was half periwinkle, half pea green with all the leftover little twistie ends from the other beads, and the centre was swirled.

RGB jungle beads

Another pair of tries with red, green and blue. The left lentil is a white core, half encased in dark grass green, half in cobalt blue, zig-zag and dot decoration on top. The second is a pea green base with black hair thin stringer lines, encased in teal, then med lapis, dark turquoise and dark blue transparent trails, and sangre on top.

RGB lentils

I decided after these that to use red, green and blue successfully together in one bead, I probably needed a fair amount of white in it as well. Haven’t tried that yet, though!

I had another go with Reichenbach silver brown. Here there is a silver brown core, reduced and encased in clear, and a sangre core encased in silver brown, reduced and encased in clear. The second one in particular I got too hot while trying to melt the clear round.

Silver brown rounds

Variety of things:
Pale green apple faux boro stringer over sangre, encased in clear. Hades and multicolour dark twistie over sangre. Sangre with very thin rings of MCD, encased in clear. Repeat of the first one but with more faux boro stringer.

Faux boro etc

And a matching lentil – sangre with pale green apple faux boro stringer, encased.

Faux boro lentil

In the How Not To Do It files, silver brown over sangre lentil, reduced and then begun to be encased… It was taking ages, I already suspected I’d got the core too hot, and then the fire alarm in the hall started beeping because its battery was running down. So I put the bead away as was and went and fixed the alarm.

Wrongggg

Here we have a kryptonite lentil rolled in purpur, chameleon, robin’s egg blue and granny apple green frit and the centre swirled. The middle two rounds are dirty martini with those same frits and then with a red frit blend. Finally, a rose opalino lentil with purple twisties.

Pastels

This is rose opalino and Reichenbach pink lady with SIS round the centre and swirled, plus Jolene’s purple murrini.

Rose lentil

Teal lentil with quartz grey shards. I was going to do more with this, but broke my bead release. Then two somewhat messy kaleidoscope beads from Passing the Flame. Then two tiger-ish beads. The first is a black base with a green and red twistie, SIS, some uranium yellow transparent and encased in clear. The second is a black base, SIS, yellow and red twistie and some amber on the surface.

Shard and PTF beads