CIM Mink, CIM Maple, and Effetre Antique Green

What's not to love about a rich, dark honey amber mixed with pastel turquoise and green. These colours look great on everyone and go with pretty much everything.  I could make them over and over (and have made them quite a few times).

This set is made with three CIM colours.  The warm honey brown comes from CIM Maple and CIM Mink and the pastel green is CIM Sprout.  The lovely soft turquoise is Effetre Antique Green.  I'm not sure why it's called green because even though it is definitely a turquoise colour, I read it a little more blue than green but either way it's a beautiful colour.

A few comments on CIM Maple.  This is a very interesting glass.  It is a dark clear transparent amber in rod form but goes kind of milky or opalescent when melted.  It is very stiff but still very easy to work with and the final result goes back to a very transparent amber.

Also some nice silver line reactions between the Antique Green and Maple.  It's hard to see in the pictures but if you look closely at the green bead near the front in the first picture, you can just make out sparkly bits of silver around the blue dots.  Very pretty in person.

CIM Blue Steel, CIM Iguana, CIM Lichen

I just got a new shipment of glass and couldn't wait to play with it.  These beads are made with all CIM (Creation is Messy) glasses and most of the colours are green.  Until recently, I wouldn't have said I was a really big fan of green but lately I can't seem to make anything without it.  And, of course, for this set, I went over the top with greens.  To start with there are 2 light greens called CIM Lichen and CIM Sprout.  The bead on the right has a base of Lichen and the bead 3rd from the right has a base of Sprout.  Sprout is a lovely, pale green that almost seems translucent (especially went it's not etched).  It melts wonderfully and creates clean lines and dots.  Lichen is a pale, very greyish green.  It is a lovely neutral colour and also creates clean lines and dots with a hint of translucency.  CIM Iguana and CIM Fiddlehead look very similar in rod form but Iguana melts to a much brighter green with less grey tones.  You can see Iguana on the 4th bead from the right.  This is a streaky colour so lines and dots get a bit wavy but it has a nice vibrancy without being a neon green.

To contrast with the many greens in this set, I've used CIM Blue Steel.  This is a hard colour to describe and I believe it will look quite different depending on the colours you combine it with.  In this set, because it's contrasting with the green, the colour is a bit more purplish.  I think if it was combined with blues it would look a lot more bluish.  Again, it was a good glass to work with and behaved pretty well in the lines and dots.  A bit of blurring but not too much.

CIM Sprout, Key Lime and Mojito

There's something about summer that just makes me want to see bright shades of yellow and frosty shades of green.  Must be some kind of frozen margarita syndrome.  This set contains beautiful shades of yellow and green glass and altogether they create this fizzy, "look at me" set of beads.  For these beads I've used CIM Sprout a beautiful, pale cucumber green pastel, CIM Key Lime a brighter, more acidic pastel green, CIM Mojito a gorgeous warm, transparent green, Effetre Yellow Lemon Light Special, Effetre Pale Emerald Green and, of course, Effetre White.

These colours just look great next to skin tones and I think that using contrasting elements like red leather or red pearls would be amazing with these greens.  All the glasses were very nice to work with, melting easily and playing together quite well.  The Sprout and the Key Lime are a bit streaky and will mottle a bit if over worked but other than that they are lovely glasses.