CiM Glass Testing: 502 Midnight Ltd Run

CiM's new color Midnight is.....well, it's weird. But in that good way that makes me want to look at it all the time. :)

On their website, CiM describes this color as a dark transparent shade that color shifts between navy blue and purple. I had a different experience entirely. I'm not saying they are wrong.....but I never got any blue or purple out of this color - not in sunshine, fluorescent or incandescent lighting. What I did experience is a color that is both dense and subtle, dark and not altogether that saturated. Midnight seems to be kind of a paradox.

In rod form, Midnight is so dark that it can easily be mistaken for black.  Even holding it up to the light, you can only see the barest hint of a transparent charcoal grey with maybe a tiny hint of blue.

When I pulled it into this swatch, only the thinnest part, towards the bottom end, can be seen as a dark transparent grey. When pulled into stringer, you can definitely see it as a transparent charcoal grey that is the kind of neutral color that reminds me of black and white photography.  There's little saturation, even though the color is very dense.

Unlike many transparent glasses, it didn't bubble or scum very much. It melted evenly without shocking, which was nice.


Midnight is a relatively stiff transparent glass.  It's one of the stiffer CiM colors, in my experience - even more so than Simply Berry Unique. This means that the color did not spread out much - even when thickly applied - without the aid of a metal tool to move it and press it.  This made the glass kind of a challenge to work with.

When encasing, I had to apply a thin layer of Midnight over some pale opaque grey (in this case, Vetrofond Pearl Grey), move it to the edges of the opaque, and then encase it.  When encased, the color lightened considerably into a lovely neutral charcoal grey.

Using this glass for layering did pose a bit of a challenge, but one that was well worth the effort.  Dots stayed put and didn't spread or bleed, which is nice when you want round, small dots.  Midnight is really gorgeous when clear is applied heavily over the top of it - like raindrops.  When layered over the Pearl Grey and pulled into stringer, Midnight goes very light - which you can see below. The scroll bead has the Midnight encased stringer, while the bead in the middle has bumps which are layered with Midnight.

I had a lot of fun working with this glass.  I adore grey these days, so Midnight was really inspiring.  It made me think of mysterious shadows and the play of light at nighttime when you can barely see.  These bead sets were made to feature Midnight in its various applications.  It's layered with Pearl Grey and DH Aether Clear, and paired up with Pastel Ink Blue and Dark Lavender. An oddlot of DH Ox created the metallic effects.