CiM Glass Testing: 632 Thai Orchid, 482 Mojito, 403 Army Men Ltd. Run

For me, the end of summer/start of fall means combining deep purples and lush greens. Yum!  This time, I started with one of the newest CiM colors - Army Men - and layered it with Mojito. I then combined the lovely result with one of CiM's older colors - Thai Orchid. Later, I added shades of amber to the mix for a really pretty autumn combination.

CiM Army Men, one of the latest colors in the CiM palette, is a subtle, muted pine green.  It falls somewhere on the bluer end of olive, with a lot of grey in it.  When I saw this color for the first time, I was reminded of the new version of CiM Commando.  In fact, Army Men sits right between Commando and Olive in tonality.  Olive has a bit more yellow.

I love the consistency of the glass - it was a dream to melt!  It is slightly soupier than some opaques.

Army Men is a dense color, despite its subtle shade, and can be layered and encased without washing out.  As many greens do, this color can bleed under encasing, and can take over other color just a little bit.  It's not as bad as some Effetre greens, but it is something to watch out for when melting in your decoration.

Army Men is also one of those colors that tends to streak and separate, which can either add variety visually, or be a pain in the a**, depending on your application. I found this only slightly irritating - for the most part, this glass behaved well and did what I wanted.

Alone, Army Men is kind of a "behind the scenes" color - one that works well as a background or filler in your designs. It made lovely spacers! This color really shined when I layered it with Mojito, which I will talk about next.

CiM Mojito is a wonderful companion to Army Men, and a lovely color in and of itself.  I've been remiss in waiting so long to review it here for you!  In pictures, this pretty pale olive green can sometimes look like just a plain yellow-green shade.  I personally think you need to see this one in person to appreciate the subtle, muted olive that it represents. It's slightly grey with only a bit of a yellow undertone. A great layering glass - with any green you want to lighten up and make a bit more subtle. It's the perfect fall green.

As a transparent glass, Mojito is smooth and not too stiff.  It didn't bubble or scum for me, nor did it react with anything at all.  It's very consistent and has a nice clarity to it.  I used it with Army Green for encased stringer, and it was very light and soft. If you want to go darker, stick some Slytherin in there!




Next we have a color that came out really early on, when CiM first started - Thai Orchid.
When it comes to opaque purple, CiM has at least half a dozen that are all really similar at first glance. They are all kind of reminiscent of Effetre's Violet shades.  They all have a slightly different way of acting, which is at the same time frustrating and fun.

Thai Orchid is at the dark end of the purple spectrum - a deep, dense violet purple. It shares some of the same characteristics as Effetre Dark Violet, but is more saturated and a little less reactive, depending on the batch you get.

I had two different batches of Thai Orchid - one that was significantly bluer than the other.  Both are lovely, though. You can see the difference in the spacers here.

As an opaque glass, Thai Orchid acts like most other opaque violets - it's streaky in the extreme, tends to spread out and bleed a little, and can pit or silver when exposed to different flame environment.  It does layer very nicely, though.  Without a layer of encasing, the lighter batch of this color doesn't do much for me.  Like most other violets, the shade is just too browned out.  But layer it with a transparent light purple or even clear and the brownish hue magically disappears, and you're left with a velvety deep violet.

In my Autumn Song beads, I layered both batches of Thai Orchid with the now discontinued CiM Count Von Count (you can get a similar effect with Effetre 081 Dark Lavender), for a lighter but slightly more saturated purple.  Wonderful for fall, I think.

Have fun playing!  :)