Coloraddiction: CiM Glass Testing: 523 Trade Winds Ltd. Run and 422 Aloe Juice Ltd. Run

It seems that the vast majority of new CiM colors these days are limited runs...but that's okay with me, because I love trying out new color.

The two I am reviewing today are very recent. One is Aloe Juice, which is available now, and the other is Trade Winds, which will be out sometime next month. I used them both in the same set, and they worked together really well.

First up is Trade Winds, a very dark, intense teal blue. The color actually sits somewhere between Leaky Pen and Azure. I'm including a pic of five transparent CiM colors so you can see where this color sits. I would say it's the bluest of all the teals, while not quite as blue as Azure's dark aqua color.

L-R: Azure, Trade Winds, Mediterranean, Leaky Pen, Great Bluedini

I think I might like Trade Winds even more than I like Leaky Pen - and that's really saying something! You can't really tell by the picture, but Trade Winds is actually a little darker than Leaky Pen - and indeed darker than all the teal colors I have seen in the CiM line. It's very saturated and intense.

The glass has a normal amount of stiffness, but can pit and bubble a little. Heating it up a little more helped remove any pitting that happened, leaving a smooth, lovely color.

I would not recommend using Trade Winds as a base bead, unless you encase it - it's way too dark. Even encasing this color in clear still yields a very dark teal.

In the bead sets I am showing, I used Trade Winds over
Effetre Light Sky Blue. It layered pretty well, but since Sky Blue is a fairly soft glass, I had to take care to heat slowly and evenly so the Trade Winds would spread out along with the Sky Blue. If I melted too fast or too hot, the Sky Blue would spread out and the Trade Winds would sink in, as sometimes happens when the transparent color is stiffer than the opaque color.

Petals were layered with Light Sky Blue and Trade Winds, with a layer of Aether clear on top to lighten the color.

Trade Winds/Sky Blue make gorgeous encased stringer for scrollwork - and it looked really wonderful melted into the opaque green base (which is this case was CiM Sherwood).

I had no issues with reactivity or compatibility with this wonderful color. More, please!

The left bead shows the encased Trade Winds/Sky Blue stringer.

The second color I am reviewing is Aloe Juice, a pale transparent green that has a slightly bluer cast to it than CiM's Appletini. I would almost call this a pale transparent jade. Aloe Juice is the perfect complement to CiM Sherwood - a medium forest green shade that has a blueish cast.

Aloe Juice works like a dream - not too stiff, with no tendency
to boil or scum. It even layered well with Sherwood, a color that, like a lot of opaque greens, can spread and striate.

I used it liberally in the bead sets shown here, but since it is almost always being layered with Sherwood, you really can't see it much on its own. It is pale enough to encase with, and I did so a buch of times in these sets.

This is one of those colors that I wish I could just make millions of spacers out of, it's so pretty! It sparkles with life and effervescence. There's not much else to say about Aloe Juice - it's easy to work, layers nicely and has no reactions or odd characteristics that I could see. There's no other color exactly like it in the 104 line (that I know of), so I will be buying more as soon as I can - hopefully before they sell out.

Ahhhhh Limited Runs! :) More eye candy below....have a great day everyone!