Test Results :: Alley Cat

CiM Alley Cat (CiM209) is a medium orange colour that is darker than Creamsicle but lighter and more yellow than Phoenix. It can be brought closer to Sunset/Phoenix orange with repeated heating and cooling because it is a striker.

The colour of Alley Cat is not affected by reducing it.

Silver behaves with Alley Cat the way it does with other sulfur-containing colours in the orange, yellow, and ivory family. It turns the surface of Alley Cat brown and develops interesting brown/yellow striations through it. This colour would probably make interesting silvered ivory stringer. When the silver is reduced and encased, it turns blue.

Alley Cat is an interesting base colour for silver glass. My reducing silver glass frit bloomed over it, and my TerraNova2 frit struck readily and developed all kinds of interesting outlining.

Alley Cat is a bit reactive. It separated underneath my Tuxedo, and when used on top of Tuxedo it got an interesting semi-opaque quality to its outer edges.

Copper Green and Alley Cat have a mutual dark line reaction, similar to but less violent than what happens between Copper Green and Ivory.

Ivory and Opal Yellow both spread on top of this colour pretty wildly, which I think is because it is stiffer than they are. I was surprised to find no outlining reaction between Alley Cat and Opal Yellow because of how Opal Yellow reacts with Ivory, but I like surprises. Without the occasional surprise, it would be hard to stay motivated to do this testing.

Here are some other beads made with Alley Cat.

Test Results :: Ginger

CiM Ginger (CiM701) is a pretty, soft peachy-pink opaque colour. It is fairly inert - it will fume and discolour with silver, but in a much milder way than other neutral colours like Ivory.

Ginger doesn't change colour when you reduce it. You can see in the bead on the right that Ginger can be a bit streaky. In that bead, a lot of the colour migrated to the middle of the bead when I was melting it down.

Silver fumes the surface of Ginger slightly, giving it a yellowish cast. If you reduce and encase the silver leaf with Effetre Super Clear it turns an interesting, ethereal, lacy white with blue and pink halo effects under the clear.

It also, sadly, cracked in this test bead, so if you will be using this colour with silver and encasing it with clear, make a test bead or two first to see if this crack was because of that combination or if it was my fault.

Ginger is an average base for silver glass. My reducing silver glass bits spread out on top of the Ginger, and it stayed pretty neutral under the silver glass. I got a lackluster starting strike from my TerraNova2 frit. It seems from looking back at my notes for CiM Butter Pecan Uniques #4 and #5 that Ginger is significantly less reactive with silver than either of those colours were.

I'm looking forward to having worked all the way through this bluish batch of Tuxedo that I still have so much of. Ginger separates and thins out on top of Tuxedo, but the only reason the Tuxedo looks blue on the leftmost bead here is because this particular batch of Tuxedo was less opaque than usual.

Copper Green and Ginger don't strongly react, but you can see a defined outline around my Copper Green stringer work if you zoom in. It's not a dark line reaction like with Ivory, it's more like the Copper Green is floating just on top of the Ginger on some thin transparent layer. Ginger separates a bit on top of Copper Green.

On top of Ivory, Ginger blushes a darker colour at its edges, but there is no strong reaction between Ginger and Opal Yellow, Ivory, or Peace.

Here are some other beads that contain Ginger.

Test Results :: Lotis

Double Helix Lotis is a beautiful middle pink colour. It has gorgeous smoothness and clarity, and is not difficult to strike at all.

The larger the amount of Lotis in one place, the darker it looks.

Lotis is pinker, brighter, and lighter than Rubino Oro and Pink Lady, the other two pinks I had on hand to test it with.

In spite of it being a lighter pink, Lotis is still powerful in a handmixed colour. Here, I've paired it with one of the Double Helix semi-transparent whites for a beautiful, semi-opaque pink without much dilution of its colour.

Lotis is a bit reactive with silver, turning it a smokey, yellowish grey colour with blue fume around its edges. When the silver is reduced and encased, it looks lacier and the yellow goes away.

Lotis makes a pretty base colour for silver glass. I got a beautiful starting strike in my TerraNova2 frit.

Although Lotis is reactive with silver, it is mostly inert with these other colours I use for testing. Apart from a slight tendency for Copper Green to separate when used next to it, there isn't much to report about these beads.