Today I am looking at three delicious shades of red glass. The first is a real favourite of mine CiM Valentine, which is part of the Messy Color regular line. It is a delicious dark red opaque that keeps it's rich colour and opacity as fine stringer work and as tiny dots.
Next up are two of the newest ltd run releases, Radio Flyer and Bing. Radio Flyer is a glorious bright mid toned red. In the solid heart bead (pictured left) you can just see a small amount of transparency left after all of the repeated heating, cooling and pressing to form the heart shape.
Bing is a lovely shade of red that tends a little towards orange. It is much brighter than Radio Flyer and it has opacified much less in as a solid heart bead.
Next I wanted to check out how the reds looked as different size dots. Valentine, the only opaque, kept it's colour beautifully. Radio flyer came into its own when used in tiny quantities for dot work, it looks even more vivid, almost Scarlet even, over Effetre white.
Bing looks very different when used for dots, the orange tone is more apparent and the results are very pretty, like strawberry jelly.
Next I made an ocean bead with three baby red mud crabs, the left one is Valentine, the middle Radio Flyer and the last is Bing. The Radio Flyer crab has became semi opaque whilst the Bing one remained much more transparent (the Bing crabs claws are semi opaque and were worked longer in the flame than the body). I found all three of these lovely reds easy to work with, smooth to melt, hard to boil and neither of the transparent glasses needed to be struck.