CiM: Messy Color™ Cirrus, A milky white moonstone.

Messy Color™ Cirrus

511806 -

A milky white moonstone.

Click here to view Cirrus Uniques

"This is now my favorite bead. It is Cirrus with my magic stringer, encased in Count von Count and Larkspur together. Do you see that little 'pearl' in the center of the swirl? That's Aurae and when reduced it gets this platinum look to it." – Sue Stewart

Click here for other interesting Cirrus discoveries.

Dwyn Tomlinson

Manuela Wutschke

Yulia Trubitsyna

Tatyana Boyarinova

Genea Crivello

Heather Sellers

CiM Tester Feedback

Cirrus is a moonstone.

“Halong Bay, Peacock Green and Cirrus are my favorite CiM colours [Note from CiM: all 3 are moonstones] because of the way they can be worked to get the desired amount of opalness or translucency.” – Juliette Mullett

Cirrus is etch resistant.

"Like Peacock Green and Halong Bay, Cirrus can't be etched with acid [trust me, I left some in an acid bath for six hours, and at best you get spotty damage] but it can be tumbled to a 'sea glass' finish in a lapidary tumbler. The result is identical to etched clear glass in terms of opacity, but the subtle blue tone gives it an especially brilliant whiteness." – Celia Friedman

Celia Friedman's tumble etching recipe for Cirrus:

"Put your beads, a drop of dishwashing soap, a handful of small glass beads, and a spoonful of silicon carbide grit in a lapidary canister, add enough water to cover that plus a bit more, and tumble for 2-3 hours. Time and grit rating will determine the finished product. 1000 grit for two hours gives a smooth, subtle frost with a pearly gloss coming through, while 800 or 600 will give rougher results.

The extra beads should be small, and many sources suggest 3-4 mm, but if you are tumbling large-hole beads those will get stuck in them, so I use mostly 6 mm.

Tumbling doesn't texture glass inside grooves or depressions, so unless you like the artistic effect of a partially etched bead, it works best with evenly rounded or perfectly flat beads. Because dimpled hole ends don't etch, I make my tumbling beads with flat ends and dremel down the edges later. NOTE: once you put silicon grit in a canister you can never, ever use it, or anything you put in it, for polishing metal." – Celia Friedman

Special thanks to Genea Crivello, Suzy Hannabuss, Teri Wathan, Elasia, & Vonna Maslanka for providing the photos in this section.

Genea Crivello used Cirrus for dandelion puff flowers.

DragonJools notes that Effetre 226 Alexandrite resembles Cirrus in rod form.

Join Trudi Doherty's FB group Lampwork Colour Resource Sharing Information for a catalogue of color study.
Claudia Eidenbenz’s "Vetrothek" (glass library) is a great resource for color comparisons.
See Kay Powell’s frit testing samples.
Browse Serena Thomas’ color gallery.
Check out Miriam Steger’s CiM color charts.
Consult Jolene Wolfe's glass testing resource page.

"1 is the 2022 batch of Cirrus without striking, 2 is the 2022 batch struck three times, 3 the 2021 batch struck three times. The degree of milkiness is achieved by striking- in fact, I controlled the degree of milkiness by the number of strikes."

– Olga Ivashina

“Testing the old CiM moonstones against the new misty opals. Top row is the moonstones [Halong Bay, Cirrus, and Peacock Green]. Bottom row is the misty opals [Wisteria and Budgerigar]. As you can see when the moonstones are worked longer they are more cloudy than the misty opals. You can see the dichro sparkle much better in the misty opals.”

– Caroline Davis

"I use Cirrus for its etch resistant properties. It looks great on top of a transparent bead- so when you etch it, the regular transparent goes like seaglass and the Cirrus decoration stays shiny! All the raised decorations on these hearts are Cirrus. It's a fabulous design feature."

– Trudi Doherty

Cirrus used as an acid etch resist.

– Claire Morris

Cirrus, Hades, and silver foil.

– Claire Morris

"Cirrus has a fabulous reaction line with fine deep Reichenbach black stringer."

– Jolene Wolfe

"These dots are Double Helix Triton on Cirrus. I just love the way Cirrus 'receives' certain reactive glasses!"

– Martina Marugg

"Cirrus is really difficult to strike back to milky opal with something this small [10-15 mm]."

– Robert Jennik

"A recent post about hand-mixed colours got me inspired to try a combination of Cirrus and Effetre Cobalt. I was really pleased with the result. The Cirrus lightened up the cobalt enough that it really is a wonderful blue in real life." Read more about mixing colors at DragonJools blog.

– Dwyn Tomlinson

"Cirrus with Lauscha pink...a gorgeous, GORGEOUS pale pink variation that reminds me exactly of real rose quartz."

– Dana George

Cirrus & Phoenix. "I really love how versatile Cirrus is when handmixing and I get such unexpected results...sometimes it's a combination of translucency and opalescence, other times it looks almost like agate or quartz. Other times it's just plain gemmy. I love it!"

– Dana George

Cirrus & Effetre light violet premium. "Here's a great example of how very gorgeous Cirrus is when hand mixed with transparents! You can keep lots of depth by controlling how much of your catalyst [in this case, Cirrus] you use versus how much of the stain [Effetre Light Violet Premium] you use. It creates incredible variation that is just beautiful! And I can't sing the praises of Cirrus enough...because as you can see, it adds a wonderful translucency to the previously transparent Effetre glass!"

– Dana George

Cirrus & Effetre copper green. "Now this one was a real shock! Cirrus does an amazing thing when hand mixed with Copper Green...it reacts strongly and pulls out the copper in the glass! You'll also notice that Cirrus mixed with any opaque can create both agate like passages in the beads or translucency...depending again on the ratio of catalyst to stain."

– Dana George

Cirrus, Celadon, and Halong Bay. "To get even more variety in this handmixed set, I used both Cirrus and Halong Bay as my catalyst, and Celadon as my stain. A lot of the resulting coloration depends on how much of a ratio of catalyst to stain you use, and also how frequently you heat, cool and reheat. It definitely allows for a lot of creativity [and requires patience!], but I think it's worth it!"

– Dana George

Cirrus & Atlantis. "Cirrus creates even greater translucency and beauty in opal glass like Atlantis. I loved the variation in this set, and I felt that it looked exactly like Apatite."

– Dana George

Cirrus & Reichenbach multicolor 104. "When I first mixed these two colors, I was unimpressed with the result. It was a sort of muddy, translucent ochre. But then a lightbulb went off and I decided to see what they would look like encased...wow...what a difference! Soft wispy clouds of tans, ochres, ambers, slate blues and grayed greens all made an appearance! Once again, I really love the way the Cirrus created that 'cloud-like' effect - even inside the encasing. Wonderful!"

– Dana George

Cirrus & Effetre transparent red. "I was curious about what would happen if I combined Cirrus as a catalyst with a transparent stain that you had to strike. Here are the results. I really think you could get an almost unending and varied palette just by hand mixing Cirrus with nearly any other color - transparent, opalescent, or opaque."

– Dana George

Cirrus & Effetre light teal. "I've found as I've been experimenting with all of these Cirrus hand mixes that it plays well with nearly any 104 COE glass. This mix made for beautiful opal and translucent pale aquas...and the more I struck the glass, the more opalescent it would become."

– Dana George

"To get the beautiful milky, moonstone color, I form the rounds [10-12 mm in back, 7-8 mm up front] in a neutral flame and let them cool a bit before striking. Because this glass melts fast and clear [like white], it’s really difficult to figure out how long to strike them. By the time, they’ve taken on a yellow glow, they’re most likely a puddle underneath my torch. Instead I strike the bead and pay attention to my turning mandrel more than the bead. As soon as the mandrel on both sides of the bead begins to glow, I move the bead out of the flame, let it cool slightly, and check results which take a few seconds to show up. If I want a milkier bead, I repeat the process until I’m a satisfied customer."

– Gloria Sevey

"It was the Cirrus that looked misty, and that makes sense - that's what it does. So where did my mistiness go [when making spacers]? Either the Cirrus needs critical mass - i.e. a thin encasement just doesn't show any colour, like a very pale transparent, or a lot of working, heating and cooling, emphasizes it's mistiness. Or maybe the scraps and trails of string play a bigger part - in that it reflects the colours internally and takes on the colours of the stuff around it. Whatever it was, matching spacers did not happen." Read more at DragonJools blog.

– Dwyn Tomlinson

"Didn't these turn out yummy? Base is CiM Cirrus, and trails of Double Helix Clio, struck and lightly reduced. Like caramel on a cloud." Read more at DragonJools blog.

– Dwyn Tomlinson

– Sue Stewart

"I'm always on the lookout for new glasses that don't react to a wrap of silver wire - sadly, I won't be adding any of the CiM whites to my palette." Read more about Cirrus testing at Lush blogs, including tests with Hades dots on Cirrus, Triton hearts on Cirrus, and etched Cirrus.

– Julie Fountain

"The beads are much nicer looking in person too, the opalescence is subtle and the camera didn’t pick it up too well."

– Amy Hall

"When worked, Cirrus looks a lot like high quality Moonstones which are a semi-precious natural stone that you can find made into beads of every imaginable shape and size. . . I really like to use these colors as encasements over intense dichroic scrap beads."

– Patricia Frantz