Test Results :: Flamingo

1 - Plain, 2 - Reduced, 3 - w/ Silver Leaf, 4 - w/ Silver Leaf (reduced & encased), 5 - w/ TerraNova2 Frit, 6 - w/ Silver Glass Frit Blend (reduced), 7 - w/ Tuxedo, 8 - w/ Copper Green, 9 - w/ Opal Yellow, 10 - w/ Ivory, 11 - w/ White

General Impressions
Reichenbach Flamingo (RL6218) is beautiful, interesting and I think somewhat challenging to use. It's going to take me some time to really figure out how I want to deal with this colour. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of Effetre Sedona, which I have not tested properly yet, only without the devitrification.  Flamingo has its own issues though, as you will see.

In the rod, Flamingo is brown. I spent quite a bit of time staring at it and wondering about it before finally adding it to my palette, and had a long (and probably tedious) conversation with Holly about how unflamingo-like it seemed before I ever melted any.

Depending on what you use it with, it ranges from a dark dusty rose (i.e. Bead #10) to a dark pink with orange overtones (Bead #1) and then down the darkness scale to more medium tones of those colours and the colours in between. It changes colour with silver, not always for the better, and it is really, really reactive. It gets mucky like Rubino Oro if you overheat it (or have a little too much propane -- not sure here). Also like Rubino Oro and many of the Italian pinks, it doesn't play nice with Ivory AT ALL.  More on this in a minute.

Something went wrong (not sure what  yet) when I encased Flamingo with the new Double Helix Terra2, added some Double Helix CE352 and then encased it with Aether. There are compatibility cracks all through the bead. Either the Flamingo doesn't much like being deeply encased, it doesn't much like being combined with a lot of silver glass, or something less obvious is going on. This made me particularly sad because I got such great colour out of the Terra2 and the CE352, but it was sort of lopsided anyway, so maybe this is for the best.  *sigh*

I hope I don't have to lose too many beads before I figure out what the problem is. I'm leaning toward the deep encasement explanation for now, because this colour is very similar in other respects to the Italian pinks, which also don't really take kindly to being encased.

Overall, though, I am pretty intrigued. I'm hoping the weather holds up this weekend so that I can get some torch time in and play with it some more.

Reduction

One of the coolest, weirdest things about Flamingo is that when you reduce it, it goes a shiny dark pink. This reduction film is exactly like the reduction film you get on a silver glass like Triton, apart from the fact that it is pink. I've never seen a colour do this before, so I am totally in awe of it. The whole thing was sort of marred by the fact that for some unknown reason, the whole bead reduced except for a thin line down the middle. Not sure why that happened, really, or if it will happen again.

Reactions

Putting silver leaf on Flamingo was sort of a different experience. First of all, the silver made a really decided beeline for the middle of the bead, and second of all, it totally turned the bead a strange shade of orange. When I reduced and encased the silver in the bead on the right, the result is really interesting -- kind've mottled and lacy and weird. I used Effetre Clear for this test.

Silver Glass really likes Flamingo, so I'm hoping that it doesn't turn out that Flamingo is a silver-glass-hating colour.

I didn't get great colour out of my TerraNova2 frit, but it didn't completely tank either. The pink in the bead of the left is a beautiful colour that unlike in most of the other beads, is actually reminiscent of flamingos. Nothing looked flamingo-like when it went into the kiln, so I spent the seven hours waiting for my annealing cycle to finish up worrying that because there are no flamingos in Germany, the people at Reichenbach had named it without ever looking at one.  Sorry about that :)

In the bead on the right, the silver glass frit has vivid halos around each piece, which is cool all by itself. Even cooler, but not so visible in the picture because it didn't photograph very well, the Flamingo reduced right along with the silver glass and the whole surface of the bead is mirrored, some places with pink and some places with greens and blues. So neat.

There is no bleeding between Flamingo and Tuxedo, but the Flamingo does have a decidedly more yellowish hue on the right-hand side of this bead. Also, where the Flamingo is over the Tuxedo, it looks much paler than in the other beads, is semi-transparent and has developed a translucent line/dot in the middle of the stringerwork designs.

Flamingo is totally cool with Copper Green. The reactions here are so crazy they are not easy to describe accurately.

On the Copper Green side of the bead, the Flamingo has separated over the Copper Green so that it is yellow on the outside and pink in the middle. You can see some dark bits on the Flamingo where I overheated it, possibly with too much propane in my flame.

On the Flamingo side of the bead, the Copper Green has also separated, light and shiny on the outside of the reaction and dark in the middle, but in addition, a thin yellowish line has formed around it so that there are three layers of reactive effect.

Flamingo makes Opal Yellow angry. The Opal Yellow on the Flamingo side of the bead blackened a little in the middle of the dots and lines, turning almost sooty. I did not expect this since Opal Yellow never, ever does things like this. It also curdled and separated.

On the Opal Yellow side of the bead, the Flamingo totally spread out and went orangey and there is some blackening both in AND around those lines.

I'm not sure what to make of this really... I think I need to try it again with a cooler flame to really be sure what's going on here, but it's pretty interesting (if a little ugly).

Flamingo made Opal Yellow angry, but that was nothing compared to the black rage it caused in the Ivory. On the Ivory side of this bead, the Flamingo dots and lines look almost frayed. They're greyed out and the edges are jagged and the whole effect looks a little like dirty watercolours.

On the Flamingo side of the bead, the Ivory dots and lines have a dark outline that is wider than the Ivory that was allowed to survive the reaction.

The oddest thing about these two glasses together, though, has to be the weirdness in the middle.  The reaction is black and jagged, and it looks almost motion-blurred towards the Flamingo side, but it also seems to be emanating pink and purple smog.  I know there's a use for this reaction, I just need to figure out what that might be.

And finally, White separates and gets translucent in the middle when it's put on top of Flamingo. Flamingo looks slightly translucent and a touch more orange when you put it over white, and spreads a bit. You can even see in one place where the centre of a large area of Flamingo seems to have tried to BE white. There is some sooting of the Flamingo here as well.

I made a few beads with Flamingo, some of which I've already shown with other test results, but here they are again. More to come as I give Flamingo a few more workouts.