This is another one of those posts that are much for my reference as anything else, but hey, just in case this wasn't obvious or you haven't run across it somewhere else, here's my recipe for intense pink stringer—actually, striped cane, for flowers—plus a softer pink (sometimes exactly what you need) and a fun coral variation.
intense pink, silver pink (coral), standard pink striped cane
There are any number of methods for making striped cane—you can just start striping away on an inch or so of standard diameter (7–8mm), or you can shape the rod into a lollipop or even a flattened rectangle (this last the typical starting point for ribbon cane.) I rather like Kim Fields’ approach: she balls the end of a rod to maybe 10mm or so, rolls it into sort of a mushroom or cylinder, some 10x6mm, and then stripes.
Take a rod of 254 (EDP) and stripe it 5x with dark opaque pink stringer. Case with 456 gold ruby. Punty and pull to about 2–3mm diameter. Now that was easy, wasn't it? —If just a tad on expensive side, being that all three colors cost $20+/lb; luckily a little goes a long way. The thing is, evil devitrifying purple shifts in the flame to a nice intense opaque pink; and, cased with the gold ruby, a nice intense transparent pink, the end result, even pulled down, is a decently intense dark pink. A more dramatic variation would substitute black for the dark opaque pink stripes. (Even dark opaque pink is nearly white, at least in my stash.)
The standard recipe is as follows: stripe a rod of dark opaque pink with white stringer. Case pink with gold ruby, and white stripes with clear. Punty and pull out to desired diameter.
Bonus recipe: this is really fun because it takes advantage of the many colors silver-bearing colors can shift to under different heat environments. Stripe a rod of silver pink (or that almost-the-same opal yellow—I think the stock numbers are something like 255/266) with 254 EDP and case with gold ruby. The stripes are not very obvious, but in variable temperature situations, it yields some very pretty effects, moving from a warm yellow to a pretty pink, like a peace rose.
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
