Ink Review #146 Diamine Red Lustre

This month I've gotten more into shimmer inks, and testing out how they behave. Diamine Red Lustre is the first of the Diamine Shimmertastic inks I will be working on. Red Lustre is from the original set of 10 Shimmertastic inks that came out in 2015.

The color...

Red Luster is a medium red with gold shimmer.

In large swabs, you can see a lot of the gold shimmer.

Dry time: 45 seconds

Water resistance: Low

Feathering: None

Show through: Medium

Bleeding: None

Other properties: Low shading, no sheen, and gold shimmer.

On 32 pound copy paper, the ink behaved pretty well, just a little bit of feathering and a few tiny spots of bleeding.

Ink swabs for comparison, left to right (top to bottom for mobile RSS): De Atramentis Red Brown, Diamine Red Lustre, and Faber-Castell Garnet Red. Click here to see the Diamine inks together. 

Robert Oster Royal Red, Robert Oster Clay Red, and Robert Oster Astorquiza Rot. Click here to see the red inks together. 

Longer writing: 

I used a medium Lamy Al-Star for the first paragraph, then switched to a Pelikan m400 with a vintage 400N nib. The flow felt average to me. 

I liked the ink the most in the flex nib. I think it would be a good ink for Christmastime, just because it's red and sparkly. 

Overall, she shimmer makes the ink interesting, but I don't love the base red. It feels a little too unsaturated for me. It is well behaved though. I would probably only use this ink at Christmas, where red and sparkly fits well, and always in a flex nib. It might work well for Valentines Day cards as well. 

Disclaimer: I purchased this ink myself, and all photos and opinions are my own. There are no affiliate links on this page.