Diamine Inkvent Calendar is an advent calendar with a tiny (7ml) bottle of ink behind 24 windows, and a larger, 30ml, bottle of ink behind the 25th window. All the inks are limited edition, and only available through this calendar. You can read more about the calendar here.

So what’s behind door number 2?

Day 2’s limited edition ink is Diamine Candy Cane. It’s a standard ink, midway between Diamine Amaranth and Diamine Coral, both excellent and unique pink inks. This ink shades a lot, even in a fine Lamy Safari (Coral) pen. It’s a dark enough pink to be readable, but still not something that I would recommend for an office setting. It’s great for personal correspondence, Christmas cards, and journalling.

The bottle is made of glass and is delightful, but a bit impractical for use. You need a cartridge converter or a syringe to fill a pen with this ink, or you can just use it with a dip pen or a brush.

Look at that shading! Yes, this was drawn on a Kanso Sasshi 3.5” x 5.5” Tomoe River Paper notebook, and Tomoe River paper makes everything pop, but even on “regular” Rhodia paper you can notice the shading. That’s not always true for such bright and light shades, like pink or coral.

If you enjoy the looks of this ink, I think that there’s a good chance that you’ll love Diamine Coral (it’s such an optimistic colour) or Diamine Amaranth (which is also a delicious looking ink, but darker than Diamine Candy Cane).