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.

It’s day 12 of the Diamine Inkvent calendar, and a snowman is holding the sign, so it must be good, right?

Day 12’s ink is Diamine Noel, a burgundy red ink with sheen. I liked the colour, as it’s warm and rich and interesting, with a lot of shading, but I was underwhelmed by the sheen, even on Tomoe River paper.

I used a Pelikan Pelikano medium nib for this, and I really laid down a good amount of ink, and I barely saw any sheen. That was so weird that after drawing the outline of the flower, I filled in the petals, and then drew the two baubles below and I still mostly just saw shading. This is not what I expect from an ink marked as a “sheen” ink, but I like the colour enough to not care too much about it.