The Diamine Inkvent calendar is an advent calendar with 24 tiny (12ml) bottles of fountain pen ink behind 24 doors, and a larger, 30ml, bottle of ink behind the 25th door. All the inks are limited edition, and, at the moment, only available through this calendar.

Day 2’s ink is Diamine Garland. It’s a shimmer and sheen ink, with a green-blue base, red sheen and green sparkles. As I guessed on day 1 of Inkvent, the label colour is meant to evoke the colour of the ink, though it’s far from a faithful reproduction of it.

Shimmer and sheen on the label:

Here’s a Col-o-Ring swab of it. The ink looks more blue than green here, but in reality it’s more of a green than a blue. If I had to compare the base colour to my Schmincke watercolours, it would be a Prussian green or a cobalt green turquoise.

I used a Lamy Safari Petrol fine nib to test this ink out. Again, cartridge converters for the win.

I felt like sketching a cat, so I drew one lazing about on a yet to be hung garland. The photo doesn’t pick up the crazy amount of red sheen that Diamine Garland has. You can barely notice the shimmer with the sheen being so pronounced.

This was drawn on a Kanso Sasshi 3.5” x 5.5” Tomoe River Paper notebook (the notebooks I have were bought in 2016, and so they contain the old Tomoe River paper).

Finally, I wrote a page in my Midori Journal:

Diamine Garland looks a lot like someone took Diamine Holly from 2019’s Inkvent and added a splash of Prussian blue or indigo to it. I think that the shimmer gets a bit lost in this ink because of the strong sheen, and I’m not sure that the colour stands out enough from other inks in this colour range to justify ordering a bottle of it. It is Christmassy colour, and a pretty one, it’s just not one that is as unique as day 1‘s Seize the Night.