Caveat: this year’s Inkvent appears to have elusive ink colours. I suggest reading my description of the inks and not going by the photos alone, and comparing my results with those of other reviewers. 

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 13’s ink is Diamine Ruby Blues. It’s a royal blue ink with a purple red sheen, and it’s gorgeous. It’s such a saturated colour that I’m worried that it will stain the converter I used, and yet it’s such a glorious colour IT’S WORTH IT!

There’s sheen and then there’s SHEEN. Take a look at the swab below to see what I mean.

Here’s a Col-o-Ring swab of Diamine Ruby Blues. Isn’t it fabulous? Yes, it’s blue, but at a certain point of sheen and saturation you leave basic blue behind and transcend into “Yasss, queen” blue. This is a blue that can do no wrong. Will it permanently stain my pen? Who knows. If it will, it will be worth it.

I used a Waterman Phileas with a fine nib to test out Diamine Ruby Blues. It sheens even with a fine nib, which you can see below:

I drew a quick trio of three blues players with Diamine Ruby Blues. The photo doesn’t capture the sheen very well, but there was a good amount of it.

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:

I’m not a fan of blue inks, as I tend to find them boring, but boy oh boy is Diamine Ruby Blues the opposite of a boring blue. I’m definitely going to buy a bottle of this to play with, and even though I don’t think the colour is particularly festive, I’m glad that it was included in this year’s Inkvent.