Diamine Inkvent 2025 the Teal Edition is over, and what a wild ride it has been. The 2025 edition introduced Pigment inks, which are waterproof when dry, and some interesting ink colour and property combinations.

Inkvent for me is a chance to play with inks that I normally wouldn’t try out, and it’s also a blogging, sketching and writing challenge. This year was more challenging than previous years, as I had received this calendar late, and so about half of the reviews were done on the actual day they were published, and the rest were only done a day or two in advance. I’m glad that I got it done, and I’m also glad that I chose a new streamlined format, as it helped me focus and get the reviews done on time.

Its the 6th year in a row that I’ve been creating these review posts, from the very first Inkvent calendar in 2019 (Blue Edition), through 2021 (Red Edition), 2022 (Green Edition), 2023 (Purple Edition), 2024 (Black Edition) and now this year, 2025 Teal Edition (Diamine didn’t create a 2020 Inkvent calendar. That was the Covid year).

Here’s a summary of this year’s Inkvent, first by ink colour, then property, and finally my personal favourites.

By Ink Colour

This is the full lineup of the Inkvent 2025 Teal Edition inks:

Unsurprisingly blue inks dominated this year’s calendar with a total of 7 inks in the blue/turquoise/Teal range. Both the first and the last inks for this year were teal inks, which is a given considering this is the Teal Edition of the calendar. Of these inks Dream Catcher is a sorry miss for me, as you don’t get to see the lovely base ink colour due to the extreme sheen (which also makes this a messy, slow drying ink with potential flow issues) and Overcast is lovely but much too light to be readable for me.

Four reds and pinks were in this year’s Inkvent, which is a pretty low number for an average Inkvent calendar. These were all decent Inkvent inks, and I’m pretty pleased with this lineup.

There were four earth tones in the calendar, with Smoky Tobacco being my least favourite ink ever. Apart from that, it was a good and interesting year for earth tones inks.

There were only 3 green inks in this year’s inkvent, with Fir & Fog being one of my favourites, Bittersweet being too light for my tastes and Laurel being gorgeous but made worse by extreme sheen.

Only two purple inks were in this year’s inkvent, with Energy being destroyed by sheen, and Gala being nice but a bit bland and light for my tastes.

And then there were 5 “wildcard” inks. Bubbly in gold, Molten Basalt the weird unspecified dark colour, Ambiance the only orange ink, Chaos the other weird ink and Pineapple Spritz the only yellow ink.

By Ink Properties

This year was a year for Standard, Chameleon, Shimmer, Extreme Sheen and Pigment inks. I would have liked to see more Pigment inks and less Extreme Sheen ones, but that’s because I want to use them in my sketching.

There were three Shimmer inks, all of them pretty and fitting a holiday themed calendar. Shimmer inks have sparkly bits in them, but unlike Chameleon ink it’s one shade of shimmer, and usually larger shimmer particles.

There was thankfully only one Scented ink this year, but to make up for that, it was truly, truly awful.

There were three Pigment inks, and while I liked antler and carousel I wish that they hadn’t chosen to make the bubblegum pink ink a Pigment ink. Pigment inks are waterproof.

The only Sheen ink this year was Energy, and the sheen really detracted from it. It made it look like there was a thick layer of dust on this ink.

There were three Extreme Sheen inks, and all of them would have been better served by not being extreme sheen inks. In particular Laurel suffered from the extreme sheen treatment, because the base dark green is very nice, but you get to see so little of it through the red sheen.

There was one Pigment Chameleon ink, Pineapple Spritz. I would have really liked this ink to have been just a pigment ink and not a pigment chameleon (with fine glitter in multiple shades).

There was one ink with Pigment Shimmer, Brrr! and again, I would have probably selected this ink as one of my favourites if it didn’t have both the Pigment and Shimmer properties.

There was one Shimmer and Sheen ink, the last but not least Myrrh the Merrier. I expect the last ink in the calendar to have Diamine going all out, and they did well with this ink.

There are no less than five Chameleon inks in this calendar, and it’s clear that Diamine are (rightfully) proud of their Chameleon shimmer.

There were 6 Standard inks, which is always good to see. These inks may be shading, or have a bit of sheen to them, but they’re generally good, well behaved inks that you can use with the knowledge that they won’t be too difficult to clean out of a pen.

My Favourites

While I have more than enough inks in my collection so I’m probably not going to rush out to buy any of these once Diamine issues the Teal Edition full bottles of them some time in July 2026, these inks are my favourites this year:

Celestial Skies is just a pretty teal with excellent shimmer that makes it truly shine. Carousel is one of the pigment ink that I’ve had the most fun sketching with. Fir & Fog is so excellent that it’s the first and only ink that I’ve written dry. Molten Basalt is an interesting alternative to black ink. Antler will be a useful sketching ink, and Myrrh the Merrier is delightful.

These inks almost made the cut, but there’s just something about them that made them a bit of a disappointment:

Marie Rose is interesting, but I found that I personally don’t enjoy using the colour. Laurel would be perfect without the extreme sheen, and Brrr! should have been a pigment ink and lost the shimmer.

Will I be doing Inkvent next year? Probably. It’s a challenging challenge to get all the reviews up, but in the end I do find that I enjoy the process.

What was your favourite Inkvent ink? Will you be participating next year?