This is the Diamine Inkvent 2023 day 1 door:

Day 1’s ink is Diamine Fortune’s Gold. It’s a chameleon ink.

The base mustard colour has a lot of shading to it, and the chameleon effect shades from gold to green. This makes Fortune’s Gold both more readable and more interesting than standard gold shimmer inks.

From another angle to try and capture some of the chameleon effect:

Fortune’s Gold is still a light ink so you want to go with a broad or stab nib for this one, to best capture the effect and ensure readability.

I don’t remember where I bought this tiny hand made bear, but it’s likely from York, UK. You can see how much Fortune’s Gold shades in this sketch:

And here’s the original bear, in all its cuteness:

Diamine Fortune’s Gold provides a strong start for the 2023 Inkvent calendar. It’s very fitting thematically, and they’ve added interest and variation to a pretty staple holiday ink colour. Would you use it or do you prefer inks that lean more heavily into the pure gold hue?

This is the Diamine 2023 Inkvent calendar. It contains 24 doors with 12ml bottles of fountain pen ink behind them, and one 30ml bottle of ink behind door 25. As in every year so far I will review all the inks in the calendar, publishing one post per day for 25 days, and then a summary post looking back at the calendar as a whole.

As I’m travelling this year at the beginning of December, I already wrote the first two weeks of reviews ahead of time (don’t worry, no spoilers). I don’t use dip pens for these reviews, but instead fill 25(!) fountain pens. This year, however, I’ve been a bit smarter about things and haven’t filled them to the brim.

Each review will contain a Col-o-Ring swab and writing sample, and that’s where you’ll get the best impression of the full range of colour of the ink.

I will also be including a writing sample, this year on a Penco notebook, and a sketch in a Midori MD notebook. This year I’m going for a theme for my sketches, sketching teddy bears out of my teddy bear collection. So you’ll also get a photo of a cute teddy bear as a bonus with each review.

At the end of each review I’ll try to give an idea of where and when I think this ink could be used, and whether I’m inclined to purchase a full bottle of it (Diamine will issue gorgeous glass bottles of the Inkvent inks later on next year).
Happy Inkvent to all who celebrate!