It’s Day 4 of the Diamine Inkvent calendar. What’s behind today’s door?

It’s Diamine Spruce – a saturated dark green that’s (unfortunately) scented.

The ink is a dark viridian green with a red sheen and relatively little shading, as it is so saturated. It also showed a troubling tendency to stain pens, perhaps because it is so saturated or perhaps because of the pigments involved. It’s not a super sheening ink, which means that drying times are long but acceptable, but it will feather on even normally fountain pen friendly paper.

Diamine Spruce is a very Christmas appropriate ink, and I’d have no issue with it if it wasn’t scented. Diamine doesn’t normally make scented inks and I don’t like scented inks, which means that this is not only the first scented Diamine ink that I own, it’s the first scented ink that I own. Did Diamine even make scented inks before this Inkvent calendar? I don’t like scented inks enough to even check.

I filled a Lamy Safari with a medium nib with Diamine Spruce, and the air freshener smell it gives off is so unpleasant that I’ll probably dump the ink in the converter right after writing this review. It’s not an overpowering scent, but it is present, and I don’t like it. It reminds me of hospital toilets and car air-fresheners, and not in a good way. Definitely not an ink that I would ever buy or use.

It’s day 1 of Inkvent 2022, and it’s time to see what’s behind the first door (the illustration on the calendar is exactly the same as in previous years, just on a green background, instead of a blue or red one):

It’s Diamine Bliss!

I filled a Pilot Metropolitan fine nibbed pen with it, and created this Col-O-Ring swab:

It’s definitely a cheerful and calming colour, and it has distinct summery vibes to it. To test it out I created a quick sketch of the beach and the Mediterranean on a Tomoe River 52g notebook (the original Tomoe River paper).

I then wrote this quick review of The Expanse series using it. As you can see, despite this ink being labelled as “standard” it shades very well, even in a fine nibbed pen. It also remains readable throughout, which isn’t a given in turquoise inks. This was written on Tomoe River paper 68g (original tomoe river paper).

I like turquoise inks, and so I have a few swabs of them at hand (and one or two laying around that I haven’t swabbed yet). Diamine Bliss is very close to Sailor Bungubox June Bride Something Blue, and not far from Diamine Subzero (minus the shimmer). Not a particularly rare shade of ink, but a nice one nonetheless.