Tag: stationery

Diamine Inkvent 2025 Day 18

Day 18’s ink is Diamine Laurel, a dark, saturated blue-green “extreme sheen” ink. It has a LOT of red sheen and it takes ages to dry (although I will say that the TWSBI Eco 1.1 nib lays down a generous amount of ink, which didn’t help things).

Col-o-ring swab

Look at the amount of sheen on this ink – Diamine isn’t kidding when it says “extreme sheen”. You can see the lovely ink colour when you’re writing with it, but the minute it dries you can barely see it under all that reddish-purple sheen.

Close up on the extreme sheen

I used a new fountain pen to test out this ink – a TWSBI Eco Serpentine and Bronze fountain pen with a 1.1 nib. I really like the combination of the bronze, the dark green, and Diamine Laurel. They work well together.

TWSBI Eco Serpentine and bronze

The sheen really gave my camera a hard time, so this photo looks smudged. In any case on Apica CD paper (coated, fountain pen friendly paper) Diamine Laurel took a very long time to dry, so if you’re someone who tends to smudge wet ink, be aware of this.There was no bleed through or show through to the other side of the page.

Writing and sketching sample on Apica CD paper

Here’s a closeup of just how much sheen there is in this ink:

Extreme sheen

Everywhere the ink pools, red sheen glows through:

Extreme sheen

Today’s bear is Milan, made by Bear in Mind. He’s a nice but slightly worried looking bear.

The bear

Red and green work well together, especially in this time of year, and Diamine Laurel is perfect for an Inkvent calendar just on that merit. It’s an attractive ink, especially when combined with a generous nib and paper like Apica CD and Tomoe River Paper. You want a coated paper to make the most of this ink, and you need to take care not smudge this ink while it’s wet. The end results do glow on the page though, so I think that Diamine Laurel is worth the effort. What do you think?

August’s Currently Inked Fountain Pens

August is going to be a month of pens and inks that I haven’t used in a good long while. While I still have a small amount of ink in four of my July pens (the Kanelea, the TWSBI ECO-T Saffron, the Big I Design Fountain EDC and the Schon Design Faceted Pocket 6), they will all be written dry by the end of next week at the latest. It was time for a new lineup, and this is this month’s assortment:

Writing sample of August’s pens

The TWSBI ECO-T is one of my favourite TWSBI designs, and so I have a few of them. The TWSBI ECO-T Mint Blue hasn’t been in use for about two years, so I decided to pull it out and use the Sailor Studio 162 with it, just for colour matching reasons. The 162 is an ink that I’ve used a few months ago but I really like it, so I felt like giving it another month in rotation.

The Lamy Safari Pink Cliff is a recent purchase that I made in Paris last April. I’ve only now inked it up as I wasn’t sure what ink to use with it — until all the discussion about the new (and not as great) Lamy Dark Lilac ink made me want to use the original Lamy Dark Lilac ink. I purchased a bottle of Dark Lilac and the Dark Lilac Safari back when they first came out, but I haven’t used the ink very much. It’s wet and very saturated and so it works best with only a handful of paper options that I have. Still, it’s a very attractive ink.

Visconti Homo Sapiens — this is the original Homo Sapiens, the one that created quite a splash when it came out. At the time it was my most expensive fountain pens, and it’s still one of my most precious pens. I bought it at Mora Stylos in Paris and had it customized with the special initial badges on the finial. I got Pilot Iroshizuku Shin Kai as a gift with my purchase, and though I love this ink I haven’t used it in a while simply because I misplaced it behind another rarely used ink.

The pens from top to bottom- TWSBI ECO T Mint Blue, Lamy Safari Pink Cliff, Visconti Homo Sapiens, Parker 51 Flighter, Sailor Pro Gear Slim Manyo Cherry Blossom, Leonardo Momento Zero Grande 2,0 Galattica Universe

Vintage Parker 51 pens are my absolute favourites, to the point where I have a hard time seeing one in the wild and not buying it. This Parker 51 Flighter hasn’t been in use in years, but in the spirit of “use the good china” I’ve inked it up. Pilot Iroshizuku Fuyu Syogun used to be my favourite grey ink — and then Diamine came out with a series of excellent grey inks and Sailor came out with the 123. I haven’t used it in years, so I dusted off the bottle and decided to give it another try.

The Sailor Pro Gear Slim Many Cherry Blossom has been in rotation relatively recently, but the ink inside it, the Sailor Shikiori Sakura Mori, is one I haven’t used in years. I don’t have or use many pink inks, but I decided I needed something to brighten up this lineup, and the Sakura Mori ink is relatively readable. It also perfectly matches this pen, which is a nice bonus.

Leonardo Momento Zero Grande 2.0 Galattica Universe is also a relatively recently purchased pen that has been in rotation not too long ago. I just love the Momento Zero so much that I decided I wanted to ink one up, and so I chose the Pilot Iroshizuku Syo Ro to ink it up with. I haven’t used this inks in years, and I love teal inks so it was about time.

What have you got inked up for this month? Anything new? Old favourites or long forgotten pens or inks?

January 2024 in Pens and Paper

January was a big month in terms of writing pens dry. For the first time ever I managed to write all of the Inkvent pens dry by the end of the month. That’s 12 fountain pens written dry, which is the most I’ve ever written dry in a month. The secret is not filling them more than 50% full, and making sure to journal and note-take consistently.

In terms of paper products I’ve journaled in my Stalogy 365 B5 journal and will be switching to a new journal next month (also a Stalogy 365 B5 because I like the paper and the format). I do have a little quirk with these notebooks – I use them upside down because I don’t like the header with the dates on it, so I flip the notebook around so that it’s at the bottom of the page. That way it doesn’t bother me as much.

Stalogy 365

I’ve also been using a Rhodia A5 dot pad to time block my day, and Kokuyo A4 KB which I cut in half (to get two A5 pieces of paper) and write my daily todo list on. At work I use a Maruman Mnemosyne horizontal A5 notebook (either squared or blank) to brainstorm on, track my tasks, take meeting notes, etc. My weekly plans and long term 12 week year goals are in a Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal that stays at home, on my desk. The rest (Stalogy B5 journal, two pieces of daily planning paper, and the Mnemosyne) travel with me when I go to the office.

I have a monthly calendar with some monthly reading, running, gym, swimming and blogging targets on it and I draw that on a Well Appointed Desk “Rebel Plans” notepad.

Earlier this month I used the wonderful Pelikan Hubs paper to do my daily planning, and it was amazing (cardstock thick and fountain pen friendly). I was running out of it quickly though, which is why I moved to the Kokuyo.

Pelikan Hubs paper pad

In terms of standard pens I’ve used the Pilot Hi-Tech-C in 0.4, my Spoke Design Spoke Pen in orange crush, and a Pilot Juice Up 04 in orange and light blue. As I will be spending a lot of time at hospitals next month, I will likely be using more standard pens then.

Pilot Hi Tec C and Spoke Design Pen

Pencils in use were the Tennessee Red, which is gorgeous and a treat to use, and Leuchtturm1917 Drehgriffel Nr.2 mechanical pencil in red and grey. I have better mechanical pencils that this one, and yet I keep returning to it. Something about the Drehgriffel design is simply appealing to me. You can read my review of it here.

Next month will likely see more use of standard pens and pocket or cheap fountain pens. I will be in the hospital a lot, so that means that my setup will change to reflect that.

Here are the fountain pens I filled for February:

Schon Design Pocket 6 pens.
Kaweco Sports.

The new and challenging setting will mean that I’ll likely go back to my trusty Moleskine hardcover and Ti Arto for the duration of my dad’s stay in hospital.

What stationery products have you been using in January?