Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day13

Day 13 has me singing an unlikely song. I don't really know what Diamine is thinking with these names. This one is "Ruby Blues," and I knew immediately what the color would be, even before I saw the word "Sheen."

It is, of course, a blue that sheens red, which you can see better here:

And what a sheen it is! I haven't tested it to see if it smears... I find that some of the most dramatically sheening inks do. 

But what's unfortunate has nothing to do with what the ink looks like--it's that I thought of "Blues," hence the guitar, and I thought of the Kenny Rogers song (which was covered by Cake), "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town" (I then went on a strange internet odyssey, during which I discovered that Waylon Jennings sang that song first, listened to Waylon sing The Dukes of Hazzard theme song and sing with Big Bird, and wound up listening to Kenny Rogers's "The Gambler" and "If You're Gonna Play in Texas" by Alabama, just to assure myself that I did, in fact, know that song. I won't even tell you what my brain did with the speaker of "Ruby" and the subject of "Hey Joe"... (talk about crossover)

Look! I painted a guitar! (not my best, but here it is--and now I'm thinking of Picasso and The Counting Crows)

Cheers!

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 12

Day 12, "Stargazer," is bound to be a crowd favorite. Before I opened this one, a friend and fellow fountain-pen enthusiast--who has vastly greater knowledge, and who first introduced us to Diamine inks and the Inkvent calendar in 2019--texted: "Today's ink - wow!" And... that does sum it up pretty well.

Today's has both simmer and sheen--and obviously so! No subtlety here! The base ink is a dark blue--basically a navy--that sheens reddish with a green shimmer.

Now, here it is worth making a comparison. I have a bottle of the Diamine Special "Blue Edition" Ink Happy Holidays, which debuted in the 2019 Inkvent calendar. You will see that the two are remarkably similar:

This year's, on the left, does not, in the above picture, show the base ink very well--I was a little heavy-handed, so the shimmer and sheen took over. But you can still see that 2019's Happy Holidays is a brighter blue--more of a royal blue--and while the sheen is the same, the shimmer is, to my eye, blue rather than green. 

Similar, but I'm not entirely sure that the sheen shows quite this dramatically:

This brings us to half of the Advent 24, and the completion of my second page of samples:

I can't wait to see what the next 12 will bring!

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 11

 

Day 11 gives us an ink that rewards patience. It is called "Party Time," fitting in with the theme of festivity that gets oddly broken up by tempest and storm, or moderated by candle light and raspberry rose. It is a shimmer ink, though this may not be immediately apparent. 

In fact, the shimmer is only apparent once the bright fuschia ink has completely dried. When it did, it had a lovely, unusual shimmer that seems to be almost a pale lavender.

Tomorrow, I finish page 2 of my Invent ink swatches, which is shaping up to be quite a lovely page!

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 10

Day 10 gives us Peach Punch--an alliterative name for an orange that goes to peach and back again. While I know that the "punch" is more a beverage than a verb, my brain can't help borrowing a bit from the old "how about a nice Hawaiian Punch" commercials...

 

I realized at some point yesterday evening after browsing inks online for a few hours that the names of the 2019 Inkvent Inks were holiday, winter, and holiday-festivity related. So far, only Garland, Winter Spice, and Candle Light really speak to a holiday season, though Raspberry Rose does pick up one of the colors of Advent, and Seize the Night and Peach Punch both seem more or less related to festive drinking.

Less theme, more ink...

This ink is a standard, with no shimmer or sheen. It seems standard in more than these special properties: I didn't find it very wet; I don't think it was very dry. There doesn't seem to be much shading. 

It is a nice, orangey-peach ink, and my younger daughter loves it because orange is one of her colors.

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 9

Inkvent Day 9 was a very nice surprise! As I suspected, if my husband and I had traded days--with him taking evens and me odds instead of how we started, the other way around, I would still have opened the inks with special effects. Day 9's "Storm" proved that hypothesis correct, so I'm glad we decided to wait it out!

Storm is a shimmer ink in a beautiful shade of dark blue. I find it interesting that we have a "Storm" after having already had a "Tempest" on Day 4, and while I tried to paint clouds for Tempest, today I couldn't resist a Storm at sea.

The shimmer is quite dramatic on this one, and it shades a bit, though I think I went heavy on the ink.

My husband's swatch has more variation in tone than mine:

And if you don't remember why 6 was afraid of 7, it's because...

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 8

 

Day 8 is the first door I have opened that wasn't a sheen or shimmer ink, but a standard. It is "Raspberry Rose," and as odd as that flower-fruit combination is from a sensory perspective, it is actually a very accurate name for today's ink, which I would other wise describe as a... deep rose, or raspberry. Nicely done, Diamine!

Beyond the beauty of the color, I don't find much to note. It can range from very deep and dark to a medium hue--so perhaps from a deep raspberry to a medium rose color.

For this sample, I switched the fine nib from the Brause Blue Pumpkin, which I don't really like, to a Nikko Comic: G nib, which I suppose is a bit better. I'm not really well-versed in the calligraphy nibs, and I should really find an option that I like for testing how the ink will look in a pen, which is, after all, how I will use it most.

This is one that I would like to see in one of my pens, probably a Lamy All-Star. In the meantime, it seems appropriate for the third weekend of Advent, which is approaching.

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 7

Welcome to Inkvent Day 7! I was a little distracted this evening because after opening the box and doing the swatches, I played around a bit with one of the 2019 Inkvent inks, Holly. I was not aware of the Inkvent calendar in 2019 until we were actually in the season, but we have collected four of the special "Blue Edition" inks that came out of that calendar. Meanwhile, my husband got an order from Goulet pens that included eight free sample inks for his birthday, so he was sampling those.

Day 7 is called "Candle Light." 

Holding with the pattern, it is a standard ink.

I offered to my husband, who is opening the odd numbers, that we could switch days, but then perhaps Diamine would throw us a shimmer on the first odd numbered day I opened, and he would still end up with a standard!

Candle Light is more gold than yellow: a candle whose light truly does shine in the darkness rather than a little joyful flame, lit more for its cheer than to hold back the night.

It has, if not a sheen, a slight edge that is a deeper gold, or orangey-red.

I tried, with the paintbrush, to see if it would shade, but it seems to layer rather than shading. I am almost tempted to draw it out with water as if I were using watercolor paint rather than ink, but I don't think that would improve the effect.

I do, however, like the lighter rich yellow that I can draw forth with very little ink on a brush. That is my favorite shade of this ink.

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 6

 

Inkvent Day 3 is a bit of an enigma! The name is "Winter Spice," and it is a shimmering and sheening ink, which means that while you would be right to expect, say, brown, that is not the whole story!

It is, you see, different in different light. VERY different. And if you turn it one way...

...versus another:

It is a rich brown that sheens green with a blue shimmer, which means that sometimes, it looks quite teal. 

It makes one want to use a paintbrush to sketch spice cakes and molasses sugar cookies, though the latter have an unfortunate tendency to look like reindeer droppings and are best turned into logs. You might also be tempted to paint an old tree that has lost all of its leaves for the winter, or try your hand at a skritchy little fox.

It is not a wet ink, and would probably perform best in a broad-nibbed pen; my broad-nibbed pens for shimmer inks are TWSBI Eco. I think it would probably be very nice with a stub nib.