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Ink Mix - Jekyll & Hyde 1 part : Diamine Orange1 part : Pelikan Edelstein JadePelikan Edelstein Jade is not a colour I like, and I have a whole bottle of it. This begged for a more creative approach… this ink might well be nice for mixing. So I set forth to turn this jade monster into a beauty… “With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.”--- Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde … and so a new ink was born. “Jekyll & Hyde” was obtained by mixing 1 part of Diamine Orange with 1 part of Pelikan Edelstein Jade. I let the mix rest for several days, and it seems quite stable. The resulting colour is a really nice type of brown, that reminds me of J. Herbin Cacao du Brésil. Who knew an ugly ink like Edelstein Jade could produce such beautiful offspring? The ink writes well, with good contrast to the paper in all nib sizes. In broader nibs, it shows off some really classy shading. Unfortunately, the ink has zero water resistance. Both standing and running water will obliterate your writing. This is also clear from the chromatography : at the bottom part, almost all of the ink detached from the paper. I have tested the ink on a variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. Below I show you the ink’s appearance and behaviour on the different paper types. On every small band of paper, I show you:An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturationAn ink scribble made with an M-nib fountain penThe name of the paper used, written with a B-nibA small text sample, written with an M-nibDrying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib)Jekyll & Hyde behaved perfectly on all the paper types I used, with no visible feathering on the lower quality papers in my test set. Bleed-through was only present with the Moleskine paper, and even there it was not too bad. Drying times with the M-nib are on the short side in the 5 to 10 second range. The ink looks quite nice on all papers – both the white and more yellow ones. I quite enjoy the way it looks on the Paperblanks paper, which is what I use for daily journaling. But why did I name this ink mix “Jekyll & Hyde” ??? Here I reveal the dark secret of this mix – the way it looks depends completely on the colour temperature of the lightsource. In daylight, Dr. Jekyll is a fine brown ink, reminiscent of J. Herbin Cacao du Brésil. At night – under artificial light – Mr. Hyde completely changes the personality of this ink, and turns it into a dirty green, that looks a bit like Diamine Salamander. Below I show you a photo of the effect – I kid you not… this really is the same ink! Jekyll & Hyde is an interesting ink, that I quite enjoy in both its good and evil forms. And with this mix, my otherwise unused bottle of Pelikan Edelstein Jade will find a useful purpose. All in all a quite interesting mixing experiment!