Diamine Inkvent (Blue Edition) Seasons Greetings – a lazy review

[A Smug Dill]

Earlier in 2020, Diamine released the 25 ink colours that it produced and included in its Inkvent (2019 advent calendar) product as separate retail products in four-legged 50ml Blue Edition bottles. The inks in the series are categorised as standard, sheening, and shimmering — and each is priced accordingly.

 

Seasons Greetings is one of the sheening inks.

 

 

 

 

Base colour: Dark teal

Flow: Moderate

 

Feathering: Not observed on Rhodia Dotpad 80g/m² paper, looking closely at the thinnest hatching lines, and words/glyphs ‘reverse-written’ with the nib upside-down (i.e. the bottom of the feed facing up)

Show-through: Low to nil

Bleed-through: Not observed

 

Drying time: A smidgen over 20 seconds

Smudging after fully dry: A small amount; this ink is slightly susceptible to being re-wetted by the moisture on one's fingertips. I rubbed my dry thumb over the stippling dots (just after the scan shown above was done), and that caused some very minor streaking that took a loupe to spot. However, just now when I was handling the ink review sheet over 48 hours later, I managed to smudge some of smaller Japanese characters

Water resistance: So apparently poor that I don't think I need to soak some part of the sheet for an hour or so

 

Shading: Negligible. In spite of the apparent shading in the image above, the darker parts are actually manifestations of sheen; see image below. (I confirmed it by checking the ink review sheet under a loupe and a bright LED lamp.)

 

 

Sheen: Plenty of pink sheen, evident in almost every ink mark on the page, other than the thinnest and driest of the hatching lines I did by ‘reverse-writing’ (with nib upside-down and the bottom of the feed facing up) which apparently this pen-and-ink combination, or maybe just the pen, doesn't support

 

 

 

Shimmer: None

 

My thoughts: Now that I have detected a bit more susceptibility to smudging with this ink, I might have to rethink whether I feel comfortable using it to write in my journals and notebooks of which the content I intend to revisit. Nevertheless, the degree of smudging doesn't seem to be quite as severe as with some other Diamine (ultra-)sheening inks such as Iridescink Herbert or November Rain.

 

[gpsgrandpa]

Thank you for the review and nice photos of the sheen. I have a number of bottles of the Invent Blue Edition inks; both sheen and sheen and shimmer. A bottle of Seasons Greetings is hopefully arriving in tomorrows post. I'm currently writing with both Holly and Polar Glow.

[inkstainedruth]

The sheen is interesting, but the base color is not to my taste.  Thanks for the review -- you've saved me some money (there are other Inkvent Blue Edition inks that I might want, though...).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[A Smug Dill]

@inkstainedruth I'm glad the review proved useful for you!

 

@gpsgrandpa Not having bought the 2019 advent calendar product or sampled its contents, Holly was originally my first choice of Diamine Inkvent colours to get separately. I can't remember why exactly I ultimately passed on it (and I only needed two or three Blue Edition bottles to pad an order at the time, to make the free international shipping threshold), but I think it must've been because I looked at some online comparisons, and it was rather close to some other Diamine, Monteverde and/or Sailor ink colours I have? My other choice was going to be Noel, but I also ended up passing on it.

 

In the end, I ordered:

• Winter Miracle, because it's so spectacularly rich with features;
• Seasons Greetings, which is reminiscent of some of the region-exclusive Diamine ultra-sheeners, e.g. Smoke on the Water, and I was trying to stop my craving to get more of those when international shipping is so damn difficult/expensive these days; and
• Nutcracker, for its green sheen I saw in multiple reviews, in spite of it not being categorised as a sheening Blue Edition ink.  

[vtgt]

I did not care for this indistinct dark colour in all nib sizes I saw. It seemed to me that when thinned it looked more like turquoise blue and more pleasant, but turquoise is as crowded a market as teal and this ink has no water resistance.

[gpsgrandpa]

My bottle arrived and I inked up a pen from Ryan Krusac - medium nib with it. It does have plenty of sheen but the contrast of colors is minimal.

[vtgt]

On 12/10/2020 at 2:05 AM, gpsgrandpa said:

My bottle arrived and I inked up a pen from Ryan Krusac - medium nib with it. It does have plenty of sheen but the contrast of colors is minimal.

That's what put me off a bottle. The sheen is a dingy burgundy-black, the teal green is quite darkly indistinct too. Came alive only after I diluted it, which weakens the sheen. The way to get a similar colour with total, distinct sheen seems to be Walden.

[Lexus77]

Just bought this ink today. And, looking at your review, I can hardly wait to try it out. It looks amazing in the pictures. So excited to see the sheen.

 

[amberleadavis]

Great review.

[frolic838]

I like the look of this ink, but the smudging may be a no-go for me.  I'm still looking for my perfect sheener!