Cream Of Earl by Ferris Wheel Press lost its pinkness

[Poojaby]

Hello! 

 

I felt the need to create this post since I can't find anyone else talking about it and maybe it's just me that I happened to contaminate two (maybe three?) different ink bottles of the same color. I hope the pictures I took serves as good reference to demonstrate  what happened over the course of a year.

 

I've been using Cream Of Earl for the past year until recently, because I thought I had contaminated my bottle of ink (fig. 3) since I sometimes use it to paint with brushes.

Lucky me I had a second opened bottle at work (fig. 5), I cleaned every single piece of my pen before refilling it, to my surprise the color on that bottle also had lost its pinkish appearance. I thought maybe I had convinced myself the ink had some pink hues, so I went through my notebook to find the very first time I used the ink and it looked just as I remembered it, also found the swatch I made that year on Tomoe River's white paper (fig. 2) and compared them. 

 

As I put the ink on paper, it looks kind of green until it fully dries looks like a grey-beige-sand color, i'm not mad about it but I'm very intrigued, also Ferris Wheel Press has no info about the ink changing its color over time and people haven't talked about it, maybe everyone owning this ink think they messed it up and are too embarassed to speak about it?  

 

I also checked my other pinkish inks from Ferris Wheel Press to see if they lost their true color (Strawberry Macaron, Lady Rose & Definetely Peachy) and they look just as the first time I opened them.

 

Anyone else has had this happened to them before with this or any other low saturated ink? 

 

fig 1. First swatch from when I first filled my pen with CoE back in 2021

 

fig 2.  Left one is on Tomoe River's white paper, swatched back in 2021. Right ones on Leuchtturm1917 paper.

 

fig 3. Bottle opened January 21st on 2021. 

 

fig 4. I received this ink bottle the same day as the other two, except this one I'm sure it  has never been opened before nor seen daylight until past

week that I opened it to compare the rest. It appears to be slightly lighter than the other two.

 

fig 5. Can't remember the day I opened this bottle but it was around the same week I first opened A)

fig 6. Swatch from FWP's page.

 

 

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week xx

[JulieParadise]

This may not be -- I suspect without knowing this specific ink -- a flaw or fault per se, as some inks, respectively some of their dye components, behave differently over time. 

 

Since I make an entry in my ink book, try out most inks I get on different papers, and also perform (very basic and unscientific) lightfastness tests every month (each new month all inked pens write a line on two sheets of paper, one goes into my notebook, one is stuck to my window), I'd either say this ink does change colour over time once it's on paper (some inks do that!) or the pinkish edge it had either faded after it had been on paper or within the bottle in case it had been stored in light. Or your paper is deceiving you, as some hues show up on certain papers better/more pronounced than on others. That's the reason for people like @namrehsnoom or Macciato Man macchiatoman.com show the reviewed ink on many different papers.

 

When flipping through my ink book I find some inks that still please me after even 5-6 years, as the colour is lovely and just what I expected or even nicer, but then there are also inks that ... did not age well, got an "ugh" tinge and do not look what I remember them to look like.

 

So, you may have to find a substitute for your ink that behaves differently, if this colour shift bothers you.

 

And yes, there still is the last possibility, that the whole ink is spoilt or defect, as we know there had been instances where certain colours in certain brands of a certain production period had "too much of .../not enough .../ingredient x was rotten". 

 

So, ;tlrd -- you are not crazy! That's the good news! 😉

[Poojaby]

On 7/19/2022 at 2:21 AM, JulieParadise said:

So, you may have to find a substitute for your ink that behaves differently, if this colour shift bothers you.

 

Hey, thank you for your response! 

 

It doesn't bother me that much because I kinda like how it looks, but I also really liked how it used to look 😕

Okay, so I found some ink tests(cream of earl's) on bond paper, Leuchtturm1917, Moleskine, Tomoe River, Nebula Notebook and Rhodia paper from when I first opened the bottle and wanted to use this ink on every paper I had, I can confirm they have not changed at all over the past 1.6 years. It's just the ink inside the three bottles that changed 😕 

 

I also thought that maybe the red dye they used for this specific ink could be the cause since I know red has a larger molecular weight and tend to fade away easier than other colors (at least for hair dye ), that's why I also compared the rest of the pinkish tones I own from this brand with older swatches but those haven't been through any change, neither the red tones. Weird. 

 

I know someone else in my city that owns this ink, but I have no way to reach her haha I'll just have to wait to ask her until I stumble upon her again. Also, it would be super weird to get her phone number just to ask her about some ink changing color hahaha

 

Either way, I already emailed the company, I'll be back as soon as I get a reply from them to give this thread the closure it deserves.

 

 

 

[arcfide]

If this is a dye-separation thing, does shaking the bottle of ink make a difference? I know some inks will definitely settle out slowly over time, especially the ones that have more "interesting" dyes or that push the envelope in some way. 

[Poojaby]

16 minutes ago, arcfide said:

If this is a dye-separation thing, does shaking the bottle of ink make a difference? I know some inks will definitely settle out slowly over time, especially the ones that have more "interesting" dyes or that push the envelope in some way. 

 

Thanks for taking the time to read, I already did and nothing happened  

[arcfide]

1 hour ago, Poojaby said:

 

Thanks for taking the time to read, I already did and nothing happened  

 

Bummer, and you say that this happened both with unopened as well as opened bottles of ink? Is there any chance that maybe there was some contamination in your pen, even something like water that might have subtly changed the color? A tiny bit of stray ink or something else? I wonder if it really is just not that stable over time in its liquid form? You did say that the paper samples you have been all stable? 

[Sailor Kenshin]

Pink can be a notoriously fugitive color.  Have you contacted whoever makes this ink?

[Poojaby]

20 hours ago, arcfide said:

you say that this happened both with unopened as well as opened bottles of ink?

 

Correct, with the unopened I even used a cotton swab instead of dunking the crystal pen or any other pen to test it on paper. I can't get out of my head this thought: Let's say I corrupted my ink bottles, how come they all ended up looking the same? Even the last one.

All the paper samples from a year and a half are stable, not even a slight fade nor change of color. Weird this only happened inside the bottle, right? 
 

16 hours ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

Pink can be a notoriously fugitive color.  Have you contacted whoever makes this ink?

 

I see, maybe because of the same reason as red (?). I normally use inks with pink hues and this is the first time ever happening so I'm very curious as to why this happened to this ink in particular, I already sent an email to the brand company but they haven't responded yet.

 

[arcfide]

Assuming that you tested on the same exact paper that the other inks were tested in (that's being a *little* obsessive) and that this paper was stored in a good, controlled environment, and you're able to get consistent color replication from all the papers and bottles, it really does seem like the only real conclusion to be drawn is that somehow the ink "aged" somewhat and shifted colors. I can't think of another possibility. It certainly wouldn't be the only ink to be susceptible to this. Some of the Noodler's ink dyes have been known to do this, and a lot of IG's do this. 

[Sailor Kenshin]

Decades ago, I wrote notes in a journal in pink fountain pen ink.  The journal has been kept inside a cabinet, away from light.  Now, the pink entries are so faded as to be barely legible.

[Muncle]

It reminds me.ofnwhat happened with my PR Coral Pink. It was a ugly, dusty grey colour that I quickly dumped. Other reviews show a lovely pink that never existed in my bottle.

[amberleadavis]

What a bummer.

[AlisaBeaubien]

Hi there! I managed to find a sealed un-used new bottle of this ink from one of the only places left in the UK that still sell it. when I say new, I mean new in that it was full of ink, unopened and in its original packaging. But it was not new stock. From what I can see FWP stopped making this several years ago therefore, my bottle had been sitting in storage for at least a few years, but unopened. I got it a few days after Christmas, and it was a dusty sage green color. Zero Pink color, zero gray, just sage green. I was a little bummed because I wanted to get the same color as the swatches but maybe this is why it was discontinued. It may not be a stable color even stored in darkness and sealed up (as mine apparently had been for 3 or so years before I bought it). I am going to do some experiments on the ink and see what I can find out.

[Flaxmoore]

On 1/1/2024 at 8:54 PM, AlisaBeaubien said:

Hi there! I managed to find a sealed un-used new bottle of this ink from one of the only places left in the UK that still sell it. when I say new, I mean new in that it was full of ink, unopened and in its original packaging. But it was not new stock. From what I can see FWP stopped making this several years ago therefore, my bottle had been sitting in storage for at least a few years, but unopened. I got it a few days after Christmas, and it was a dusty sage green color. Zero Pink color, zero gray, just sage green. I was a little bummed because I wanted to get the same color as the swatches but maybe this is why it was discontinued. It may not be a stable color even stored in darkness and sealed up (as mine apparently had been for 3 or so years before I bought it). I am going to do some experiments on the ink and see what I can find out.

 

I've seen some super-weird things happen to ink that aged for a while, even in good conditions. I had a bottle of Pelikan 4001 Red turn bright Barbie pink, and one of Noodler's Black Eel turn spinach green.

 

I've had plenty of other inks last a very long time (I've a bottle of Pilot BB that's about 8 years old and is still perfectly good, and one of Noodler's Ellis Island that's also totally fine) but some inks just don't last.

 

A book I once read (Forty Centuries of Ink) leans into a fairly strong dislike of violet inks, stating they're "remarkably fugitive". Granted, there weren't as many colors made in that era (common were blue, black, blue-black, green, red, purple) and the dyes were often unstable, but it surprises me to realize we've still not quite cracked that nut.