Where to buy: Diamine [Here]

Price: £9.95

Bottle size: 50ml

Colour: Red-pink

Shading: Not much

Sheening: No, but you have the sparkles which gives an “artificial” sheen (of gold)

Recommend?: A pink ink? With sparkles?! Of course!!

I have been kindly sent a set of four of the new Shimmertastic inks for a United Inkdom meta review. Many thanks to ‘Scribble’ for providing them for review. The inks I will be reviewing are:



Right off the bat, this is an ink that lends itself closer to an orange/red pink rather than a true pink. I’m not put off by the colour, but would love to see it closer to something like Diamine’s Hope Pink. This isn’t a pink, or what I refer to as ‘pInk’. It does have glitz though, for sure. I’ll give it that.

When emails started going around us United Inkdom lot, I was introduced as the one who will consider the use of stationary in a business/fun/school setting and compare the settings using this ink. This certainly isn’t an ink you’d use in a professional setting. It is, however, an ink that I would use to journal with, perhaps make personal revision notes (though, during school days I noticed that teachers cared less about the ink I used and more that I was doing work) and write letters to my friends. In fact, I think this is an absolutely brilliant ink to use to write to friends with. I would say it trumps any of the other Shimmertastic inks that I have reviewed for this purpose (though I would say it is narrowly in the lead followed by Cocoa Shimmer). The trouble with flashy inks is the readability (which is exactly what I was worried about when first testing this ink). Had it been silver particles (and we know that I much much much prefer gold over silver, so perhaps this takes in some personal bias) I think the ink would be harder to read, but the gold provides a good contrast. Certainly if the ink was lighter and truer to pink, gold would be a must and silver really would be troublesome. Again, personal bias but I think that gold with pink looks absolutely phenomenal and especially in the correct angle. As with the other Shimmertastic inks, the ink does not hold back when it comes to sparkles. Even in the barrel of my TWSBI 580 you can see the mass of particulate. Which would be a good time to mention how perfectly easy and well behaved this ink is.

The ink flows straight away. I have set the TWSBI down for 3 days in a row at times, perhaps longer(?) since inking it up with this ink and it would write instantly. Of course, part of this is attributed to the nib and also partly the paper, but it goes without saying that this ink is well lubricated but still better behaved than Noodler’s Britannia’s Blue Waves which essentially turned the nib into a nib grade higher because it poured out. Never had any crusting issues or felt the need to do anything over and above normal fountain pen hygiene. It does take a little bit longer to wash out (I cannot recommend bulb syringes enough) but all the glitter that you see on your feed and the slight golding/silvering is removed. To further build on how well behaved this ink is, a writing sample on cheap paper. Honestly, I went in expecting it to spider and bleed and gahh. But nope. What’s more, the particles are still obvious! So even if you’re out and about and need to borrow some paper from someone to jot down some information, you should be good to go.

And because I had it in my TWSBI, it would be impolite not to show you guys, right?

Pros:

Deep & saturated ink

Perfect for correspondence to friends/family & personal journal taking

Gold particles!

Performs amazingly well even on poorer paper

Cons:

Would like to see this as a truer pink

Not the most professional of inks