Where to buy: Pure Pens (as an exclusive) [here]

Price: £12.95

Bottle size: 3oz (~90ml)

Colour: Blue

Shading: Minimal

Sheening: lol no

Recommend?: This is a tricky one.. I would be concerned about putting this ink in some pens because of how it looks in the bottle (read below) but it performs fine and I haven’t had any problems. Not very practical due to high bleedthrough. Love the colour, however. Lubricates the nib very well so great for dry pens!

Postage and packaging is a pain. When I bought Brexit I was short from free delivery. I saw this as an excuse to get a second bottle of ink. This was my first Noodler’s order, so I searched for a bottle and came across this blue. I had to have it.

It is safe to say that this ink lives up to expectations. Well… At least, in colour. I’ll get into that later.

The colour is amazing and really does remind me of the ocean. It’s lighter than Sargasso Sea, for example, but very well saturated. I have acquired a lot of blue inks as of late, but this is not one I regret buying. I will say this now – I will get another bottle of this ink.

This, like the sea, is wet. I enjoy wet inks, so this is not a problem. What is a problem is the show-through. I cannot write on the reverse side of this paper (Rhodia) very easily. The writing on both sides will be readable, but harder than other inks. The ink flows so well and so wet that it has turned my TWSBI 580 broad into a Pelikan grade broad. This isn’t something that bothers me too much because I do love wet and broad nibs, but the show-through of this ink limits the usability.

In hindsight, this doesn’t look awful, but I’ve never experienced this amount of show-through on Rhodia. I also want to limit the amount of editing I do on pictures.

As you saw in the images above. Paint. It looks like paint. This worried me a little bit, but I was pleasantly surprised when I cleaned it out. This is something that not many ink reviews I’ve read have pointed out (and certainly this is the first time I’ve pointed it out in my own reviews) – this ink cleans out incredibly well. It doesn’t stain, but does cling to the plastic when the ink is in the barrel. So if you’re using it in a demonstrator and you like it when the ink settles and you can still have some transparency, this is not the ink to use in a demonstrator – but it’s no Baystate Blue.

On copy paper, I think the ink does incredibly well. I see no feathering, not even on the flex (other than when the nib is stupidly saturated, such as the beginning of my F.. Whoops). The colour isn’t really compromised and is similar to that of the Rhodia paper. I’d say that this is because it’s such a saturated ink.

But I do notice bleed-through on the reverse side, whereas on Rhodia there was only show through..

So.. An interesting ink, but second think using it if you need to use the reverse side of the paper. Sadly, not a journalling ink.