Where to buy: Diamine [Here] (or just about anywhere else that sells Diamine)

Price: £9.95

Bottle size: 50ml

Colour: Turquoise/light blue

Shading: Yes!

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

Recommend?: A B S O L U T E L Y

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:

I’m not doing these reviews in any particular order, but I must say that this is my favourite out of them all. If there’s a standard ink in Diamine’s line up then please, someone tell me because this is a beautiful ink I have done some investigating and I’d say that if you want this ink without the sparkles then go for Diamine Marine/Steel Blue. However, as I wrote in my sample, the glitter makes it a little impractical.

But I feel like that’s complaining about having pasta in your spaghetti bolognese. I went to a pen club meet in London, something I do every month, and was speaking to someone (whom shall remain nameless for I haven’t asked if it’s okay if I name drop) and they said “no. Always sparkles”. So for some people, the sparkles are good. Add more sparkles!

Diamine Tropical Glow Shimmertastic Ink Swab Diamine Tropical Glow Shimmertastic Ink Swab

People who I speak to will know that I’ve been in love with teal inks ever since getting my hand on Pelikan Edelstein Aquamarine and then Blue Suede. I think this is a mix between a dark turquoise and a blue-teal. It certainly lends itself heavy towards the blue side rather than the green. As a blue guy myself and someone not that impressed with greens, I’m game. The colour is just beautiful. The shading isn’t excessive, but works well with the colour spectrum that you have. Also, you can see the sparkles at the top. Something that goes for all the Diamine shimmer inks is that they have far more particles than the 1670 inks by J Herbin, which are the only other inks I am aware of that have the sparkles. This could be a turn on or turn off for any individual. I think in the case of this, if you go for sparkles (and I realise I referred to it as glitter.. Sorry..) then you want to go for sparkles and I’m glad this ink doesn’t hold back. Of course, if you want fewer sparkles then don’t shake the bottle before you ink up. Alternatively, if you want a lot then shake and shake and shake.

As for cheaper paper, the ink isn’t awful, but I wouldn’t describe it as great:

As I wrote in the sample, the colour still manages to remain, as do the sparkles, to a certain extent. The only negative aspect is that the ink bleeds quite a bit. There’s a little bit of feathering, but it isn’t dreadful. To sum it up, I’d say this ink performs the worst on copy paper of the four I test. But let’s admit, if you’re writing on one side, it isn’t that dreadful. And with that, I shall leave you in anticipation with the other reviews, like a good author writing a book series. I hope.

Pros:

Absolutely beautiful colour!

Silver particles makes the ink fun to use

Cons:

Particles might not be practical

If you leave the pen without writing with it for some time then there is a risk the particles can block the flow