Yup, it’s that time of year again. No, not Halloween. No, not Guy Fawke’s Night (though, soon..!) and Christmas is still a little bit around the corner. No, it’s time for the annual overview of the new Shimmertastic range that Diamine release around this time every year. And oh boy, are these some fun inks..!! I’m very excited to get into these, so without further ado, let’s take a look. These inks can be bought directly from Diamine – a very reliable service and you get free delivery and a free 5ml ink sample with orders £10+ (which isn’t much at all!)

Dragon Blood

Colour : Dark red

Dark red Sparkles: Gold

Gold Sheen? No

Generally when I hear of inks being named ‘dragon’, I get extremely excited. Red Dragon and Dragon’s Napalm are very good inks – the former of which I use very regularly. Dragon Blood lives up to the excitement I initially had.

Diamine already have “Oxblood”, and I think this is a fairly like for like, with the difference being that Dragon Blood has sparkles. Fairly fitting, though. I’m sure dragons had sparkly blood.. I shall have to ask St. George on that one, eh?

Dragon Blood is a dark red. It’s not so much the arterial red that I’d describe Red Dragon as being, but more in line with dried blood that you’d expect to get from Diamine’s Oxblood offering.

Mystique

Colour : Dark purple

Dark purple Sparkles : Gold

Gold Sheen? No

When I first saw this in the bottle I thought that the ink was black with sparkles. Upon putting the nib to paper, I realised that it was actually a dark purple. Mystical indeed!

This is a nice dusty looking purple, rather than the sort of vibrant “imperial” purple. Similar to one of last year’s releases, Arabian Nights, but with gold sparkles rather than silver.

Pink Champagne

Colour: Pink

Pink Sparkles: Gold

Gold Sheen? No

This is a light pink and probably one of my favourites in this line. Back in 2016(?) I was quite critical of Pink Glitz (yeah, that’s an old review..!) because it seemed a bit more red than pink. This is definitely pink, but perhaps a watered down version of Pink Glitz (not that this is the case, just a way of describing the ink).

I used this ink for one of my tutorials at university and my lecturer seemed to enjoy it, so there’s another seal of approval for you.

The shade coupled with the gold sparkles really makes this ink live up to its name. It just sounds and looks classy (whether pink champagne is classy or not I will leave that up to you to decide). A nice ink for the champagne socialists out there, perhaps? Or is it not red enough?

Ahem, moving on…

Neon Lime

Colour: Lime green

Lime green Sparkles: Silver

Silver Sheen? No

This ink reminds me a lot of Golden Oasis, while not being as vibrant and also definitely lighter than Golden Ivy; being less of a “nature” green. All of Diamine’s shimmer green inks that they offer have gold sparkles, if I recall correctly – so that’s another outlier. I think gold and green works nicely in a slightly ostentatious manner, while silver works more as an understated ornament. Nevertheless, I was quite taken by this ink. Something about the shade that just works quite nicely.

Starlit Sea

Colour: Blue

Blue Sparkles: Silver

Silver Sheen? Yes

I personally disagree with silver sparkles being used with blue inks. That’s a purely personal thing – I just prefer gold in general. That being said, this blue is incredibly beautiful.

There is also a slight red sheen to this ink, which will appeal to quite a few. I know, shimmer and sheen? How ’bout dat?!

Rockin Rio

Colour: Orange

Orange Sparkles: Gold

Gold Sheen? No

I am going to go ahead and assume that this is some wordplay on “Rock In Rio”, which is a rock/metal festival that occurs every year that originated in Rio, Brazil, but has since moved to various locations. I’m not sure what the relation is to orange, but there we are. It’s a nice orange and I believe the only orange sparkle ink that is offered by Diamine thus far.

Originally I was concerned about the gold sparkles being in an orange ink because of the similarity the two colours (is gold actually a colour?), but it works very well and looks awesome. It’s a nice orange, too!

Peacock Flare

Colour: Teal

Teal Sparkles: Silver

Silver Sheen? Yes

This ink is probably going to be the best seller out of this year’s batch. It’s teal, which everyone appears to enjoy at the moment, and has sheen; another thing that people seem to enjoy.

It’s a teal that leans closer towards green than blue. It provides a slight red sheen when you get it in the right light.

Razzamatazz

Colour: I don’t even know.. Dirty yellow?

I don’t even know.. Dirty yellow? Sparkles: Gold

Gold Sheen? No

In the same way that I was concerned about how the gold sparkles would look in Rockin Rio, I felt the same way about Razzamatazz. Thankfully my concerns didn’t materialise once seeing this on paper. While I did say above that I have absolutely no clue what to describe this ink as, other than a “dirty yellow”, I’m still very much taken by this colour. It’s just a really ‘odd’ colour and is so nice to write with. I will definitely be using this more often.

Can we also appreciate how awesome this name is? I think it even beats Dragon Blood.

I think that this is the strongest offering from Diamine for their Shimmertastics range. There’s a great balance of colours that means at the very least one of the offerings would appeal to someone. That’s something I think that Diamine does very well with their vast array of offerings and the reason I love they release so many of these inks at one time, in comparison to the likes of J Herbin which will only one release annually. This is something that I will get into on another blog post I’m working on, however.

Disclaimer: These inks were provided by Diamine in the exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.