Where to buy: Diamine [Here]

Price: £9.95

Bottle size: 50ml

Colour: Ivy green

Shading: Very subtle

Sheening: Very very slight, but you also have the gold particulate

Recommend?: Greens aren’t my thing, but I can definitely understand why this would be a tempting ink!

I have been fortunate enough to receive samples from Diamine of five of their new generation of Shimmertastic inks. Here are the links to other reviews on the Shimmertastic range if you’re interested (all links open in a new tab). I will add more links as the reviews are posted:

Golden Oasis.. Golden Ivy.. Alrighty, Diamine. I see your game here.

Diamine Golden Ivy is a green ink from the third generation of the Shimmertastics range; without getting pedantic about colour families, this is the third green ink in the range, and quite easily my favourite green in the Shimmertastic range. You can see my review of another green, Golden Oasis, but unfortunately I haven’t had the chance to try the other (called ‘Magical Forest’, which, as the name suggests, is slightly more of a nature green). While it’s my favourite green in the range, it’s probably my least favourite out of the other colours, as green just isn’t my thing.

Something that I think green inks are great for is ‘admin’. Things such as reviewing my essays or marking my practice exams, that sort of thing. I prefer red (specifically Diamine Red Dragon) for this purpose, but sometimes a green ink is nicer. It’s easier on the eyes and it isn’t necessarily as ‘violent’ or ‘intimidating’ (I suppose for lack of a better term). What makes it even nicer is that these inks (spoiler) have sparkles and so for the ‘admin’ purpose it can be far nicer to use.

One of my issues with Golden Oasis is that the green was too light and it didn’t really contrast well with the golden sparkles and was a little difficult for you to see. Being understated in this way might actually be a good selling point for some people, so each to their own. With this ink, however, you notice a lot more sparkle because the ink is darker (literally, think of ivy). Another big selling point for me is that the particles are gold. I think it would look dreadful with silver particles.

There are only three inks that I have in my collection: Alt Goldgrün, Irish Green & Chiku-Rin, which are the only greens that I really enjoy. If this ink was presented to me without the sparkles and I had to judge it off the base colour only, I think I would be able to appreciate it, but I wouldn’t be blown away: I wouldn’t want to buy the ink I don’t think. But as an alternative to Golden Oasis, I would have no difficulty deciding which one I wanted, and it would definitely be Golden Ivy. The darker colour just makes using the ink more enjoyable for me.

Talking about the admin side of things, I think it is important to look at how the ink works on cheaper paper, as you’re not always going to be guaranteed to work on good paper with these things. I’ve always been impressed with how the Shimmertastic inks act on cheaper paper, and this is no exception. I don’t see any feathering or substantial bleedthrough, though you do notice quite a bit of showthrough, which isn’t too surprising. All in all, very happy with how the ink performs on this paper. You still get a lot of the sparkle onto the paper. Sehr gut!

Of course, I’m sure you want to know how it performs on better paper. Well, lots of shimmer, well performing. The ink flows well and you get a lot of particulate which makes it very nice to use.

Also, there is a very slight hint of sheen, for those of you who like that sort of thing. It was very slight, but I wanted to show it off so I had to edit it a little bit more than I was comfortable with as it wasn’t showing up well in the photos. Full disclaimer there.

All in all, I think this is a very useful ink and appealing to those who like greens. While it wouldn’t be my go to, I can definitely appreciate it. Which, in my opinion, says quite a lot! The ink certainly lives up to the name.

Disclaimer: These inks were sent to me for review purposes in exchange for an honest review. All views expressed are my own and no other compensation was provided.