Diamine Inkvent 2024: Day 17 — Winterberry
Day 17!
Hello again! For day seventeen of Diamine Inkvent, we have Winterberry.
The color/properties:
Winterberry is a Chameleon ink. It’s a type of shimmer ink with particulates in it that change color depending on the angle at which the ink is viewed. I mostly noticed a color shift between gold and pink. The base color is a bright red that has a great deal of pink undertone to it, and I think that goes far to give this ink an especially cool, wintry appearance. There’s some shading, but pooled areas of the ink don’t seem to darken up that much, and especially beneath the shimmer, I wouldn’t say it’s all that visible.
*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.
How did it perform?
Winterberry has a medium flow and the writing experience is comfortable. For the most part, it performs well, but I had a few light hard starts during my writing with the medium nib, and that’s something I noticed mostly while writing in print over cursive. I didn’t have any clogs or stops, and the shimmer distributed well, needing minimal agitation of the pen to keep it flowing.
Cleaning wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. There was a light ring of shimmer left in the pen and no haze, but there was also some red residue left over that had thankfully scrubbed right out (the pen still had to be disassembled). I couldn’t test it due to time constraints, but I have a feeling letting water soak in the pen for a bit longer would have also done the trick to remove the red residue. Still, maybe keep it away from demonstrators and easily-stained pens just to be safe.
Ink splat
Ink droplets
My personal thoughts…
At this point, I feel that I’ve already started to feel the shimmer fatigue from this year’s calendar. And being a chameleon ink no less (I’m not the biggest fan), I admit I wasn’t looking forward to inking this up, so it says a lot that I ended up being quite fond of this ink. My experience with Winterberry was simple: I filled the test pen, the nib touched the paper, I immediately fell in love with it, and I ran to tell Sarah (the editor). The color won me over instantly. Back to the subject of the chameleon shimmer — I wasn’t sure it would do anything for the base color, or the winterberry theme as a whole, but I was pleased with the results, and in this case, I think the chameleon shimmer not working that well is a good thing. The writing experience wasn’t the best, but I think it’s worth giving it a try anyway. Especially with a wetter-tuned pen, I think this ink will shine.
Written in a Leuchtturm1917 notebook
More Images/Info:
Tools and materials used in the writing samples:
A TWSBI Diamond 580 AL with 3 nib units including a Fine, Medium, and Broad. All nibs are tuned to perform at the same wetness.
A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad
A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook