Diamine Seasons Greetings
Ink Review #116
*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.
This ink is part of the Inkvent Blue Edition (2019)
Overview
The color/properties:
Diamine Seasons Greetings is a sheening ink. The base color is a dark, saturated blue-green that gives off a reflective red sheen in pooled areas of the ink when it dries. The color leans more blue than green — it reminds me a lot of Diamine Yuletide from the Red Edition, but more saturated and much darker. There’s also a smoky/fogginess to the color that I can’t put my finger on, but I quite like it.
Ink splat
Ink droplets
Performance on paper:
Seasons Greetings should be fine on most fountain pen-friendly papers. I didn’t see any signs of bleeding or feathering on any of the test papers. The dry times are mixed, but regardless, they aren’t great. It can easily take up to 30 seconds or more with larger nib sizes, and due to the nature of sheening inks, any residual moisture on the hand can easily smear the ink no matter how long it’s been dry.
The water resistance isn’t great either. Water exposure immediately clouds the ink, and while there are some legible remnants of the writing left over, it’s far from ideal.
Water resistance
Chromatography
Performance in the pen:
Keeping in mind that this is a sheening ink, Seasons Greetings performs well, but it’s not perfect. It has a wet flow but the high saturation can cause the ink to dry in the nib quickly when lifting off the page. The needlepoint and extra fine nibs suffered from this the most. The larger nib sizes were mostly better, but the broad nib also suffered from constant hard starts and skipping. When the ink works, however, it’s very comfortable and pleasant to write with.
I’m always worried about cleaning sheening inks out, but thankfully, Seasons Greetings wasn’t that bad. I would still recommend sticking to pens that have easily soakable grip sections, but it washed out relatively quickly. There weren’t any stains or residue left in the pen either, although I would always proceed with caution using an ink like this in any kind of demonstrator or light-colored pen that may be prone to staining.
Performance in a pen: 6/10
Performance on paper: 10/10
Color saturation: 10/10
Sheening: 10/10
Shading: 1/10
Dry time: 4/10
Water resistance: 1/10
Ease of cleaning: 7/10
Shimmer: None
My personal thoughts…
Well! December is finally upon us, and Inkvent 2024 is finally underway as well, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work on other reviews at the same time, right? And what’s a better way to kick off the holidays with Diamine’s Seasons Greetings!
Yeah, this one’s been around for a while now, and I would almost call it a classic, except it’s often overlooked in favor of other sheening inks in the calendar. I think that’s a real shame because this is a fantastic sheening ink. Sure it’s another blue-green-with-red-sheen ink, and I know I have a record of complaining about the sheer abundance of those, but this feels like more than just another over-saturated Harmonious Green clone. As for Diamine’s reasons behind the choice of color, I’m sure there’s a degree of arbitrariness to it. I mean, really, what rules are there to colonizing something like “Seasons Greetings”? It could be anything. And what it is, is a great Holiday ink.
Written in a 52 gsm Tomoe River notebook with a Lamy Al-star (Cursive nib)
More images/info:
Tools and materials used in the writing samples:
A TWSBI Diamond 580 AL with 7 nib units including a Needlepoint grind, EF, F, M, B, 1.1mm stub, and an Architect grind. All nibs tuned to perform at the same medium wetness.
A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad
A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook
A Midori MD A5 Notebook
A 68gsm A5 Tomoe River Notebook
A Maruman Mnemosyne A5 Spiral Notebook
A Kokuyo Campus A5 Notebook