Ink Review #70

*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.

Overview

The color/properties:

Just like it sounds, Wonderland in Coral is a pale, coral-colored orange-pink. It has pearly silver particulates that distribute evenly across the letters. It has some excellent shading too — there’s not a lot of tonal variation, but it still shades with a crisp cut and darker, redder edges around the areas that the ink pools. Paired with the shimmer, the areas where the ink shades look especially stunning in person.

As I mentioned earlier, the color is on the pale side, and while I didn’t find it difficult to see on most papers, it appeared significantly lighter — faded even, on the Maruman sheet. It was also more difficult to make out over the more noisy grid in the Kokuyo notebook.

Rhodia

Leuchtturm1917

Performance on paper:

Wonderland in Coral should perform fine on most papers. There was minimal bleeding on the Kokuyo sheet (and only with the broad nib) and no visible feathering or bleed-through on any of the other pages. The dry times were excellent! Across all of the papers, almost every nib size dried at the 10-second mark, with just a handful of occasions where it took 15 seconds. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much in the way of water resistance. Upon water exposure, most of the color washes away beyond legibility almost instantly.

Midori MD

Maruman

Tomoe River

Kokuyo

Performance in the pen:

For a shimmering ink, the performance wasn’t bad. The ink has a medium flow and it’s not slick, but there’s enough lubrication to write comfortably. I didn’t notice any drop-off in lubrication with the larger nib sizes. I did run into 2 clogs with the extra fine and fine nibs, but otherwise, there weren’t any clogs, skipping, or hard starts with the other nib sizes. The shimmer distribution was good, and the pen needed minimal agitation to get a consistent supply of shimmer while writing.

While cleaning the pen, the color washed out of the pen and nib units instantly, but like many shimmers, there was a hazy residue left along the inside of the barrel of the pen, which had to be disassembled to clean it out.

• Performance in a pen: 7.5/10

• Performance on paper: 9/10

• Color saturation: 4/10

• Sheening: 0/10

• Shading: 6/10

• Dry time: 9/10

• Water resistance: 1/10

• Ease of cleaning: 5/10

• Shimmer: Yes

My personal thoughts…

I have to admit, I’ve been really excited to do this review. I love Wonderland in Coral. It was one of my first Ferris Wheel Press inks, and at the time, I was still hesitant after some bad experiences with shimmering inks in the past. But the box art won me over: I like books! That alone convinced me to give this ink a fair try.

Tentatively, I inked up a pen expecting the worst, and the worst never came. It just worked, and I loved it. This was the first great experience I’d ever had with a shimmering ink. Maybe my enduring appreciation for Wonderland in Coral is rooted in those first memories of it, but I don’t think it’s just that. There are a handful of coral inks out there, and while they’re all well and good, this is my favorite one. And it’s simply because of that brilliant shimmer: it adds that extra dimension to the color that other corals lack. And sure, it clogged the fine nibs during my tests — it’s not perfect, but it is good, and I would be very sad if it was gone.

More images/info:

Tools and materials used in the writing samples:

• A TWSBI Diamond 580 with 5 nib units including an EF, F, M, B, and 1.1mm stub, All nibs are tuned to perform at the same 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