Diamine Shimmertastic inks 

+Stephanie Ling Really is! Enjoy it!

My pleasure!

+Jonathan Green My handwriting looks appalling when I use a biro, but a fountain pen covers an awful lot of horrible irregularities etc!

Hello, Rosemarie - and yes. One day I hope I might be able to persuade Diamine to allow me to visit! I really admire their dedication and passion for their inks.

:-)

You are welcome, Gretchen. Hope you really enjoy them. Diamine have brought out a load more since I got these ones, so you have a very wide range. Just be aware that you'll need to shake your pen before use (gently, naturally!) because the flakes do settle and form a sediment very quickly.

@@writerlywitterings Thank you. I ordered some inexpensive Twsbi pens for the shimmer inks other than taking a risk with my Conway Stewart and Pelikan pens. I also plan to clean the pens after each use with these inks. I really enjoy all your videos on pens, inks and writings. I'm also reading your books and really enjoy them. Thank you

Thanks so much, Gretchen. If you like the books, don't forget to tell others about them!

+Neo Getz I agree. The shimmer in Brandy I think looks gorgeous on paper, but all of them work really well in my pens. I'm still too nervous to put them into my Viscontis, but they work excellently in my Kawecos and others I can take apart to clean.

Many thanks! I have a lot more Diamine inks to film!

Hallo, Karin - no problem. I hope to be reviewing DIamine's inks over the next few months. It'll take ages, since there are so many. Just now I'm loving the Deep Dark Purple, which is a Cult Pens colour, made by Diamine. Really lovely colour and shading.

You have a wonderful sounding collection! You ought to make videos about your pens. I wholeheartedly agree with your comments about Diamine. Excellent value, and a fabulous range of colours and shades.

@@writerlywitterings After your review of the Conway Stewart 58 "Indiana Jones," I've been trying to get an original 58. Basically because of my ongoing love affair with lever fill pens. Not even on my radar, until your review. 😉 Not really a big or really that interesting collection. I have all the colours of the double jewel Esterbrooks in a few nib choices, an example of each model in the series, 2 of the "Dollar" Esterbrooks, 2 late 1940s Wahl-Eversharp Skyliners and the Mabie Todd Swan from around WWI (I'm guessing not older than 1912.) On a fixed disability income, I've had to stick with ones that need repair of some sort, or have been extremely lucky (the Mabie Todd.) I have a few on the shelf waiting for minimally a new ink sac, usually a good cleaning and polishing, and I refuse to get anything I'd not actually use. Videos? Probably not. I'm just not sure about doing that.

I may have to give that a try! Many thanks, Vanezcha

+Rob P. Hi, Rob. It is Atoma paper. I got a pad or two from Cult Pens a little while ago, and this stuff is great. Not to mention the fact that the way the binders work is superb. It's not the cheapest paper, but if you look at their site, it's very good value compared to other pads. If you want to see it, you'll find it here - www.cultpens.com/c/q/brands/atoma/?Project

I have to admit, I wouldn't put any shimmering inks into any of my better pens. A Conway Stewart with a cartridge converter would be fine, but anything with an enclosed reservoir (Homo Sapiens, Conway Stewart 58 lever fill etc) I wouldn't let near. It's probably an over-active concern for my pens, but I feel happier knowing that only the pens which I can flush and see flushed are allowed near the inks with a high particulate content. In the same way, I tend not to let any iron gall inks near my better pens. There are so many perfectly safe inks, I prefer not to take the risk.

writerlywitterings thank you for saying that! I feel the same! I keep all my shimmer inks for Twsbi GOs and Noodlers pens;)

+angela i No, the settings were the same as usual, I think - but we did have an alteration half way through. Just before I picked up the paper and held it before the camera. For that we used the camera's microphones ... mainly because we forgot to turn on the main mic!

I haven't tried it myself yet, but I've been covetously eyeing the Wearingeul inks for shimmering - there's one they make for Cult Pens which is called the Merchant of Venice, which is a fairly muddy looking colour to my eye. www.cultpens.com/i/q/CU00009/cult-pens-exclusive-world-literature-ink-collection-by-wearingeul Then again there are some Dominant Industry inks, such as Autumn Forest, which might fit your bill? Best of luck. I won't dare mix my own. I'm too much of a coward with my pens!

@@writerlywitterings Your pens are much more expensive compared to mine, so I don't blame you for being cautious. When it comes to shimmer, I prefer to use the very inexpensive Jinhao 992 demonstrator with a 1.1mm stub. I prefer to see exactly where the shimmer has settled in the pen and the 992's entire body-including the grip!-is clear. It comes with both an international converter and an o-ring, so you can fill it up as much as you want, but saturating the feed/grip section is enough for me. I find that saturating only the feed helps shimmer inks stay more consistent. Once the shimmer is in suspension the "fins" of the feed help trap the shimmer in suspension, whereas the shimmer that hangs out in the cartridge/converter/body of the pen tends to settle out of suspension and needs the occasional remix to stay consistent. The 992 is also very easy to disassemble and clean. At less than 5 USD, shipping included, it was a no-brainer for my purposes, but I don't use shimmer as much as you. As a lefty who prefers the crisp lines of an italic nib over the smoothness of a stub, I sometimes feel like the Jinhao is too smooth and juicy. I use a Pilot Parallel 1.5mm when the added width won't be a problem. It has a lot of similar benefits. Your gorgeous use of the TWSBI Go has inspired me to pick up the new blue Swipe with the stub nib. It is a gift from me to me that Santa will deliver in a few days. I haven't been this excited about Christmas in a long time! Wearingeul is simply too expensive for me. I won't allow myself to look at them when I already have dozens of cherished inks to use. Dominant Industry inks are right at my maximum price range, however. Autumn Forest looks like it might work very well to represent April, as does Winter Night. I'll keep my eyes on those and your videos to see if you review them. What I love about your reviews is that you actually write with the inks! Far too many "reviews" amount to nothing more than watching people make swatches so that they can "ooo!" and "ahhh!" over their purchase. I want to know how the ink behaves and looks in writing, so please accept my thanks for taking the time to write with your inks! It is appreciated!

@@twitch7515 Thanks for the comment, @Twitch - and I agree on the price of the Wearingeul inks. I am glad to say that Dominant are sending me a package for review early in the New Year, so I'll be very happy to take a look at their latest offerings. Also, very glad to hear you like the TWSBI nib. Santa can be very kind on occasion, clearly! I do hope you like the Swipe. I really enjoy using mine, although I am very unhappy with that clip. Far too tight, and rather too sharp for me to use it on a shirt pocket. I always get the feeling it's going to cut the fabric!

Sorry to hear about your friends - yes, we've been steadily losing friends too. We used to send over 200 cards (agents, editors, booksellers etc means a lot more people), and now it's fewer than 100. So many friends disappeared, sadly. As to the colour chart, I was sent that by Diamine some time ago. It might be worth asking whether they still have such things.

+Gareth Williams Sorry, Gareth, these were review samples, so they sent me the smaller bottles. I'm not sure whether they'll be selling this range in the smaller bottles. I do know that other folks have been reviewing the other colours as well, though, and if you look up the colours on Fountain Pen Network you will find full reviews of all the colours, so you can select the ones that are most appealing. Hope that helps!

+writerlywitterings Ah, I see - many thanks!

Not that I've seen yet, no. Not only the Diamine, the Dominant Industry, the J Herbin and others seem very resilient. I suppose if you rub at them constantly they would, but they seem well stuck on or in the paper's fibres.

My main comment would be, they ain't! But, if you have something like a Prussian Blue or one of the other darker inks, they are waterproof "enough" - at least for my work. I once accidentally left a notebook in a tent - which then blew away in a very wet thunderstorm (while I was merrily singing and drinking Skinner's Beers in a beer tent). When I got back, all pages were drenched. And yet all were more or less readable. The worst ones were the paler inks - China Blue etc. So the question really is, how waterproof do you need an ink? I prefer inks that are more likely to wash away because they are less likely to clog a pen. However, Rohrer und Klingner have several iron gall inks which should be safe "enough" while also being very resilient on the paper, if you need real security. Another supplier I lean towards is KWZ, who have a very good line up of iron gall inks. Hope that helps!

@@writerlywitterings that's what I found out from my testing and research but I wanted to see what other people's opinions were

+Marie-Paule Graham Dee-a-meen, eh? Thanks for that. I should have checked before sounding a twit on video! Many thanks, Marie-Paule. Have to admit, I think I'll be getting 80 mls of the Red Lustre or the Brandy Dazzle. Both are ideal for writing Christmas cards and thank you letters!

It was an American who told me, so we were both slow on the uptake. But given that the company are based in Liverpool, Dee-a-meen seems logical.

+Ghost2Coast Absolutely, and I wouldn't use them in a pen that was valuable and leave it inked for a long time, but for use in my Kaweco pens with converters I'm not too worried. They wash through easily. I have found that the particles don't cause any problems so far and it does make a lovely change once in a while!

I used Magical Forest and Night Sky for my Christmas cards last year in my TWSBI Diamond with 1.1 stub nib, and had no problems at all. I left each ink in the pen for probably a week or so. I didn't dismantle the pen; just drew water in and out until it was clear. It cleaned out fine. I don't think I'd leave it in there for months at a time, though, just to be safe. Thanks for a great video!

+Cynthia Morales They are very useful. You can find them on the Cult page (although not the Shimmertastic range yet) here www.cultpens.com/i/q/DM28425/diamine-ink-30ml-bottle/?Project

+writerlywitterings oh they gave you advanced product. I'll wait then. thanks.

+Cynthia Morales No, it's not advanced - it's just that they only sell it in the larger 80 ml bottles, I think. It's available for sale, certainly!

writerlywitterings oh. Well unless the shimmertastics are available in the 30ml bottles I'll probably just get ink samples. I can't commit to anything larger. Thanks though.

All Diamine inks used to come in either 80ml or 30ml bottles. Now they sell shimmering inks in 50ml bottles, but when this video was made, things were different!

@@writerlywitterings ooh that's cool thanks! I still haven't received mine but I r really like the new bottles from what I see online