(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her first novel, The Bone Weaver’s Orchard, now available where books are sold!)
There have been so many fun moon landing anniversary editions in the stationery world this year, and the Colorverse Apollo 11 Ink Set is certainly no exception. It's a fun theme, a great celebration, and this is probably the most drool-worthy ink set I've encountered.
The first thing you can't help but notice about this set is the amazing packaging. The spacey looking grey box unfolds to fun facts and illustrations about NASA's mission and the spacecraft. Then there's a layer of wee cute ink bottles nestled in formed foam. The cardstock has more fun facts. Beneath that is another layer of ink bottles and yet more educational nuggets. The set comes with napkins and info cards and stickers. It's clear a lot of thought went into what would be inside this box besides the fun inks themselves.
I love the color choices for this set. It's the essentials--every color you really need is here, yet they're all still wonderfully within the theme. And somehow they've used common colors and still made them unique. Of all my sample cards, I could not find any that looked like a clear duplicate of any of these five colors.
Best of all, I love the tones. The blue-black, called Apollo 11, has a lovely smoky blue shade that pools to a deep navy. The grey, called One Small Step, is a perfect moon dust color. It seems cool in its lighter tones, and warm where it's darker. The teal, called Eagle, is fresh and bright but still readable. The green, Tranquility Base, is a lovely, earthy, matcha green. And the red, Columbia, is sometimes pink, sometimes orange, and sometimes deep red with a gold-green sheen.
The chromatography tests for these inks blew me away. The teal and red were fairly straightforward, through it did bring out the pinks in the red. The green left a lovely smoky line behind as the brighter neon green crept away. The blue-black had some lovely hidden pinks and purples that I hadn't been expecting. But that grey? Holy cats! Bright orange, pink, and teal. There's clearly some sort of alchemy afoot at the Colorverse laboratory. As I watched the colors climb the paper, I felt like I was watching some sort of spell unravel. And it also explains that dual warm/cold look to the ink itself.
I'll do a part two of this review where I talk about all of their behaviors in actual pens. But for now, I can easily say that this is the most fun I've had with inks in a long time. The only downside to this set? The price. The $100 cost is a bit high, even for all this magical fun. While I think the packaging is unbeatable as far as coolness goes, I wonder how much it has driven up the cost of this set. There are only 125ml of ink here. And while there's a good color variety, and the bottles are adorable, I'm not sure I'd have splurged on this. I think the audience for this package requires a very specific overlap in the Venn diagram of ink buyers: People who are drawn to practical colors, who are space fanatics, and collectors of limited editions. I'm sure there are plenty of pen addicts who fit into those categories, and I do hope that this limited run will all find good homes. I can't help but love it, myself. More fun with these inks to come next week!
(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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