Posts filed under Ink Reviews

Vinta Pink Sands Shimmer Santa Cruz 1983 Ink: A Review

(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)

Vinta Ink is made in the Philippines, with Pink Sands named for the coraline sands that line the beaches of the Great Santa Cruz Island in the southern part of the Philippines.

The ink comes in a box labeled “Santa Cruz” with a tiny swatch of the color. Although the box looks nice, I found the lettering really hard to read, and assumed that the ink color was called Santa Cruz. That’s not a big deal, because the bottle itself has “Pink Sands” written clearly on it (if you’re smart enough to look closely, which admittedly I wasn’t, which is why all my writing samples call the ink “Santa Cruz.” I need bifocals.

Although the ink name is Pink Sands, the color is definitely more of a bright peach. This is explained in the ink’s description, which says the color is supposed to evoke the pink beach at sunset. The shimmer in the ink is both pink and rose gold.

When I opened the bottle, I was surprised to discover what looked like sandy growths on the bottle threads. This “ink crud” seems to plague orange inks, but, in this case, the shimmer definitely contributed to the crusty deposit.

I’ve had the ink in my TWSBI Eco for over a week and the crud didn’t collect on my nib. This is likely because, being a ding dong, I didn’t realize this was a shimmer ink. I didn’t shake the bottle before inking my pen, thus, no shimmer was drawn in. I suspect, had I shaken the bottle and inked the pen properly, sandy formations would’ve appeared on the nib.

Vinta Pink Sands is a bright peach color with yellow and pink gold shimmer. The color is fairly uniform on the Col-o-dex card swab and offers little shading (but lots of shimmer) when writing with a Brause Blue Pumpkin nib. The ink splats are interesting because they actually dry with tangible edges to them.

I tested the ink on Rhodia dot pad paper. Again, you can see that the ink is uniform in the swab and on the ink bottle print. The color is bright and quite readable. It is a slow-drying ink and it is not waterproof.

Chromatography reveals only slight variations of color in this ink. It contains some pink but peach predominates.

Big ol’ Texas-sized nibs really show this ink off. I used my Handwritmic nib on MD Cotton paper, and . . . just wow! There’s gorgeous shading, pooling, and sheen.

Overall, I’m not a fan of this particular color. It’s a little too bright for my tastes (I prefer darker oranges with lots of shading). And, I’m not too keen on shimmer inks. I always worry about the shimmer gunking up my nib and clogging the converter or piston mechanism.

I plan to try other Vinta inks, first because they’ve created some really interesting colors. Second, I appreciate that the company donates 25 Philippine pesos to Teach for the Philippines, Inc., an organization that advocates for quality education for all Filipino children.

You can purchase Vinta Pink Sands Shimmer Santa Cruz 1983 from Vanness Pens for $13.99 (30ml) or $3.00 for a 4ml sample.

(Vanness Pens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Posted on November 15, 2019 by Susan Pigott and filed under Vinta, Ink Reviews.

Sailor Ink Studio 941 Review

Sailor Ink Studio fountain pen inks have been all the rage since the first pictures of the 100 inks in this collection hit the internet. The premise of this collection is to feature the 100 favorite inks from Sailor’s in-shop Ink Studio events, where customers were allowed to mix their own colors. According to Sailor, this final group was narrowed down from over 20,000 (!) creations.

And you think you have an ink problem?

I had been wanting to try out these inks myself, but aside from a few samples I had been given, I didn’t put in the effort to track them down. There was nothing I saw that felt must-have, but seeing that Sailor is my favorite ink brand, I knew I would dive in head first when the opportunity presented itself.

Opportunity to all in the US market came this summer, as these inks made their way into retailers hands. But there was a catch to ordering: You could not buy them online. Why the silly restriction? Your guess is as good as mine. So, you had to buy them in person at a shop or pen show, or call a retailer to place an order over the phone.

Fortunately, that restriction has been recently lifted, as you can now order Sailor Ink Studio inks online.

I bought mine in person on my recent visit to Dromgoole’s, where I went in with a list based on samples provided by Macchiato Man and Mountain of Ink, each of who swabbed all 100 colors. Pictures on a screen may never do inks justice, but I figured this was as good of a starting point as any.

My eyes trained on five colors:

450 - A dark/dusty purple.

731 - A hot pink with sheen.

767 - A yellowish green.

773 - A bright orange.

941 - A blue black with a slight teal undertone.

4 of the 5 came home with me, with 731 the only not available during my visit. All of these color choices are within my realm of likes, with no real outliers, like the hugely popular Sailor Ink Studio 123.

I plan on testing all of these inks out eventually, but 941 was the easy first choice. Not only is it part of one of my favorite color groups, it is a very close match to the Sailor 1911 4 a.m. fountain pen I purchased on the same trip. Matchy matchy!

After a couple of weeks of use, I am very happy with the color and the performance. It’s a bit darker than I thought prior to seeing it in person, but not too dark to where you can’t tell the character of the ink. Lighter, brighter hues pop out on thinner lines, and it has a nice, dark red, sheen when dry. For a blue black ink, I find it quite fun.

Not that I would expect anything different, but standard Sailor ink properties apply, with good flow, lubrication, saturation, and a moderate dry time. They are also expensive, checking in at $18 for a 20 ml bottle. That may sound cheap, but it’s not, considering you can get 50 ml of the equally as great Pilot Iroshizuku for $20.

I went simple and straightforward with my initial choices, and while I am happy with them, I think next time I will experiment more and try some of the outlier inks that have made the Sailor Ink Studio lineup so popular.

(I bought this ink at a discount from Dromgoole's.)

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Posted on November 11, 2019 by Brad Dowdy and filed under Sailor, Ink Reviews.

Kala Nostalgia Abstraction Spring Rain Ink Review

Kala Nostalgia Abstraction inks are pigmented inks.

I didn’t realize that important tidbit when I initially picked out a bottle of Spring Rain to review. Nor did I realize it when I opened up said bottle on stream recently, stuck my pocket knife into the bottle, and spread it across a Rhodia Ice pad.

At the time, my primary concern was the color. To be honest, the color palette of these inks isn’t inspiring at first glance, and I settled on what looked like a pretty nice grey. Then someone looked up the inks while I was discussing them, and mentioned the pigment thing. Pigmented, huh? That’s means it should be waterproof. And boy is it.

During that stream, I grabbed my water bottle, reached my fingertips in, and splashed it onto the page. The ink didn’t budge.

Nor should it. I shouldn’t be surprised - this is the expected performance of pigmented and iron gall inks - but to see this ink do the one job it has so well was enjoyable.

I don’t normally test the waterproofness of inks during my reviews. If the ink isn’t marketed as waterproof, I don’t think seeing exactly how not waterproof it is is useful information. If it is a waterproof ink, I trust the manufacturer that it is, so when I’m journaling outside during a hurricane, fountain pen ink is the least of my worries.

But I wanted to test this Kala ink further. I put it through my normal writing process in my TWSBI ECO 1.1 mm stub, and found it flowed well through this admittedly wet nib. It is a darker shade of grey in my Yoseka Notebook, but showed off more of its graphite side on Rhodia paper.

Rhodia is what I used for the water test, soaking a small page in a bowl for about a minute. The page sat for a couple of days beforehand - I didn’t go right from writing, drying, and into the bowl - so the ink was well set. The ink didn’t so much disperse a particle in the water, spread onto the page, or transfer to the paper towel I used to pat it dry. It was a rock-solid performance.

So, do you need an ink that behaves in this manner? If waterproof inks are a priority, then Kala Nostalgia Abstraction inks are a great choice. Did I mention they are only $10.75 for a 30 ml bottle? That's very good, comparitively. The color choices may be lacking compared to standard inks, but you have plenty of other choices in that realm. Pigmented and iron gall inks serve an added purpose, and in this case, serve it well.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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