(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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