(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 latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)
Monarca Stationery inks are so tempting. I love the names, the look of the bottles, and the wooden stand for the bottle with the pen rest (a limited offering, I believe). There's a lot to like about what they're up to, including an array of great colors.
I love brown and sepia toned inks, so I was curious to try this pale sand color from them. Arena Blanca means White Sands, and that's a great name for this color. It's a very soft, warm brown and quite pale. It's one of those ink colors that won't work for folks who want bold, saturated colors. It's not an ink you could read easily in low light or use on kraft or brown-toned paper, but it has tons of character on regular paper.
This ink shades like crazy, and it looks so much like a watercolor painting of a shoreline. It's a very peaceful color and I dig it. Heavier application, or where the ink pools, creates a bolder brown. There is no sheen, but the shading is so intense a sheen would be too much.
The color is a complex one, and the chromatography was wild. There's a grey base, with shell pink, peach, and soft goldenrod, with a light skim of blue. The breakdown is as pretty as the ink itself.
There is no water resistance to this ink--it washes away quickly, just like its namesake. The dry time was quite slow, and I had to add a 30-second mark to see if it would stop smearing, and even that streaked a little. Dry time on this one is "eventually."
I do have two nitpicks with this ink, though. One, the stock picture sent to retailers looks absolutely nothing like the actual ink color. Look to reviews for a more accurate shade. And two, the opening of the bottle is far too narrow for easy filling. Even my narrower pens had trouble, and my Pilot 823 didn't fit at all.
This ink will be filed in my "lovely but impractical" category, which I use more often than you'd think. At $20 for a 30ml bottle, it's about mid-range on price. Not inexpensive, but not alarming. It's a fair price. Overall, I like it a lot, despite my nitpicks.
(Monarca Stationery provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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