(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)
It's been quite a while since I've tried a new shimmer ink. For whatever reason, they just don't interest me as much as inks that shade beautifully or feature vibrant colors. In some cases, a little shimmer effect really makes an ink look like more than the sum of its parts. With Autumn Rain Gray from Troublemaker Inks, this is definitely the goal.
For the uninitiated, a shimmer ink is a fountain pen ink that features a reflective glitter material suspended in the ink. The glitter material is usually silver or gold colored, but can be other colors as well. When writing with a shimmer ink, little glitter particulates end up on the page while you write, and start to sparkle as the ink dries. It's a magical effect that took the fountain pen ink world by storm a few years ago.
In the case of Autumn Rain, the base ink color is a dark green or green-black and the shimmer effect is achieved with a silver glitter material. There isn't much in the way of shading with this ink, but there is a ton of shimmer. After inking the pen, there was so much glitter on the grip section that I was worried that I hadn't shaken the bottle enough to evenly disperse all the glitter. Nope; in this case, there is more than enough shimmer to go around in the ink while also wasting some when filling a pen.
Based on the name of the ink, I was expecting a medium gray ink with some moderate shading to imitate a dreary autumn sky full of thick clouds and streaky rain. Instead, this is much, much darker to the point that I don't think the name fits at all. When looking at the swatches, it makes me think of a star-filled night — absolutely nothing to do with autumn or rain. When writing with this ink, it looks like a really dark gray or gray-black on the page. When swatching this ink, you can tell that the main color under all the darkness is actually a beautiful forest green. The green is so much more prominent than any gray that I once again find the name of this ink to be such a bad choice. The forest green color under the dark clouds is so pretty with silver glitter on top of it. I absolutely love the color I see on my swatches. I just wish I saw more of that when writing with this ink! If it were up to me, I might name this ink something like Dewey Forest or Deep Lagoon.
Name choices aside, I really enjoy this ink. The dark color and minor shading paired with the bright sparkle is a great combination. It's a smooth flowing ink and has no issues starting or bleeding. I tend not to worry or treat inks any differently whether they're shimmering or not, but I haven't noticed any downsides to using this ink with all the glitter material floating around in the pen. Aside from behaving well when writing, it also dries pretty quickly. In my tests, normal writing normally dries between 20 and 30 seconds to the point that it is smudge resistant. Not bad, but certainly not a fast drying ink.
Troublemaker is a new brand to me (based out of the Philippines), and I'm definitely interested in trying more of their inks. I think this ink is fun, pretty, and interesting, though the name is a complete miss. If you can get past the name (and also be aware that it's a misnomer for the actual ink color), I'd definitely recommend trying it. A large 60ml bottle is just $24, though Vanness also have a small 4ml sample vial if you're not ready to commit to such a large amount of shimmer ink.
(Vanness Pens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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