8 pens, from the middle up.
Fountain Pens

December 2022: Palette, Daily Samples, and Subscription Samples, All together now…

Trying something different! Instead of multiple posts, I’m going to just share a couple things from each.

Let’s start with the Pen/Ink Palette.
December’s pen/ink palette theme was more of an intention to use only inks from Diamine Inkvent 2021 than a proper theme. My favorite over all ended up being one I added from the 2022 Inkvent however haha – so the favorite here will be my second favorite. I really liked this palette, I found it very comfortable over all.

A sample card with a color swatch at the top, and the text says “Inkvent (15) Nightshade xxxooosss, standard, 2021” all of this is in an ink that looks like a light blue in this photo.
One of my sample cards from the beginning times! I do them very differently these days. And the ink ends up looking more purple in the notebooks I am using, hard to catch in a photo.

Favorite: (second favorite…) Diamine Inkvent 2021, Nightshade and the London Pen Company Christopher 13 Jr. pens.
This ink was not in this pen this month – but they were my favorites respectively. I have actually used this ink in a couple of palette’s this year, but! The thing that makes it my favorite is that it’s one of those blue-purples. It operates really well, no skipping, good level of wetness, doesn’t smudge.

A crab pen stand holding a shimmery pen.
My crab stand is adorable, ahem. But this pen! Look at this gorgeous pen! It’s the perfect size and weight for me. And those colors!

I really enjoyed the shape and weight of this pen model. And the two I have are gorgeous colors.

Text reads: “December Pen Test” in a green ink. And the pangram “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” The pangram is repeated 7 times, each line is a different color.
Candlelight is the fifth pangram line down, it is mostly a golden yellow, there is significant shading from an almost unreadable pale yellow to a darker golden brown color. (Nightshade is the third pangram line down for the record.)

Least Favorite: Diamine Inkvent 2021, Candlelight
There is nothing really wrong with this ink, but I found it a little annoying to read as I was writing it and after it dried. It shades pretty significantly, I am hoping that is visible in that picture of my writing sample.

Learned: A balanced palette is really important for my mental health. This is more of a year long thing I learned, but it really solidified for me this month. So if there is a pen and ink combo I don’t like, as soon as I’ve realized that, swapping it is a good idea.

Now, Daily Samples!
This month I went through Diamine Inkvent 2022 Advent Calendar. A complete mystery set of samples is a double edged sword. There were more browns than I like, but at least there was a healthy dose of shimmer inks!

Close up of a sample card. All that can be seen is a piece of the swatch across the top of the card, a stamp of a nib, and a pool of the same ink that is seen in the swatch appearing to drip off of the nib.
Look at that pretty color! You can see the dark warm purple color with several different light colors of shimmer.

Favorite: Diamine Inkvent 2022, Solar Storm
Hands down my favorite. I liked it so much and so instantly that I added it into my palette right away. After using it all month I have decided it is a little dark for my tastes over all, and more of a warm purple, when I prefer cool purples. But the shimmer, is so fantastic. So really my favorite thing is the way the shimmer works in this ink!

Sample card with a long swatch of color at the top, and a stamp of a nib on the right side. There is text reading “ Diamine, Inkvent 2022, Pick Me Up, xxxooosssss, 22DecVent-15, scent/sheen”
Icky green/brown color. Where it looks sort of golden in this photo is actually a lot browner.

Least Favorite: Diamine Inkvent 2022, Pick Me Up
I do NOT like scented inks. And heck this one was scented. AND it’s brown, my least favorite ink color. And to top it all off, the scent was one of those things that I recognized but couldn’t place, and I still haven’t figured it out so it continues to bug me. Triple threat.
There were other scented inks, and since they were behind sealed Advent Calendar style doors, they were always unexpected. I hated it. Fortunately a friend of mine opened her calendar ahead of time and was able to give me warnings for the days they would show up. Very helpful! I’m not sure I would have been able to finish the set of samples otherwise.

Learned: There were a couple of inks in this set that look a lot like inks from the 2021 Inkvent. I saw some folks be upset about this on Instagram. But it made me think, what if they look really similar, but they are different somehow? How are they different? Why would they release the same shade of ink with a different name (beyond the obvious consumer marketing nonsense)? I want to look into this some more.

Last but not least – the Subscription Samples.
This month I received Kaweco Inks from Truphae (and a Lamy pen? Seems off that is isn’t a Kaweco pen??) and I received Ferris Wheel Press inks from Ink Flight. Unfortunately I got a lot of duplicates from Ferris Wheel Press, since I sampled all of the inks they had at the time in April for that months Daily Sample set. Also unfortunately overall, none of the inks really stood out either way.

A container of Wearingeul Smile Cat Ink Swatch Cards, 200g’m, 5 sheets and a single swatch card above it with a blue ink with purple sheen and silver shimmer.
I REALLY like these cards but I’m not sure what I should use them for…

Favorite: So instead of a favorite ink sample, my favorite thing from these subscriptions this month were the Wearingeul Sample Cards. They have a kind of hydrophobic impression in the shape of the Cheshire Cat smile from Alice in Wonderland and when ink is applied over it, over about a minute the ink will move off of the hydrophobic spots and reveal the smile. It is SUPER cool looking. I took a video, I’ll try to put it on my twitter when this post goes up.

7 sample vials with ink in them. They all have white lids, but only the front 2 have labeled dots on top.
I was able to sample 2 of them, and at least one of those was shimmer, so yay.

Least Favorite: Again, none of the inks stood out as my least favorite since none of them stood out in any way really. Maybe I am just indecisive this month. And while the Lamy pen I got from Truphae is purple…Lamy’s are not my favorite pens. I do really like the tear-off notepad from Endless. So! I guess my least favorite thing from the Subscription Samples was the duplicate inks I got.

Learned: My reaction to the duplicates was a high level of disappointment. This was not Ink Flight’s fault, for the record – I really enjoy the subscription boxes both companies send out. I just have a ton of ink samples at this point, so it’s my own fault! But the thing I learned is that I really need to figure out how to handle this better so I am not so disappointed.

Overall I most enjoyed the Palette I used this month. The Daily Samples and the Subscription Samples ended up being a little frustrating. Fortunately nothing super terrible and some new favorites mixed in, which I really appreciate.

Next month (next YEAR) I’ll be using a mix of brands for the Daily Samples, a bunch of Kaweco pens and shimmer inks in my Pen/Ink Palette (theme: Ice), and looking forward to whatever I get in my subscriptions! I expect to run into the usual problems with shimmer inks and fine nibbed pens – sigh – and I am guessing the mix of sample inks is going to be frustrating somehow due to the random grab bag effect. But, as usual, looking forward to finding some joy in all of this!