Alright, to review, this whole palette started with the idea of a “comfy” theme, and when I started thinking about comfy pen/ink combos I started thinking about combos I had used before that worked well. Which led me to the idea of picking a combo from each month between January and October of 2021 and using that as my palette. 

So I did. I went back through all of my palettes. Although the palettes from before April were definitely not documented in my Monthly Palette Journal where I recorded what I ended up using – which made things a bit tricky. But, I picked pairs out and started using them – but I ended up making some changes, which I’ll explain later:

1. Jan: Twsbi Diamond – Prussian Blue (F), Diamine Inkvent 2021 Subzero

This combo kept getting clogged, and I tried all of my usual tricks and they just wouldn’t work and I ended up getting very frustrated.

2. Feb: Twsbi Diamond – Punch Pink (F), Van Dieman – Underwater, Moon Jellyfish

This combo clogged as well, and was equally frustrating! These two inks really did reflect my experience in January and February of 2022 with my palettes.

3. Mar: Hong Dian 5019, Lan Tian – May Flowers (EF) / Ferris Wheel Press Moonlight Jade 

4. Apr: Sailor Pro Gear Slim – Purple Northern Lights (MF) / ColorVerse 54 Hayabusa Glistening

5. May: Bonecrusher7Studios – Monet (Architect), Ferris Wheel Press, April Showers 

6. June: Sailor Pro Gear Slim Mini – Night Blue (MF) / ColorVerse Cat

7. July: Leonardo Supernova (F), Diamine Inkvent 2021 Wonderland

8. Aug: Esterbrook JR Paradise Pocket Pen – Purple Passion (F), Van Dieman, Harvest Collection, Beetroot Relish

9. Sept: Esterbrook JR Picket Paradise – Key Lime (F) / Wearingeul Flowing Leaves 

10. Oct: Mad Science Pen Company, Modified Clingman – Ghost (F) / Vinta Inks, Fairytale Collection – Clouds of Grey

I immediately had trouble with the January and February pens. Looking back more closely at my notes I realize I had always had trouble with them. So I thought, welp maybe I’ll try a different pair – and when I looked more closely at both of those months it became clear those two palettes were kind of the worst. 

The thing is, I discovered shimmer inks later in 2021, and my Daily Samples for December were all Van Dieman shimmer inks, so by January and February of 2022 I was very hooked on shimmer inks. And I struggled to use them in my pens which I found incredibly frustrating! Which is why when the Ferris Wheel Press Moonlight Jade worked without a single issue in my Hong Dian pen in March I was so absolutely thrilled! 

As I was looking into this and trying to decide if I wanted to keep struggling with those two pens, I ran across and instagram post from @claire_scribbles (check) about the #30Inks30Days challenge for November being about sampling old favorites. Which is similar to what I was doing for my November palette…except the favorites part. That got me thinking, maybe I’ll look back thru all of the palettes and see if I had any other favorites – and turns out – I did! So I threw the whole “one combo from each month” out the window, and went back looking for any combos that worked and were loved. I looked thru the Monthly Palette Journal, where I make notes about the combo performance, and for anything prior to April I went looking in my Captain’s Logs for those times and looked for any complaining or performance issues. And came up with more than 20 options. Since I try to only carry around 10 pens at a time in my palette, I needed to narrow it down. 

I started by keeping the 8 pens I had picked out already and were behaving. And mostly looked for combos that helped me round out the ink palette color range wise. But what was interesting to me were the combos that stood out – like Bloom in the Peach Punch Twsbi Diamond – it was the first pink I used and liked, in my April palette. I’d used a bunch of pinks in February and it made me so grumpy that they both didn’t work and the colors were irritating that I switched to the March palette early. And in April I found a pink I liked AND it performed well. So I kept using it in May! Or Kon-Peki, which was a blue I used really early on, first time in September of 2021. I’d gotten into all of this pen stuff in late August 2021, and I got a sample pack of blue inks and Kon-Peki was in it, and I liked it, and I put it in a pen when I built my first rainbow palette. I put it in my Twsbi Diamond Mini. And I loved it. Used it into October 2021 before I switched it out. I wasn’t using month palettes at that point. But it came back in my May 2022 palette in a Kaweco, and continued into June just in another pen. One of the reasons this one stands out is it is not a shimmer ink and yet, I still adore it. And there were other examples like that, combos I liked enough to pull into the next month’s palette, and inks I liked enough I swapped them into different pens to keep using them. 

I ended up with 12 pens – rather fitting, considering it’s a year review, although I did stick to combos from 2022. When I started listing out which combos were from which months, I realized some combos could be from multiple months! Actually, only 2 of the 12 are combos I only used once, but I distinctly remember wanting to use them more than once. In case anyone is interested: 1 of them is a pen I inked in late April but ended up using through May. 2 of the inks I put in a pen and never took out. 2 inks I used in multiple months but not back to back and in different pens. 3 more are pens I used across 2 months. And there are 2 from October I am using in November, so I guess technically one of those joins the “used across 2 months” club, and the other counts towards the group that I used in multiple months but different pens! 

So this ended up being a proper review, because each of those categories hits a 2022 trend for my palettes. Even washing out 2 pens almost immediately fits a decision I made pretty early on to not persist for too long with a pen that bugged me. Made that decision after the February palette. I remember being SO GRUMPY which utterly defeated the entire purpose of using these pens in the first place. The Narwhal pen with Sosdajgh in it – pen arrived IN November, so never used it before, but that’s something I did often, adding a pen completely unrelated to the palette purely because I wanted to use it IMMEDIATELY. Usually I decreed it an accent color. Actually, Bloom was my accent color for May, since that theme was all Blues. So even that one fits!

I will list the pens I did end up using – and why! I find this rather fascinating. I really enjoyed the things I discovered and learned and developed. Like how I don’t reeeeally need a whole rainbow. (Even tho rainbows are absolutely delightful and satisfying and completely legitimate.) I figured out what was satisfying for a palette and worked out good themes along those lines. I learned how many pens I could actually use in month. I worked out how to deal with shimmer pens when they clog. I started filling the removable converters with a syringe. I settled on a good way to use the different colors for work. I discovered new pen makers and new inks. I even did art. Yay art.

1. January: NOPE. Could not find a pen combo from January I wanted to use.

I tried Subzero in the Twsbi Diamond, altho originally this ink was in a Twsbi Eco. It didn’t perform well in either of them so after trying to make it work with my new found skill set at handling shimmer inks and having that fail, I decided to put this one away. February’s palette made me so very very grumpy this year that I decided moving forward to just clean out a pen if it was bugging me too much. 

2. February: NOPE. This was a very frustrating month for me. The pens either didn’t work or the ink were colors I really didn’t like. I actually ended up emptying almost all of these pens about half way through the month!

I really like shimmer inks, but at this point nothing was working well and it made me want to throw things because Van Dieman shimmer inks are so gorgeous. The one I felt truly betrayed by in January was another Van Dieman: Twilight Mist, but! I kept trying. I had a theory with that brand that I just needed to find a good pen and the shimmer inks would behave.  (The secret usually is having a wide nib, for the record.)

3. March: (Magic Green) Hong Dian 5019, Lan Tian – May Flowers (EF) / Ferris Wheel Press Moonlight Jade 

And lo and behold – a pen and shimmer ink that WORKED. I swore I would never put it down. Never. We shall see how long that is true. But please know – I was so incredibly delighted. (AND this is an EF nib! Why does it work?? No one knows.)

4. March: Twsbi Diamond – Prussian Blue (F), Kiwi Inks, Zoanthid Turquoise 

This was another satisfying combo – both of the TWSBI Diamond pens I tried to use in the beginning with different inks ended up with shimmer inks from brands I had looked in to after Van Dieman frustrated me so badly. I was chasing a theory that each brand handle shimmer differently, largely stemming from how Diamine shimmer inks and Van Dieman shimmer inks performed so differently between November and December of my 2021 samples. The only reason Zoanthid didn’t go from my 2022 March palette it into my 2022 April palette was I had chosen bright rainbow colors for April, and a teal didn’t really work. 

5. April: Twsbi Diamond – Punch Pink (F), PenBBS, #140 Bloom

Pink? Seriously? Pink. I needed a red for my 2022 April rainbow and I loathe red inks more than I dislike pinks, so I picked a pink for my April Rainbow Palette. And I liked it so much I justified using it in my 2022 May palette because I was going to use all blues and I needed an accent color. And it remains one of the only pink inks I actually enjoy using. 

6. April: (Forever Purple) Sailor Pro Gear Slim – Purple Northern Lights (MF) / ColorVerse 54 Hayabusa Glistening

It’s the right color purple – a cool purple, that is desaturated enough to LOOK purple, and has shimmer that showed nicely. In this pen it mostly behaves. And the pen is sparkly. So I decided to also never put this combo away. I’ve only had to empty it once completely so far and that is because I made an absolute mess filling the converter with a syringe the first time I tried it. Which made me nervous the next time I went to fill it so! The entire pen top to bottom got beautifully cleaned sometime in August 2022 and otherwise I just keep refilling it.  

7. May: Bonecrusher7Studios – Monet (Architect), Ferris Wheel Press, April Showers 

I actually started using this ink in April 2022, late April, the day the custom architect nib I had ordered arrived. This ink was originally in my Gravitas pen, with this same nib. I put it in a different pen for my 2022 November palette because I really love this resin. I love being able to use both top and bottom of the nib to get those different line widths and I think this was the nib that I decided to use for headers in my notebooks. 

8. May: Kaweco, AL Sport – Anthracite (F) / Sailor Inks, Kon-Peki

Okay this one is fun! It was one of the original inks I used in the first set of pens I ever kept inked. I put it in the Twsbi Diamond mini first in September of 2021, then used it into October 2021, but switched it out sometime in that month. It re emerged in May of 2022, with a Kaweco pen. Then I swapped it into another pen in June, a Cult Pens x Kaweco collaboration. And now it’s back in the first Kaweco pen I had it in! This ink is delightful and NOT a shimmer ink and yet I still adore it. May 2022 was when I started to accept that if I wanted a pen that worked well without having to fuss with it every time I used it, I might need to find non shimmer inks I enjoyed using. Sigh. For the record, there is like, a thousand blue inks that fit this category. But not many purples. 

9. June: Sailor Pro Gear Slim Mini – Night Blue (MF) / ColorVerse Cat

This was another fun one – I fell in love with this ink fast, because it is a blue, but also can shade purple, and has rose-gold shimmer. I adore it. And finding a pen that would write consistently was difficult. It wasn’t until August that I actually found a Sailor pen with a MF nib to put it in and be able to trust it worked consistently. But since June was another month with a disappointing palette, I fudged which pen I put this ink in a tiny bit. I first used this ink in November of 2021 in a Twsbi Eco. Kept using it in December and then January of 2022. In February I moved it into the Twsbi Navy Blue Diamond, where it lived until April. I put it back in the Twsbi Diamond for May and June, cleaned it out in July, and it joined my palette again in August in the Sailor. So technically an ink I used in June, just not the pen. The ink works pretty consistently in this Sailor pen, but to be honest it isn’t perfect. I was originally thinking that this would be my third forever pen alongside the Purple and Green I am using, but alas. Still too frustrating to be kept inked forever.

10. July: Leonardo Supernova (F), Diamine Inkvent 2021 Wonderland

I desperately wanted this pen – it has a fidget built into the clip on the cap. It’s not intended as a fidget but it is one and I needed it. The one I got has a lot of orange in it, so! For my July palette theme of Summer, I needed a really good orange. Enter Wonderland! Loved it so much I managed to justify using it into August, for my Sunset theme. It performs so beautifully. I was super excited to have it back in my November palette. And it worked beautifully as usual!

11. August: Esterbrook JR Paradise Pocket Pen – Purple Passion (F), Van Dieman, Harvest Collection, Beetroot Relish

A non shimmer purple that I like! What! So excited. SO EXCITED. I loved how this pair worked. I didn’t use it in the September palette, because it didn’t fit into the Fall theme, so enthusiastically added it back in for the review theme in November!

12. September: Esterbrook JR Picket Paradise – Key Lime (F) / Wearingeul Flowing Leaves 

Wearingeul inks sampled in August brought me Flowing Leaves which is a truly delicious green – and distinct enough from Moonlight Jade that I was able to justify keeping them both in my palette. I had started insisting inks of the same color had to be distinct shades, because sometime in June or July I think I started using two different color inks in one day for my work notes, alternating per line item so I could read my notes easier. In August I switched to just using the entire palette, mostly because I couldn’t find 2 ink shades for the whole palette that I liked enough. But, I ended up liking this ink so much I used it in my October palette for my Zombie Spoopy Monster. Yet another ink brand with excellent shimmers! I am going to have a very hard time putting this ink away.

13. October: Mad Science Pen Company, Modified Clingman – Ghost (F) / Vinta Inks, Fairytale Collection – Clouds of Grey

Another Wearingeul shimmer ink – one of 3 in the October palette actually, all 3 of which are still being used in November. This was originally in a different pen, but I actually can’t remember which one? I HAD to put it in the Mad Science Pen Company “Ghost” pen the instant it arrived. The INSTANT. And it has performed beautifully, and I love continuing to use it. I ended up having some trouble with the ink dribbling out into the nib when it was resting capped so I ended up having to clean this one out early, mostly because I completely ran out of the ink sample. I spilled this vial, if I recall correctly, when I was first sampling it. And of COURSE it is out of stock everywhere. Sigh.

14. November: Narwhal (Nahvalur), Nautilus – English Garden (Limited Edition) (F) / Wearingeul, Yi Sang Series – Soyeongwije 

This entire year I tried very hard to create palettes I would find engaging and delightful. Occasionally a pen or ink arrives after the theme is put together and I just HAVE to use it. And that is how I justified using this pen in this palette! I put together a palette to review pen and ink combos that worked well, one from every month between January and October of 2021. But THIS pen arrived in November – and I was having an extremely bad day when it showed up and Aaron encouraged me to put an ink in it I love just for the night. And now I refuse to put it away muahahah because I love it. So, technically, it fits in this year’s review! 🙂 

I think it’ll be interesting to see what ends up happening around this time next year. Will I have even MORE options to choose from because I get amazing at combining pens and inks and they all work beautifully? Or will I take more risks because I’ve gotten better and now I think I can do ANYTHING. Hmmm…I do want to try some more custom nibs. I want to keep trying new brands of inks, and paper types, and experimenting. So who knows? I guess we’ll just have to find out.