Diamine Inkvent Days 5 - 11

It's been a week since I posted about the first four days of Diamine Inkvent Black, so here's a catch up to today, Day 11!

Quick Thoughts

Icy Lilac's base color reminded me of Baltic Breeze (day 1), but without as much pink. And the silvery shimmer also changes the tone of the base shade. Not too much else to say about it. I'm pretty sure there was an ink in last year's Inkvent that was similar, and I was similarly neutral about it.

Cranberry disappointed me because I was really liking the base color, a true, bright, happy cranberry red. Given that I have found very few reds that I really like, I was like, "Finally!" But then this really strong orange sheen took over the color, and made it quite unappealing to me. 🤦‍♀️ It's an interesting color because as you can see in the scribbling at the bottom of the swatch, in the middle my dip pen kind of ran out of ink and all that showed up was a strong magenta color. People who like strong sheeners may like this one.

Lemon & Lime was a bad time. A) I don't really like neon yellow-green to begin with, B) it was so light it was generally illegible when writing (not really demonstrated by the dried swatch), and C) for some reason this ink really didn't want to cling to my dip pen nib, so it was hard writing with it. Really don't like this one.

Marley is a very nice chromoshading gray with pink and purple tones. When I was first writing with it, it appeared mainly gray, which is fine by me, but as it dried, more of the purpley tones came out, which is even better.

Wishing Tree is a really interesting "odd" color – greige, swampy green-brown, with some light green shimmer. The shimmer is pretty subtle, but when using this ink, I'll probably further not agitate the bottle so that little of the shimmer is picked up in a fill.

Chilly Nights, another Star Bright ink, really surprised me with its cooler blurple base color. Back when I wrote about another shimmer ink with a nice cool purple base (Journalize Dark Matter), I was surprised to realize that I don't have many cooler purple inks that do not have pinky/violet/magenta leanings. I think this Chilly Nights is a similar cool color, but more leaning dark blue than purple. Still, I like it a lot, with or without shimmer.

Finally, Grotto was a big surprise. It's the first time Diamine has an "Extreme Sheen" ink in the Inkvent sets. And my actual reaction was to groan, "OH NO," when I saw the designation, because I generally am not cool with strong sheening inks, mainly because I am annoyed that the sheen kills a very nice base color, and there's no way NOT to have the sheen show up. But this ink may work for me. The base color is a nice fall-ish/cozy burnt red-orange (which already is beyond my general color preferences, but I'm keeping things open), and surprisingly the bright orange/orange-gold sheen seems to accentuate the base color to me, rather than making the base look awful. I'm not saying this ink has changed my "disliking sheeners" way, but this is an example of a sheening ink I can be alright with. I'll be interested to see how well I like it in a pen.

Despite Lemon & Lime really kind of annoying me, Cranberry disappointing me by its obliterating sheen, and Icy Lilac being whatever, the rest of the colors in this batch are quite appealing and will likely be loaded into pens soon.

What are your thoughts on this batch of inks? Any one of them you're waiting to buy as a full bottle? Do you know of dupes of these inks that I would be interested in trying? Let me know, either here or on Mastodon or Bluesky.