Ink Swatch Wednesday: Journalize Whimsical and Starry Night Inks
A while back I bought a sample of Journalize Elphaba from their Whimsical series and was totally enamored of it. It has a wonderful medium dusky purple base with some pink tones and a lovely aqua shimmer.
Ink swatch for Journalize Elphaba, and an angled view of the ink swatch to show off the aqua shimmer
And although it is obviously a shimmer-heavy ink, it performed well in my The Pen Addict x BENU Euphoria with a fine stub nib. Near the end of the ink in the converter, it did seem to get a bit shimmer jammed, but generally it felt well-behaved.
Later on when I bought more ink samples from Vanness (IIRC), I picked up another Whimsical series ink, Hecate, and 2 inks from their Starry Night series — Deep Space Aurora, and Dark Matter.
Ink swatch for Journalize Hecate, a medium purple ink with rose gold/copper shimmer and an angled view of the swatch showing off the shimmer
Once again, I was pleasantly surprised by how pretty Hecate was when I swatched it. It reminds me of Dominant Industry Pearl Sunset, but seemed to have more of a pigmented base color to make it more legible. I can’t remember if I tried it in a different pen, but it is currently in my Lamy Safari Violet Blackberry, with a medium nib. The flow isn’t quite as nice as it was in the BENU, but I know BENU nibs tend to be wetter writers. There is some noticeable shimmer accumulation around the bottom edge and underside of the nib, but ink flow is alright. This would likely perform better in a wetter nib, like a JoWo medium or something.
The Starry Night series ink swatches are pretty stunning.
Close up views of ink swatches for Journalize Dark Matter, a dark cool purple with a green shimmer, and Journalize Deep Space Aurora, a dark, dusky blue with a lighter green shimmer
Initially I tried Deep Space Aurora in a couple TWSBIs I had with medium or broad nibs, but somehow they got super clogged up, so I transferred the remaining ink to my trusty Jinhao 9019 with a #8 medium nib. That pen finally was up to the challenge of this very shimmery ink. I have not inked up Dark Matter yet (AFAIK).
Just today I read a description on Vanness for the Starry Night inks: “The design concept was that when the ink is shaken evenly or the ink bottle is turned up and down, different starry skies can be seen in the process of flashing powder precipitation… As the inks contain glitter, it is recommended to write with a dip pen, glass pen, brush pen, or a fountain pen with M/B/BB nib.”
Though I did try the Deep Space Aurora in TWSBIs with M or B nibs, I don’t think their smaller feeds were up to the task.
Tangent: A lot of people recommend TWSBIs for dedicated shimmer ink pens, but I humbly recommend using Jinhao X159s or Jinhao 9019s with fine or medium nibs as your shimmer pens instead. I think their huge #8 feeds are able to take on the shimmer of really dense inks, and yet maintain good ink flow, especially the medium nib. Try it out!
As I mentioned, I have Hecate and Deep Space Aurora in my currently inked line up. I also have an older writing sample for Elphaba below:
Of these Journalize inks, I definitely want to buy a bottle of Elphaba, but I’ll have to play around more with the other inks as they haven’t been as well-behaved (though Deep Space Aurora in the Jinhao 9019 is alright).
Have you tried Journalize inks? Are there other colors you recommend I try? Comment here or catch me on Mastodon. ✌️
