Ink Swatch Wednesday: Kakimori Frost Rollerball and Diamine Inkvent Vibe
For today's Ink Swatch Wednesday post, I'm doing something a little different. Instead of highlighting an ink and showing off comparable inks I have in my library, I'm showing off an ink in a pen. This time it's Diamine Inkvent Vibe, a sheening ink, and the Kakimori Frost rollerball pen. I had to clean out and refill the pen today, and decided to try a sheening ink in it for a couple reasons:
1) I thought the sheening additive would help lubricate the rollerball. Advice on the internets said to use wetter inks in rollerballs, and these sheeners tend to flow wet, so I thought it'd be a good test.
2) I'm not the biggest fan of sheening inks since the sheen usually overtakes the base color in a way that I don't like, or they're kind of thick and unruly at drying properly. I thought the rollerball could possibly tame that part of the ink, given its thin lines and overall mechanism, another test.
Some Thoughts on the Kakimori Frost
Let me first say that I was harsh on the Kakimori Frost when I gave my very first impressions of it. I had some preconceptions about how it would look and feel in the hand because I thought it would be like this other frosted cigar shaped fountain pen I have, the Namisu Horizon.
These pens have a similar shape and frosted exterior that my brain immediately thought the Kakimori Frost would feel the same in weight and texture, but it doesn't. The Namisu Horizon's frosted body feels smooth, while the Frost has a fine but very slightly rough texture. I further made the assumption that the Frost's lightness meant that it was kind of cheap and flimsy (which annoyed me in conjunction with its price, but I was counting the additional fountain pen nibs, which probably wasn't fair), but it's materials are well-made and sturdy; they just happen to optimize for lightness in their design. It is true that you can see a very faint seam on the cap and body, but it is very faint.
Now, even though I don't think the Kakimori Frost is a cheap pen to avoid, I still have some personal reservations about it, but these are due to my preferences. The metal grip is very thin and narrows down sharply to the rollerball point. So to me, it feels slightly harder to control than a pen with a more substantial grip with some kind of flared edge to keep my fingers in place. Combined with the pen's overall light weight, I feel like I have to hold on to it more tightly to keep it from flinging out of my hand. I've come to prefer fountain pens with thicker sections, as they feel very comfortable to me, especially for longer writing sessions. The slightly visible grip of the Namisu Horizon in the picture above is a good example of a grip I prefer. Anyway, because of the Frost's shape and weight, it isn't as comfortable for me to use. It's a decent rollerball pen, though, and I'll write about that in more detail another time.
Diamine Inkvent Vibe
Last year's Inkvent collection had two blue inks with red or pink sheen – Vibe and Cosmic Glow. I preferred Vibe because it has a darker base color, like a dark teal. It's a bit different from the typical bright-ish blue with shiny pink sheen combination. Anecdotally, Diamine sheeners feel like they're a bit more well-behaved compared to others. I haven't had too much trouble with text I've written in my journals smearing even days after I wrote it, but YMMV, since I don't use sheening inks a ton. 😅
Today when I was trying to figure out what ink to fill the Kakimori Frost with next, I wanted to pick a wetter ink since I used a dry Troublemaker ink previously. I remembered that I liked Vibe and thought it would be an interesting experiment to see how it fares in the rollerball. I have a couple writing samples, one on Tomoe River S, and another on Iroful:
Quick snaps taken at an angle to show the red sheen in the writing samples on Tomoe River S (left) and Iroful (right). As expected, the line width is slightly wider on the Iroful paper due to its absorbency.
My initial thought is that maybe using strong sheening inks in something like a cartridge rollerball pen is a good way to balance out the sheen with the base color. When you look at the writing straight on, as in the scans posted above, you can tell it's a dark teal, not just shiny, red sheen (which I know some people would prefer). In reality, the sheen kind of looks like random shading. You have to see it at the angle to tell it's red. For sheening inks which I really like the base color, I prefer this.
It's possible that I could've gotten a similar look in a fountain pen with a regular fine nib, but I never know with sheeners how wet they'll really flow. I should probably try this ink out in a fine-nibbed fountain pen to see how it compares. 🤔 I can still hear a little bit of the rollerball rolling as I write, but not too loudly, compared with how it was when I used a drier ink. I'm definitely going to try other sheening inks with my cartridge rollerball pens, like Lamy Dark Lilac (2024) and Violet Blackberry. I dislike both of those inks because of how the strong green and gold-brown sheen obliterate the base colors. I'm curious if the rollerball can rein it in and still show a bit of sheen with the base.
As I mentioned before, I'm going to write more about my experience and further research about rollerball pens which use cartridges and cartridge converters. It's kind of fun to use your fountain pen inks in a different way. Do you have any questions or comments for that future article, or what I wrote today? Let me know!
