Inkvent 2025 - Day 4

Today, Colorverse wins the batch again, Diamine's first (hopefully only?) scented ink in the set rears its head, and I got a Bungubox ink from Slackvent (new brand to me).

Swatches

Colorverse

(Editor's note: fixed the swatch for Milky Sea and the description below, as it mistakenly was more purple than the ink swatch actually was.)

Still not totally in the mood for shimmer inks, but I really like Milky Sea (glistening). Its base is translucent, so it feels like the light blue or aqua shimmer is well-balanced. It's a pretty, blue-leaning, dusky purple medium denim blue. If I put a shimmer ink in one of my pens this month, this is a contender.

Diamine

When I saw "Smoky Tobacco", I immediately thought of my sample of Diamine Tobacco Sunburst, which I have in a pen currently. It's accurate to its namesake. Then I saw on the side of the bottle that it was a scented ink. Uh...hmmmm. Considering I don't like the smell of cigarettes, cigars, etc., this was kind of concerning. 😐 But I remembered this tobacco shop that used to be in the mall when I was a kid (yeah, I'm old...Gen Xer!), and there was a sweet smell that filled the air there, perhaps the pipe tobacco? I don't know. I was hoping maybe Diamine chose that scent, but no. They opted for a very stinky, sharp, cheap body spray, too-strong cologne version of "tobacco". Gross. Given that its brown shade is alright, and I already have an ink that is similar and not stinky, this one is a hard pass.

Related: I hope Diamine retires the scented ink category. Besides the fact that the scents they've used in previous Inkvents were chemical and unappealing, whatever scent additive used seems to make these inks ridiculously wet and unusable. The only ink I've been able to use is Cinnabun, which doesn't feather in an extra-fine nib, and whose cinnamon scent isn't offensive, at least to me.

Slackvent

My sample for day 4 is from Bungubox, a brand that I'm familiar with, but haven't purchased anything from yet. Silent Night is "a jet black ink with just a little bit of blue mixed in", according to their product page. And it's specifically a holiday ink, nice!

In the writing sample it's quite dark. I tend not to like inks that are so dark they might as well be black, because I don't like writing with black inks. But I'd be curious to use the dilution solution I have from Birmingham Pen Company to help lighten the shade and coax the blue out more. I do like lighter blue-black or dusky blue inks. I'll post results whenever I do that experiment.

Any favorites from today's batch? Rants (or raves?) about scented inks? Let's discuss here, or catch me on Mastodon or Bluesky.

Previously: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3