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Duping the 2021 Diamine Inkvent Calendar (25 Days of Dupes Returns)

Posted in Ink

Don’t worry, I won’t be sharing spoilers today (or any day, technically).

Diamine’s Inkvent Calendar returns with the Red Edition. After how little I actually used the 2019 Inkvent Calendar — I don’t use shimmer ink, and rarely use sheening ink — I couldn’t justify purchasing the even more expensive 2021 calendar. Lucky for me, the DC Metro Pen Crew is a very generous community. David was kind enough to allow me to borrow his calendar to replicate my 25 Days of Dupes idea from 2019.

What’s Different This Time?

As before, to avoid spoilers, I’ll be publishing each post the day after its ink is opened. Meaning, tomorrow, the 2nd, I’ll share the dupe for today’s ink, and so on. Because it’s 25 days — and 25 inks — these will once again be truncated dupes. I won’t include as much information about the inks (e.g. price, size, etc.), nor will I include the variety of comparison methods.

Unlike 2019, however, I won’t be sharing to Instagram every day — instead sharing a reminder of the posts once a week. So if you’re interested in following along, subscribe to my blog for daily notices.

Based on feedback from 2019, I’ve decided not to avoid dupes that are difficult to obtain or expensive. It’s likely that these inkvent inks will also be released individually, and people may choose to get them as dupes for those harder-to-acquire inks.

About the Posts

Each day will include a large brush swab and writing sample for the Inkvent ink, and, in cases where I felt that there wasn’t enough “non-shaded” color showing, a thin brush swab with less ink so there’s no shading.

Below the Inkvent swab, I’ve swabbed each dupe ink and written the ink name.

I created all swabs with a small paintbrush, and wrote with a Zebra G dip nib.

Limitations

I don’t think I’m giving anything away by acknowledging that aside from standard inks, there are also sheen and shimmer inks in the Inkvent Calendar. I’m not trying to dupe those “special properties”, I’m focusing on color.

I’ve duped sheen, where possible, but I’m not trying to dupe shimmer at all. I’ll note that there are several articles online about mixing simmer into existing ink, if you’re a shimmer fanatic.

For some Inkvent inks, I’ve found several dupes and near dupes. For others, I’ve been lucky to find one. I’ve done my best, however, to find a perfect color dupe for each Inkvent ink, even if I had to create my own custom mix.

I’ve mentioned this in past Ink Dupes posts, but I want to remind you that I can’t guarantee that the color you see on your screen will be true to life. However, I’ve put all the dupes on the same page. So any differences in color will show equally across all of the inks. You’ll see how the colors look in relation to each other, which is the main point of these posts.

I’ve found that my new scanner isn’t very good at showing the true color of the inks, so this year I’m photographing the inks at two angles.

Inkvent Calendar Thoughts

My overall impression of this iteration of the Inkvent Calendar is more positive than the previous. The inks seem to be more unique this time, as I found less Diamine dupes. However, those cases where there are Diamine dupes, it seems like, once again, Diamine simply increased the dye saturation on or added some shimmer to an already existing ink.

The inks are definitely pretty, but I think you’re likely to enjoy the Inkvent Calendar much more if you’re a shimmer and/or sheen fanatic.

Hopefully, my 25 Days of Dupes will prove useful to those who find a favorite ink within the Inkvent Calendar or who were unable to get one. You may want to bookmark the 25 Days of Dupes 2021 page which will include each ink dupe as I post it.

Enjoy, and happy inking!


Have you purchased the 2021 Inkvent Calendar? Did you already open it, or are you opening it as a standard advent calendar? Let me know in the comments.

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