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Category: Ink

25 Days of Dupes 2025 – Week 3

Posted in Ink

Welcome to the third post of 25 Days of Dupes 2025. Below you’ll find the inks for days 12-18. If you have a suggestion for a possible dupe for any of these inks, let me know in the comments, and I’ll add it to the wrap up post.

View Reminders
  • You can click the images to view them larger.
  • I swatched each ink with a small (#2) paintbrush and wrote with a F Sailor Compass Hocoro Dip Pen.
  • The dilution pages show the sheening inks diluted with water in single-part steps. I started with just the ink, then 1:1 ink to water, then 1:2, etc.
  • While I try to edit the images so they look as close to real life as possible, I can’t guarantee that the color you see on your screen will be true to life. However, with all the dupes on the same page, you’ll see how the colors look in relation to each other, which is the main point of these posts.
  • I can’t fairly call any ink a perfect color match, as I’m not comparing them scientifically, I’m just using my eyes. Therefore, I won’t be going any further than calling an ink a “near-perfect color match.”
  • I’m not attempting to dupe the special properties of the inks — sheen, shimmer, scent — only the base color.

Enjoy, and happy inking!

My 2025 Favorites

Posted in Fountain Pens, and Ink

As I do each year, I’m sharing my current top tens. *screech* Except I’m not. I’ve decided to rename this entry to my favorites of the year. It has nothing to do with my inability to stick to just 10… Really.

My inks list started the departure from my “top 10” format. As you’ll read later, I could either have a top 5 or a top 15. Then I tried to do nibs, and I have so many amazing nibs, I simply couldn’t rank them normally, so I provided my top nib(s) for several categories. And, then, when finishing the pen section, Stanford Pen Studio was 90% of the list, so I decided to give those pens their own list so that other pens would have a chance to shine.

You can also check out my top tens (AKA favorites) from previous years: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021

Now, without further preamble, enjoy my top tens favorites of 2025.

2025 New Pen Releases, The Tag

Posted in Fountain Pens, and Ink

Time for another addition to this yearly tradition. If you’re curious, you can check out the 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 entries. This idea was originally based on the “New Makeup Releases | THE TAG” video from Angelica Nyqvist.

This tag is about evaluating the releases — in this case, pens and inks — from the past year. Unfortunately, I was significantly more out of touch with pen releases this year — I blame it on crochet and an absolutely crazy year — and had to do quite a bit of research to answer some of these questions. Let me know if you agree or disagree with me.

25 Days of Dupes 2025 – Week 2

Posted in Ink

Welcome to the second post of 25 Days of Dupes 2025. Below you’ll find the inks for days 5-11. If you have a suggestion for a possible dupe for any of these inks, let me know in the comments, and I’ll add it to the wrap up post.

HEAD’S UP: An ink sample arrived a couple of days after posting week 1 that better matches Energy. Check out the update.

View Reminders
  • You can click the images to view them larger.
  • I swatched each ink with a small (#2) paintbrush and wrote with a F Sailor Compass Hocoro Dip Pen.
  • The dilution pages show the sheening inks diluted with water in single-part steps. I started with just the ink, then 1:1 ink to water, then 1:2, etc.
  • While I try to edit the images so they look as close to real life as possible, I can’t guarantee that the color you see on your screen will be true to life. However, with all the dupes on the same page, you’ll see how the colors look in relation to each other, which is the main point of these posts.
  • I can’t fairly call any ink a perfect color match, as I’m not comparing them scientifically, I’m just using my eyes. Therefore, I won’t be going any further than calling an ink a “near-perfect color match.”
  • I’m not attempting to dupe the special properties of the inks — sheen, shimmer, scent — only the base color.

Enjoy, and happy inking!

25 Days of Dupes 2025 – Week 1

Posted in Ink

Welcome to the first post of 25 Days of Dupes 2025. Below you’ll find the inks for days 1-4. If you have a suggestion for a possible dupe for any of these inks, let me know in the comments, and I’ll add it to the wrap up post.

View Reminders
  • You can click the images to view them larger.
  • I swatched each ink with a small (#2) paintbrush and wrote with a F Sailor Compass Hocoro Dip Pen.
  • The dilution pages show the sheening inks diluted with water in single-part steps. I started with just the ink, then 1:1 ink to water, then 1:2, etc.
  • While I try to edit the images so they look as close to real life as possible, I can’t guarantee that the color you see on your screen will be true to life. However, with all the dupes on the same page, you’ll see how the colors look in relation to each other, which is the main point of these posts.
  • I can’t fairly call any ink a perfect color match, as I’m not comparing them scientifically, I’m just using my eyes. Therefore, I won’t be going any further than calling an ink a “near-perfect color match.”
  • I’m not attempting to dupe the special properties of the inks — sheen, shimmer, scent — only the base color.

Enjoy, and happy inking!

25 Days of Dupes 2025 – Intro

Posted in Ink

We’re back to the Diamine Inkvent calendar for this year’s 25 Days of Dupes. While I love Colorverse inks, the Colorvent calendar just didn’t do it for me last year. The biggest letdown was how dark and muted many of the colors were, especially given how bright regular Colorverse inks often are. The bottle shape was also a consideration. The Colorverse bottles are easily double the size of the Inkvent bottles, but only contain 3ml more ink. I just don’t have space for them. Last year’s Colorvent is still in its box. And, finally, the price difference matters to me. If anyone reading this is in the Washington, DC area and would be willing to let me borrow their 2025 Colorvent, I can dupe it around February next year. Just let me know in the comments.

What’s the Plan?

Per usual, I’ll be posting once a week with all of the inks from that week, with the day based on Christmas. Since Christmas is on Thursday, my posts will be on Friday this year. My first dupe post will be on the 5th, with the inks from December 1-4. My final dupe post will be on the 26th, with inks from December 19-25. And I’ll have a wrap-up/reference post on the 29th linking to the 4 dupe posts and listing the best dupe for each ink.

I’m also sticking with the Sailor Compass Hocoro Dip Pen. I used the F nib this year, since the finer nib seemed to be appreciated in my Inktober posts.

I enjoyed the Muji A5 loose leaf paper I used last year — it really is fantastic paper — but I’m trying to use up my stock of Kokuyo loose leaf paper, so this year I used that instead.

Inktober 2025 Skirmishes, Wrap Up

Posted in Ink

This is my final installment of my Inktober Skirmishes series. If you want to see the photos of the skirmishes, check out my other Inktober 2025 posts.

My initial goal was to use Inktober to work on my resolution to get rid of some inks. I’d hoped to get rid of one ink from each skirmish, but that’s not quite how things worked out. Although a bit time-consuming with needing to clean out the pens each day, I enjoyed these skirmishes. They were a great way to clear out some inks, and more fun — for me — than Ink Battles.

I’ve got a favor to ask of you at the end of this post, so even if you aren’t interested in reading through, please scroll down. Thanks in advance!

Inktober 2025 Skirmishes, The Chaos

Posted in Ink

Welcome back to Inktober Skirmishes. As a reminder, I’m using Inktober to work on my resolution to get rid of some inks. The goal is to remove one ink from my collection for each skirmish, but if the two inks are different enough, I’m open to keeping them both.

Skirmishes are similar to Ink Battles, but without scoring, just final judgment. I am writing out the first chapter, one skirmish at a time, of as many of my favorite books as necessary to get through the 31 days of Inktober.

This is my last set of skirmishes for Inktober. I chose one of my favorite poems, The Chaos, by Gerard Nolst Trenité. The version I copied from is quite a bit longer than what I’ve included below, but I got to Halloween and decided to jump to the last two lines. Side note: this poem is written for British English pronunciation, not American English.

NOTE: For some reason, the images look different on my computer upon upload than they did during editing. I’m not sure how true-to-life they’ll look on anyone’s screen. The close-up images seem to look more true-to-life than the full page images.

Inktober 2025 Skirmishes, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Posted in Ink

Welcome back to Inktober Skirmishes. As a reminder, I’m using Inktober to work on my resolution to get rid of some inks. The goal is to remove one ink from my collection for each skirmish, but if the two inks are different enough, I’m open to keeping them both.

Skirmishes are similar to Ink Battles, but without scoring, just final judgment. I am writing out the first chapter, one skirmish at a time, of as many of my favorite books as necessary to get through the 31 days of Inktober.

This time I’ve copied out the first chapter of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith.

NOTE: I still had a lot of trouble with photographing and editing these colors, so most of them aren’t quite true-to-life. I’ve done the best I can, but I wouldn’t advise making a purchasing decision based on this post. Look at some other swatches, too. The close-up photos are more correct than the full-page photos.

Inktober 2025 Skirmishes, Indian Captive

Posted in Ink

Welcome back to Inktober Skirmishes. As a reminder, I’m using Inktober to work on my resolution to get rid of some inks. The goal is to remove one ink from my collection for each skirmish, but if the two inks are different enough, I’m open to keeping them both.

Skirmishes are similar to Ink Battles, but without scoring, just final judgment. I am writing out the first chapter, one skirmish at a time, of as many of my favorite books as necessary to get through the 31 days of Inktober.

I’ve caught up with my skirmishes, but fell a wee bit behind with posting. But, here is the next set of skirmishes featuring Indian Captive by Lois Lenski.

NOTE: I had a lot of trouble with photographing and editing these colors, so most of them aren’t quite true-to-life. I’ve done the best I can, but I wouldn’t advise making a purchasing decision based on this post. Look at some other swatches, too.

Inktober 2025 Skirmishes, Little Women

Posted in Ink

Welcome back to Inktober Skirmishes. As a reminder, I’m using Inktober to work on my resolution to get rid of some inks. The goal is to remove one ink from my collection for each skirmish, but if the two inks are different enough, I’m open to keeping them both.

Skirmishes are similar to Ink Battles, but without scoring, just final judgment. I am writing out the first chapter, one skirmish at a time, of as many of my favorite books as necessary to get through the 31 days of Inktober.

I’m running a bit behind with these as I’m working on them around a lot of Halloween crochet projects. I should be fully caught up by the end of today and back to doing one a day, like I planned. Still, here is the next set of skirmishes featuring Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

Inktober 2025 Skirmishes, Pride & Prejudice

Posted in Ink

Welcome back to Inktober Skirmishes. As a reminder, I’m using Inktober to work on my resolution to get rid of some inks. The goal is to remove one ink from my collection for each skirmish, but if the two inks are different enough, I’m open to keeping them both.

Skirmishes are similar to Ink Battles, but without scoring, just final judgment. I am writing out the first chapter, one skirmish at a time, of as many of my favorite books as necessary to get through the 31 days of Inktober.

I’ve decided that I’m going to post the skirmishes as I finish a book’s chapter. This post has the rest of the first chapter of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

Inktober 2025 Skirmishes, Week 1

Posted in Ink

I always want to participate in Inktober, but I often find it difficult to do so. Last year, if my memory serves me correctly, I took part in Inktober Tangles. However, I really had to push myself, and often found I didn’t have enough time to really relax and have fun.

So, this year, I’m using Inktober to work on my resolution to get rid of some inks. I haven’t done anywhere near as well with it as I’d like to. The result: Inktober Skirmishes! The goal is to remove one ink from my collection for each skirmish, but if the two inks are different enough, I’m open to keeping them both.

These will be similar to Ink Battles, but faster. No scoring, just final judgment. I haven’t even included a scribble section. My plan is to write out the first chapter, one skirmish at a time, of as many of my favorite books as necessary to get through 31 days. The first book pick is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

Ink Dupes #16: Sailor, Platinum, and Pilot

Posted in Ink

As a reminder, this is my new format for ink dupes posts. Where, previously, my ink dupes posts were more like double reviews, now they’re about art. I know that isn’t a perfect translation to writing with the ink, but I’m doing my best to include “wet” sections with a lot of ink and “dry” sections with less ink to simulate broader and finer nibs, respectively.

Today’s post features Sailor x Disney Belle Yellow, Platinum Mixable Sunny Yellow, and Pilot Iroshizuku Daikokuten.

These three inks are all incredibly similar. While there may be minute differences in how they shade, unless you’re using them side by side in pens, I don’t think you’d notice the difference.

Ink Battle: Taccia and Colorverse

Posted in Ink

This ink battle is between Taccia Light Washed Jeans and Colorverse αCnc. Both inks are in a pens fitted with a Jowo #6 M nib. The paper is Muji loose leaf dot grid A5 paper.

Today’s ink battle is another bout of bottle versus sample. It determined if my sample of αCnC got to stay in use, or get relegated to the “for dupes” baskets. Were I to keep it in use and go through the whole sample, then I’d consider getting a bottle.

I love pale, desaturated blue inks, but they have to be bright/dark enough to read easily, even in F and EF nibs.

Between myself and Jim buying inks, we own far too many. This means I have some inks that are incredibly similar in color. And, because of that, I need to figure out which inks to keep and which to dispose of. Sometimes, I have samples of two or more similar inks that I'm trying to decide which to buy, or if I should buy one ink when I already own a bottle of a similar one.

Enter ink battles. I put the similar inks into pens with the same nibs (two Jowo #6 M, two TWSBI F, etc.), or I create ink splats and doodles, to test them out to see which I like better. Or, I may find out that they’re sufficiently different to keep.

You can assume I have no problems with any ink that appears in an ink battle. I may find, when using the inks side-by-side, that there are performance differences, but the point of the battle is to choose a favorite ink, a "winner". These choices are often subjective, and you may disagree with me.

An ink battle — unlike ink dupes — is between inks I like. I enjoy using them enough to have them in my "for use" ink collection — as opposed to my repository of inks for testing dupes. If an ink performed poorly or caused problems, I wouldn’t keep it. And, if that were the case, an ink battle would be unnecessary.

Reminder: You can find all of the ink battle posts on the tag page.

Inky Madness – Colorverse

Posted in Ink

So, I just missed March with this post, but life decided to life, and, well, better late than never, right?

In this sequel to my Diamine Inky Madness post, I’m going through all of the Colorverse inks I own bottles of. To make this bracket a bit more fair than the Diamine bracket, I listed the bottles by number of uses, then looked for inks in the same color family with the closest number of uses possible. That way, as much as possible, I could avoid comparing an ink I love and use a lot to an ink I just got or have used significantly less. I’ve included the number of times I’ve used each ink in a pen in parentheses after the name in round 1.

Disclaimer: To have isolated photos of each bottle I pulled images from: Colorverse, Inky Inspirations, and Papier & Stift.

Ink Dupes #15: Diamine and Stipula

Posted in Ink

I’ve revamped ink dupes to bring them back. Where, previously, my ink dupes posts were more like double reviews, going forward they will be about art. I know that isn’t a perfect translation to writing with the ink, but I’m doing my best to include “wet” sections with a lot of ink and “dry” sections with less ink to simulate broader and finer nibs, respectively.

I have no set schedule for ink dupes, and they won’t replace my ink battles, but they will help me get rid of some inks.

I hope you enjoy the new ink dupes!

Tag Questions Revisited

Posted in Fountain Pens, and Ink

My original thought with this post was to revisit a single tag post and answer all of the questions a second time. But, as I looked through the various posts, I realized that many of my answers haven’t changed.

So, instead, I pulled out questions where my answers actually have changed from a variety of posts I hope you like this little redux.

The Fountain Pens Tag (9/14/21)

This post was based on The Eyeshadow Tag from the beauty side of YouTube.

1. What is your newest fountain pen?

Ink Battle: Van Dieman’s and Wearingeul

Posted in Ink

This ink battle is between Van Dieman’s Feline Collection Catnip and Wearingeul Vayu. Both inks are in a pen fitted with an unaltered Jowo #6 Medium nib. The paper is blank Muji loose leaf A5 paper.

For this particular Ink Battle, I’m comparing two ink samples, trying to decide which to purchase. Catnip and Vayu are both seafoam green

Between myself and Jim buying inks, we own far too many. This means I have some inks that are incredibly similar in color. And, because of that, I need to figure out which inks to keep and which to dispose of. Sometimes, I have samples of two or more similar inks that I'm trying to decide which to buy, or if I should buy one ink when I already own a bottle of a similar one.

Enter ink battles. I put the similar inks into pens with the same nibs (two Jowo #6 M, two TWSBI F, etc.), or I create ink splats and doodles, to test them out to see which I like better. Or, I may find out that they’re sufficiently different to keep.

You can assume I have no problems with any ink that appears in an ink battle. I may find, when using the inks side-by-side, that there are performance differences, but the point of the battle is to choose a favorite ink, a "winner". These choices are often subjective, and you may disagree with me.

An ink battle — unlike ink dupes — is between inks I like. I enjoy using them enough to have them in my "for use" ink collection — as opposed to my repository of inks for testing dupes. If an ink performed poorly or caused problems, I wouldn’t keep it. And, if that were the case, an ink battle would be unnecessary.

Reminder: You can find all of the ink battle posts on the tag page.

What Makes a Good Ink Bottle?

Posted in Ink

This post is a response to UK Fountain Pens’ post, What Makes a Good Ink Bottle? Reading Anthony’s post got me thinking about what I think makes a good ink bottle. After all, I know I’m a bit odd with how I fill my pens.

From the original

While I highly suggest you take a couple of minutes to read Anthony’s post, as a recap, or if you don’t have time, he posits there are four main factors to a “good” ink bottle:

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