Searching for a better Diamine Spiced Apple
Last year’s Diamine Inkvent had a nice ink, sort of a candy apple red with bright gold shimmer, called Spiced Apple.
I really wanted to love it, especially since I had yet to find many red inks that I truly liked. But it also has a gold/brown sheen to it that ultimately makes the ink look “poopy”, ruining the nice base color. I write small, and don’t really like using broad nibs that might lay down enough of the base color to counteract the ugly sheen, so I could never really use this ink.
Prior to Inkvent starting this year, I got it in my head that I wanted to find a nice red ink with gold shimmer, appropriate for the holiday season. Vanness happened to have an ink sale for Black Friday, so I ordered several red inks with gold shimmer to see if I could find one that I actually liked. Happily, I think I succeeded in at least a couple cases.
Imagine more gold shimmer, well-layered on top of this lovely red. Dang flatbed scanners don’t do shimmer inks justice. Also imagine a brighter, slightly more saturated red; I was too lazy to post-process to get the scan up to snuff.
I’ll start with the winner and then talk about the runner-up. Dominant Industry Pearl Christmas Red is basically what I was looking for! It has a great, saturated, bright, yet deep red with virtually no sheen, and a decent smattering of gold shimmer that permeated the swatch and the writing sample. I’ve had trouble with Dominant Industry Pearl Sunset in the past, clogging several of the pens I tried it in and appearing too light in the writing, so I hope that doesn’t happen here. I have found some other pens since that seem to handle shimmers pretty well, so I’ll be trying the ink out in those pens. But finally! A red ink that I actually like! Amazing.
This swatch is not entirely accurate to the ink, but close enough. Without the post-processing I usually do, the red looks muted and slightly too brown here.
The first surprising runner-up is Wearingeul’s The Great Sage Heaven’s Equal. My immediate reaction as I was swatching the sample was revulsion because it looked a lot like the “bloody” swatches for other dark red inks that I did not like, especially since there is a noticeable brown tone to this red/burgundy color, which makes it look more like blood. However, as the ink dried, the colors mellowed out a little, and the shimmer came through more, the overall combo looked decent to me. The swatch has a richness that I didn’t expect. I haven’t used this in a pen yet, but I was quite surprised to my reaction to the swatch that I had to rank it as the runner-up.
The next inks aren’t bad, but two of them are too orange for what I’m looking for, and one of them lacks saturation.
Again, the red here is a bit muted thanks to scanning and lack of post-processing.
In reality, Diamine Shimmertastic Red Lustre looks similar to Dominant Industry Pearl Christmas Red, but it lacks saturation and depth, so it’s not quite to the level of red that I’m looking for. But I still like it enough that I’d use it.
Diamine Shimmertastic Firefly and Robert Oster Red Gold are too orangey for what I’m looking for, and Red Gold has a lot more golden shimmer, which is nice, but makes the ink look even more orangey.
I actually had a sample of Red Gold before, but my sample barely had any shimmer, so “Red Gold” didn’t sound appropriate to me. Now that I have a proper sample, the name makes sense. 😝 Anyway, these inks are nice, and I might use them, but they wouldn’t be on the priority list.
I’m glad this search for a specific kind of ink actually worked out this time. I also got several other ink samples that look really nice, so the purchase overall was a winner! I’ll post some of these latest ink swatches later.
