Mailart Sunday: Having some fun with diamine shimmeritastic inks!

In my last post I showed you the writing examples with Diamine Shimmertastic ink samples, Mishka from Bureau Direct so graciously provided and today I wanted to show you some mail art I made with the remaining drops that were in the sample vials. No drop was wasted! [This post is going to be image heavy]

I started off with making my base back grounds first. I drizzled some drops with a pipette and tapped the inks strait from the vials on the page and sprayed water all over the pages with a mini mister, so that the colors would blend over. Then I dried the pages with my heat tool.

It's important that you use good absorbent yet sturdy (watercolor)paper for this. The paper I used is the Maruman Zuan B5 sketchbook which I got at my recent Pen Store haul. It's 126.5 grams of great quality water color paper and with the inks and water spillage I have doled out, it hold up pretty well! No bleed through on the other side as you can see above (the smudges on the right side is from excess water that pooled over) And warping of the page after drying is minimal.

When the sheets were properly dry, I added some more shimmery ink drops on them by using a syringe to create random spatter patterns. I also diluted the ink a little bit in the ink vial to get more 'mileage' out of the last few drops. This way you also create some color variation, a light ombre in the color scheme. When I was satisfied with the amount of droplets, I dried the pages with my heat tool again. This time, when dried completely as shown in the picture above, the added drops are much brighter and the shimmer is more pronounced. Now to turn these pieces into mail art!

I took 2 of the background pieces I liked most and stamped Joy Crafts Old Letter Rose 2 and Old Letter Butterfly (by Noor design) on them. By this time I had run out of Shimmering inks but a good friend of mine gave me a full set of these in sample bottles so I could play with them more.  I colored some accents in the rubber stamp image, like the rose, butterfly, postage stamp etc. by using a pentel color water brush to make the image pop out more.

I used blue lightning to accentuate pieces in the rubber stamp, wings of the butterfly, postcard header, cancellation stamps and the postage stamp.

With the rose I used red luster to accentuate the petals of the rose a edges of the leafs and corners of the 'post card' header. I also diluted the Magic Forest color in the leafs to accentuate that part more.

I also used the water color brush to create depth in the Rose petals. Make sure you use a water proof rubber stamp ink, I used memento rich cacao and tuxedo black, because your image can wash away if you don't. You can stamp over the dried image again to give the image its crispness back.

A couple of close ups of the pieces so you can see the shimmering accent better.

The last step was to glue the pages to card stock and I rounded off the corners with a punch.

And there you have it! I hope this inspired you to mess around with shimmery inks and rubber stamped images too :) And in the end your fingers will probably look like this

And you will find glitter EVERYWHERE! But that is part of the fun ;)

Thanks for stopping by!

Namaste

Inky Goodness: Diamine Shimmering Inks

Due to the generosity of Mishka from Bureau Direct, I received a few samples of the new Diamine shimmering inks in samples to try out. And wow, these are really great inks! I had the chance to pick colors I like and I picked the above ones. FYI: all the samples have been written with a vintage Waterman 12 and flexible Ideal #2 nib on Muji dotted notebook paper which is similar to Midori MD paper.

Purple Pazzazz is a lovely deep violet color with a golden shimmer to it. The ink color reminds me a bit of Montblanc's lavender purple (old formula) that also had a hint of gold sheen to it when the inks pools up. I had a bit of trouble getting this color washed out of the feed of my pen, because the color is so rich and saturated. But eventually it does washes out completely.

Blue Lightning is the one I was so excited to try out! Turquoise and a silver shimmer?! Well the ink gods (aka Diamine) have been very good to me with producing this one! I developed an instant crush! I do wonder what base color diamine chose for this though, since it has similarities to Montblanc's Honoré de Balzac Dandy Turquoise... but that one has more red sheen to it.

Golden Sands is definitely the underdog in the line up, but I think this one will appeal to many. It does remind me of beautiful desert in like Dubai or something... Gorgeous golden brown color with a golden shimmer. This ink also shades really well and I love how it looks in italic nibs like I have in my Pelikan M205 congac.

The shading and shimmer pool together really well.

 

Magical forest... I gotta hand it to Diamine, they sure know how to name their inks! This one is very aptly named as well. This was a surprise ink thrown in by Mishka and I was very pleasantly surprised! A gorgeous shade of emerald and the shimmer in there is also green. A very pretty pearly combination. This would look good in my TWSBI Diamond 580 green edition with 1.1 nib... oh yeah!

So I will definitely get some bottles of these and am very curious how the other colors look IRL. If you want to see a more in depth review of these inks, check out Gourmetpens review on these! Also if you are feeling bold, Leigh Reyes has made an excellent post on how to Shimmerfy your own inks!

I have made some mail art with the ink samples I received and in the next Mailart Sunday post, I will show you  how those turned out. 

Thanks for stopping by!

namaste

Paper Goods: Maruman Mnemosyne Word Cards

Last week I got ill with a really unpleasant flue type thing and was stuck at home for a good while. So I thought I'd spend my time doing what I like to do best, organizing and cataloging stuff. Yeah it was almost like being at work ;) I wanted to make a better and more comprehensive chart of all the inks I have in samples and bottles. The color chart wheels I made with Le Typographe ticket books are fun, but limited to the set of pages in those booklets. When I heard about the Mnemosyne Word Cards on the Goulet Q and A while back, I knew these would be perfect for what I had in mind.

This was my set up: In front of the telly, while watching some Graham Norton episodes on you tube... And then it was swabbing time! 

The cards hold up ink really well, great drying time, no bleed through and minimal feathering!

Q-tips are great for swabs, and I made sure I hit the edges of the cards and used a vintage semi flex pen, by Onoto de La Rue to dip and write the brand and ink name.

The booklet has 100 sheets with 156 grams of water color like paper. Because there is no bleed through, you can also opt to use the back of the cards. I will use it to write information on the type of ink on (ie if I have just tried a sample or a bottle) 
And three ink sample trays in, I already filled one of these booklets! I am currently busy with booklet number 2 and the sad news is that I heard these word cards are being discontinued, so I stacked up on them to make sure I can still use them for future swabs.

Hope this gave you some idea's on how to make your own ink swabs.

Thanks for stopping by!

namaste

Mailart Sunday: Swap Bot 10th year anniversary swap

In one of my previous posts I talked about the 10 year anniversary Swap that was being hosted at Swap bot. And I wanted to share with you what I sent to my partner for this swap. I ended up using different kinds of fountain pen ink in the SB color scheme (blues and oranges) and just random dripping it on water color postcard paper. There is a bit of shimmer on there too, courtesy of Emerald of Chivor ink (and if you are interested in having a laugh, see this and this picture on my instagram on how I was totally frazzled and could not identify this ink due to a missing label ;) Other inks on the postcard are sheaffer pacock blue, diamine blue lightning, diamine autumn oak, sailor jentle apricot and a bit of mont blanc oyster grey.  I used inks from my ink sample vials and in some aria's you can see the imprint it left. After the 'dripping' I sprayed water all over it with a mini mister, then dried it with my heat gun. Used my fave typography stamps for the 'Ten years of happy mail!' sentiment with Staz On ink and colored the letters with Sailor Jentle Apricot, which I have inked my Twsbi Amber 540 with. 

It was fun doing this Pollock - Inking postcard as I like to call it and definitely doing more of those :)

Thanks for stopping by!

namaste

Paper goodness!

A little while back Misc Store Amsterdam announced they had a sample sale and of course I had no chance of resisting, even though it was straight after the pen show and I was sort of cash depleted. I am glad I went because they had so many wonderful paper goodies for sale (and even some ink too!) So I came home with a stack of Midori notebooks and Le Typographe stationery to try!

From left to right: maruman eco spiral notebook, Midori MD notebooks regular and light, 2 types of le Typographe letterpads, notebook and envelopes, and yes those are alpaca's post it's on the top right :) 

The Maruman Mnemosyne goods I got at a different source, the pen store nl, and I read that it's close to midori and tomoe river paper. Also not pictured on the pile though, I bought the Mnemosyme word cards  as they are awesome for ink swabs and I just had to try that out.

Fist impressions on the Maruman paper is that it is definitely nice and smooth, holds fountain pen ink well, and is very pleasant to write on. Also quite affordable. The blue eco B5 7mm ruling note book for instance is 1,50€ for 30 sheets (on sale at this time). Also the small sketch book is awesome for mail art endeavors with fountain pen inks! This water color paper hold up ink quite well. I have been doing some ink-speriments on them and I can't wait to show you :)

I will post my findings on the paper goods when get the chance to I test them more and compare them to each other. 

I am curious though, Have you tried any of these brands?

What is your fave brand of paper to use?

Thanks for stopping by!

namaste

Thriftfinds Thursdays: The Tilburg Penshow edition

My weekend activities were cut a bit short due to feeling under the weather, though I could not miss out on the yearly event that is the Tilburg penshow on saturday. It was the 27th pen show and it's been a bit obscure as it has practically no online presence, but the show was amazing none the less! Met some great pen people and an amazing seller whom has a nick-name of 'the one-man pen show' and I've found some sweet vintage fountain pen beauties there (they also sold a lot of newer fountain pens, but I go to these shows to find some older gems!) My wallet was hurting at the end of it, but it was a great day!

First an impression of the show:

The show was held at the Natuurmuseum in Tilburg. There were two rooms in which the vendors placed their goods for sale and I think there were about 30 vendors in total. We arrived right on time though, but still a lot of pens to look at during these 5 hours the show was open.

A new vendor to the show was Sarj Minhas and honestly there were so many good pens there it took a great portion of my time just staring at them!

La Couronne du Comte stand looked impeccable as always and they also have their own store front in Tilburg to which we went to after the show ended.

I did not have a list of things I wanted to buy and I figured I would know what I wanted when I see it. And boy I did see a lot of beauties, but I went home with 'only' 3 pens and 1 ink bottle (well technically two as I bought one later at Couronne du Comte...)

And these are the 3 pens:

My tilburg penshow spoils Omas Paragon with BB Mottishaw stubbed, Omas Extra Lucens with flexible Omas Extra Stub and Waterman England with 2A Flexible stub.

Writing samples are below:

I bought this pen at Sarj Minhas's stand for a really good deal! I love stubs and this is just a beauty of an Omas older paragon and fallen in love with it ever since I saw and wrote with Azizah's Omas Paragon which had a semi-flex nib. And steel blue is the ink I bought at Couronne later on. It's such a beautiful petrol color!

This is the Omas Extra Lucens from around 1937, which I got from Tom Westerich, a vaccuum power filler that needed a bit of silicone grease and TLC to work! This nib is such a gorgeous wet writer! Still needs a bit of work like heat setting the nib and feed properly because it has some start up issues, but wow, the Omas Extra nib just glides over the paper.

And this was a lucky grab on a 'needs repair/sold for parts' table. The only thing that needs work is the threads in the cap. But everything else just works great! There was even a sack in there so it was ready to write! And man, that stub nib is really stunning!

Last but not least, the unicorn find of the day:

Parker Penman Sapphire ink! And half full! For under 10€!! It was tucked away at a far corner of someone who sold a lot of older ink bottles and I couldn't believe my luck when I spotted it! I can't wait to test this in a pen!

We left for home satisfied and happy and I am already wondering what next year will be like at the penshow :) And I am curious: What was your greatest find at a pen show? 

Thanks for stopping by! 

namaste