Inky goodness: J. Herbin 1670 Caroube de Chypre

Not a pens and ink post this week, but a focus on just the ink this Wednesday! A little while ago Mishka from Bureau Direct kindly sent me a sample vial of the coming ink in the anniversary line of J. Herbin 1670 Caroube De Chypre, which is due for release on Bastille Day, July 14th. So I'm lucky that I got a sample to try it before the release date and I finally had the time to play around with the shimmery ink a little and showing you some results today. Thanks so much again, Mishka!

J. Herbin Caroube de Chypre on with a waterman 12 Ideal nib #2 on Muji dot grid notebook paper. The ink performs well on smooth and fountain pen friendly ink paper like the above. I dipped my pen in the vial to write and then added some splatters. There is a lot of shimmery action going on there, which I really like. And the deep chocolate brown base color shows off the gold shimmer well.

I used my Pelikan 200 Cognac with a M italic ground nib for more writing and testing in my written meditation journal. The ink holds up pretty well on Clairefontaine paper as well. But sadly the shimmer doesn't show through as much as with dipping the pen in the ink vial and writing with it. It showed some shimmer the first few lines when I wrote with it.

As you can see in the above picture the first few sentences has the gold shimmer, but later on there is little shimmer. I had to shake the pen a few time to get some of the shimmer flowing into the writing again. And it does pick up a little, but not a lot.

You can see that my pelikan does hold a lot of shimmer in the barrel, so it might be that the combo of this pen and ink doesn't allow the shimmer to shine though like it deserves. The feed doesn't have a lot of shimmer on it and I think herein lies the problem.

For the shimmer to really shine though, I think you need a pen with less fins in the feed, like a vintage pen with a smooth feed or a really wet writing pen. I discovered that too with the diamine shimmering inks, though those inks have a lot more shimmer in them than the J. Herbin 1670 series.  I'll be experimenting with this ink in other pens when I get the chance (ie when I get a full bottle, my sample is nearly depleted). But for now I also wanted to show you some ink wash artwork I did. 

I stamped the dip pen stamp from Viva Las Vegas Stamps with versamark ink on smooth white glossy paper and embossed it with clear embossing powder. Then I wrote Caroube de Chypre, J. Herbin 1670 with a versamark embossing pen and embossed that with clear embossing too. I took a small paint brush and a little bit of water and started to wash the ink from top to bottom over the embossed parts. 

The embossed parts work as a resist, so the image shows up through clearly and you can wipe excess drops of ink on the embossed parts away. When the image was dry I took my brush, dipped it in the water a bit and spattered over it. I let that dry and then I dipped the brush in the ink vial and spattered non diluted ink over it.

This is the end result, a beautiful chocolate brown shimmery gold speckled ink wash! I'm going to do some experimentation on watercolor paper like I did with the Diamine shimmery inks, but I definitely love the smooth glossy look this paper has. I'm also loving this embossing ink resist technique a lot and will incorporate them more in inky goodness posts :) 

More reviews with lush pictures on Caroube de Chypre can be found at The Clumsypenman and Gourmetpens. And if you do not want to miss out on this ink when this gets released in July, why not subscribe yourself to Stationery Wednesday newsletter and blog from Bureau Direct for more info and a 10% discount code being distributed weekly!

Disclaimer: this sample was sent to me free of charge for review purposes. All opinions are my own and there are no affiliate links. 

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

namasté