Happy Diamine Inkvent December and Day 1!

You’ve read in a previous post that I was able to get my hands on the Diamine Inkvent 2021 Calendar and I was anxiously waiting to bust open the bottles of ink. Well today is the first day of December and it’s only appropriate for me to share with you my first swatch (out of 25 colors). This will be a first for me as I will be posting an ink color each day until the 25th of December.

The front of my Inkvent Calendar box shows the numbers (1-25) and the perforated outlines representing the individual doors with the tiny bottles of ink behind them.

Here’s the back of the box.

I did open the top of the box and pulled out the plastic tray that holds the bottles of ink. Oooops! Two tiny bottles jumped out and landed on my desk. Uh-oh! I quickly figured out which day they belonged to and placed them in the tray. Box is now closed. Lesson learned. Must not open the box again. 🤣

Inkvent Day #1: Seize the Night

It’s not easy to open each door. I used the blade of my scissors to carefully “trace” the outline of the door and used my Cricut weeding tool to pull the door open.

Here is the bottle of ink behind Door #1. Can you hear me squealing with delight?

For those of you who are not partaking in the Inkvent calendar, I wanted to show the size of this tiny bottle (12 ml) in comparison to a bottle of Robert Oster ink (50 ml).

It took some effort to remove the plastic wrap from the tiny plastic bottle. Each bottle is labeled with the ink name in the front and on the side it shows the ink’s type. For Seize the Night, they called this a standard ink.

Here is a picture of my swatch samples and writing sample.

At first, the ink looks like an average brown/bronze ink. Until, I look at the ink from my swatch card at an angle. Do you see it? This ink appears to have a “vintage brass-like” sheen.

My writing sample showed very little specs of sheen.

Here’s a close up of my swatch card.

This ink color is hard to photograph. Especially with my writing sample. Is this a purple ink? Or a brown-bronze ink? When I added water to the ink swatch a reddish purple color appeared on my swatch card. It then dried to a purple hue. Yes, I was scratching my head on this one. I set my card aside to let it dry and did not see the color had changed.

I’ve changed my mind on this ink color. I would say this is a purple ink ~~bronze ink with purple undertones and~~ with a bit of vintage brass sheen. The more I write with this ink, the more I see a dark purple ink color on my paper.

Here’s my quick pen & ink sketch on mixed media paper: