SusieG Studio

Yes. I’ve come across another ink that took my breath away. And it’s not from Robert Oster. It’s from Colorverse Ink and it’s called Horsehead Nebula. It’s a beautiful glistening ink with multi-colored shimmers.

I came across this ink during the DC pen show this past August. You might remember I was collecting bottles of inks that were either on my wish list or caught my eye. This one caught my eye.

As you can see, we are almost at the end of October and I’m finally getting around to trying out this lovely ink. There are times when I have bottles of ink lined up on my studio desk. In a queue. Waiting for me to fill a pen. That’s how I work. I enjoy spending quality time with my inks.

So you can imagine when I was gazing at my swatch card and focusing on the sparkles when my gut instinct told me to fill a pen. Perfect timing as I had just cleaned a few pens earlier in the week.

I picked the perfect pen to use with this ink.

This beautiful magenta-like color is gorgeous. This inky color reminds me of raspberries. Am I right?

I swapped out the regular medium nib that came with my pen and replaced it with one I purchased from Kirk Spears of Pen Realm. He had engraved special 2025 DC pen show nibs and I had to have it with the cherry blossoms. BTW. This medium nib writes buttery smooth.

The multi-colored sparkles are subtle. When I pull out the color with my water brush, the sparkles float along the paper. I love this bold raspberry color and the lighter pinky color it shows when water is applied. Can you envision seeing a pen & ink wash sketch of a rose?

Here’s a close up of my writing sample. There’s a lot of “shading” going on as well as the sparkles. Yes, this ink has quite a bit of personality.

I already knew I had another similar raspberry color in my inky stash. Persian Princess is very close, but has golden shimmers.

Here’s an angled shot of the two swatch cards together.

I’ve been writing a lot in my journal with this ink. I love moving my paper around to see all the multi-colored sparkles look back at me.

After letting my pen sit for a while, I do get a burst of sparkles in the first few words that I write and the sparkles seem to taper off a bit. The sparkles are subtle, but appear in every word I write.

Though I enjoy seeing different underlying colors appear when I apply water, I don’t mind that this base color is a true pink. I can’t wait to create a pen & ink sketch.

I purchased this ink from Frank at Federalist Pens & Paper during the DC pen show.

Ink: Colorverse Ink Horsehead Nebula (glistening series)

Pen: Zodiac Pen Co Cancer model in PM5

Nib: Kirk Speer of Pen Realm special 2025 DC pen show Medium nib. Click on the link to see his other 2025 pen show nibs.