#swatchwednesday — Public Fediverse posts

Swatch Wednesday: Diamine Sepia

Last of the set of three inks I bought to celebrate a writing accomplishment! This one is Diamine Sepia, and it looks more or less as I’d expect given the name.

Diamine Sepia fountain ink bottle and swatch. It’s a sepia brown/orange coloured ink as one might expect from the name.

This one has a bit of shading in my swatch, which initially made me worry that it might be close to Ginger Chicken but it absolutely isn’t:

Four ink swatches: Diamine Salted Carmel (from inkvent 2024), Diamine Sepia, Dominant Industry Ginger Chicken, and Diamine Rose Marie (from inkvent 2025)

Salted Caramel is more brown and has shimmer.  Marie Rose is a bit brighter but very similar.  Ginger chicken is considerably more red and darker, so much so in the swatches that I wondered why I’d thought them similar until I compared writing samples done with regular fountain pens (my most recent swatches are done with a somewhat wet fude dip pen) and while they’re still clearly different they do look closer when run through a regular fountain pen feed.

If it hadn’t been in a 3-pack, I probably wouldn’t have gotten Sepia since I already have a bottle of Marie Rose.  But the inkvent bottles are tiny and I liked Marie Rose a lot more than I expected and Sepia fits well with some sticker sheets I have, so I’m not sad to have gotten it!

And just for fun, here’s my 3 pack of ink together:

Three fountain pen inks from Diamine with swatches. From left to right the inks are named Sepia, Red Dragon, and Cool Green.

Swatch Wednesday: Diamine Sepia

Last of the set of three inks I bought to celebrate a writing accomplishment! This one is Diamine Sepia, and it looks more or less as I’d expect given the name.

Diamine Sepia fountain ink bottle and swatch. It’s a sepia brown/orange coloured ink as one might expect from the name.

This one has a bit of shading in my swatch, which initially made me worry that it might be close to Ginger Chicken but it absolutely isn’t:

Four ink swatches: Diamine Salted Carmel (from inkvent 2024), Diamine Sepia, Dominant Industry Ginger Chicken, and Diamine Rose Marie (from inkvent 2025)

Salted Caramel is more brown and has shimmer.  Marie Rose is a bit brighter but very similar.  Ginger chicken is considerably more red and darker, so much so in the swatches that I wondered why I’d thought them similar until I compared writing samples done with regular fountain pens (my most recent swatches are done with a somewhat wet fude dip pen) and while they’re still clearly different they do look closer when run through a regular fountain pen feed.

If it hadn’t been in a 3-pack, I probably wouldn’t have gotten Sepia since I already have a bottle of Marie Rose.  But the inkvent bottles are tiny and I liked Marie Rose a lot more than I expected and Sepia fits well with some sticker sheets I have, so I’m not sad to have gotten it!

And just for fun, here’s my 3 pack of ink together:

Three fountain pen inks from Diamine with swatches. From left to right the inks are named Sepia, Red Dragon, and Cool Green.

Swatch Wednesday: Diamine Sepia

Last of the set of three inks I bought to celebrate a writing accomplishment! This one is Diamine Sepia, and it looks more or less as I’d expect given the name.

Diamine Sepia fountain ink bottle and swatch. It’s a sepia brown/orange coloured ink as one might expect from the name.

This one has a bit of shading in my swatch, which initially made me worry that it might be close to Ginger Chicken but it absolutely isn’t:

Four ink swatches: Diamine Salted Carmel (from inkvent 2024), Diamine Sepia, Dominant Industry Ginger Chicken, and Diamine Rose Marie (from inkvent 2025)

Salted Caramel is more brown and has shimmer.  Marie Rose is a bit brighter but very similar.  Ginger chicken is considerably more red and darker, so much so in the swatches that I wondered why I’d thought them similar until I compared writing samples done with regular fountain pens (my most recent swatches are done with a somewhat wet fude dip pen) and while they’re still clearly different they do look closer when run through a regular fountain pen feed.

If it hadn’t been in a 3-pack, I probably wouldn’t have gotten Sepia since I already have a bottle of Marie Rose.  But the inkvent bottles are tiny and I liked Marie Rose a lot more than I expected and Sepia fits well with some sticker sheets I have, so I’m not sad to have gotten it!

And just for fun, here’s my 3 pack of ink together:

Three fountain pen inks from Diamine with swatches. From left to right the inks are named Sepia, Red Dragon, and Cool Green.

Swatch Wednesday: Diamine Sepia

Last of the set of three inks I bought to celebrate a writing accomplishment! This one is Diamine Sepia, and it looks more or less as I’d expect given the name.

Diamine Sepia fountain ink bottle and swatch. It’s a sepia brown/orange coloured ink as one might expect from the name.

This one has a bit of shading in my swatch, which initially made me worry that it might be close to Ginger Chicken but it absolutely isn’t:

Four ink swatches: Diamine Salted Carmel (from inkvent 2024), Diamine Sepia, Dominant Industry Ginger Chicken, and Diamine Rose Marie (from inkvent 2025)

Salted Caramel is more brown and has shimmer.  Marie Rose is a bit brighter but very similar.  Ginger chicken is considerably more red and darker, so much so in the swatches that I wondered why I’d thought them similar until I compared writing samples done with regular fountain pens (my most recent swatches are done with a somewhat wet fude dip pen) and while they’re still clearly different they do look closer when run through a regular fountain pen feed.

If it hadn’t been in a 3-pack, I probably wouldn’t have gotten Sepia since I already have a bottle of Marie Rose.  But the inkvent bottles are tiny and I liked Marie Rose a lot more than I expected and Sepia fits well with some sticker sheets I have, so I’m not sad to have gotten it!

And just for fun, here’s my 3 pack of ink together:

Three fountain pen inks from Diamine with swatches. From left to right the inks are named Sepia, Red Dragon, and Cool Green.

Swatch Wednesday: Diamine Sepia

Last of the set of three inks I bought to celebrate a writing accomplishment! This one is Diamine Sepia, and it looks more or less as I’d expect given the name.

Diamine Sepia fountain ink bottle and swatch. It’s a sepia brown/orange coloured ink as one might expect from the name.

This one has a bit of shading in my swatch, which initially made me worry that it might be close to Ginger Chicken but it absolutely isn’t:

Four ink swatches: Diamine Salted Carmel (from inkvent 2024), Diamine Sepia, Dominant Industry Ginger Chicken, and Diamine Rose Marie (from inkvent 2025)

Salted Caramel is more brown and has shimmer.  Marie Rose is a bit brighter but very similar.  Ginger chicken is considerably more red and darker, so much so in the swatches that I wondered why I’d thought them similar until I compared writing samples done with regular fountain pens (my most recent swatches are done with a somewhat wet fude dip pen) and while they’re still clearly different they do look closer when run through a regular fountain pen feed.

If it hadn’t been in a 3-pack, I probably wouldn’t have gotten Sepia since I already have a bottle of Marie Rose.  But the inkvent bottles are tiny and I liked Marie Rose a lot more than I expected and Sepia fits well with some sticker sheets I have, so I’m not sad to have gotten it!

And just for fun, here’s my 3 pack of ink together:

Three fountain pen inks from Diamine with swatches. From left to right the inks are named Sepia, Red Dragon, and Cool Green.

Swatch Wednesday: Diamine Red Dragon

• This is the second ink out of a set of three I bought to celebrate finishing a longer piece of fiction writing,  This is the colour of the three that I really wanted.  I love red inks, probably a bit of a holdover when I did more editing and marking by hand.  When I was relatively new to the PhD one of my collaborators used to hand papers back with practically every other word crossed out and you’d think that would make me more sensitive to seeing red ink but he was so darned good at it that as a former editor myself I just had to stand there in awe of how absurdly good he was at condensing text so we could fit in more science to a 7 page limit. So it’s definitely more fond memory than grad school trauma!

Diamine Red Dragon fountain pen ink bottle and swatch.

Similar to Blush (not pictured but basically a shade lighter), I felt like Red Dragon reminded me of blood while I was dong the larger swatches because it has a tendency to look a bit brown at the edge until it dries.  I don’t really notice the effect as much when writing with the dip pen, though.

A lot of the red inks that people recommend on top 10 ink lists are darker.  Colours that are lovely, but they wouldn’t stand out against black text the way I want a red to work because of the editing connection.  So I’ve been slowly collecting brighter red inks.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ones closest to this one are other Diamine ones.

A set of fountain pen ink swatches photographed together for comparison. On the top row is Diamine Red Lustre and Diamine Writer’s blood. In the centre is Diamine Red Dragon. At the bottom is Diamine Carousel and Pilot Iroshizuku Momiji.

• Red Lustre has shimmer and has given me no end of headaches in pens so I’ll be glad when the sample is done because I think I’m down to only being able to use it in my Pelikan since it clogged in every other pen I tried to use.  Red dragon looks pretty similar to Red Lustre but without the shimmer, and it may actually the same base?
• Writer’s blood is beautiful but it’s just not an editing red. That is, it’s too dark to stand out enough against black printed text. Which makes it lovely for the way I actually use it but it doesn’t scratch the red ink itch right for me.
• Carousel from inkvent has a shiny almost lacquered vibe that I love, but it’s a pigment ink so I’m a little more reluctant to use it in all of my regular writers. It may wind up in my red Preppy when I run out of what’s in the cartridge, probably 3 years from now at my current rate. I didn’t bother to swatch the Preppy cartridge but it’s brighter.
• Momiji is just outright more pink and I love it but I don’t even really think of it as a red because it’s so pink.

Red Dragon is a nice no-nonsense red that works consistently and while it’s still maybe is still a touch darker than the perfect editing red in my mind, it should be lovely for journal writing which is how I’m actually going to use it.  And generally speaking Diamine inks are on the inexpensive side of things: I paid less than CAD $10 for 30ml before taxes.  Will this be the last red ink I ever buy?  Probably not.  I still think it would be fun to have one that was a touch brighter or one that had a bit more shading.  But I like it a lot and since the idea was to treat myself for a writing accomplishment, I’m happy to have something that gives me more of an “editing red” vibe than a “goth vampire writing” vibe (sorry Writer’s Blood).  Will I ever go back to editing on paper?  Likely not.  But apparently I’m never going to stop loving red ink.

Swatch Wednesday: Colorverse Black Hole

This was a gift from a friend who said it was more for the fun little bottle than anything exciting about the ink.  It’s a pretty cute little bottle and I didn’t have one since I think the only colorverse ink I have is a sample.

Colorverse Black Hole ink bottle, which has an unusual teardrop shaped base. This is the front view showing the bit sticking out on one side. The illustration has a stylized black hole and a little planet saying “SOS” on it.

Love that little picture on the front.  The bottle has a teardrop shaped base which I guess makes it a bit less likely to tip over and mostly just makes it interesting.

Colorverse Black Hole ink bottle, which has an unusual teardrop shaped base. This is thebottom view showing the teardrop shape, though it sits nice and flat because of the flat label on the front.

Inside, the ink is as one expects, a pleasant black.  There’s a tiny bit of sheen visible in the swatch on the right, and indeed I can see that in my writing occasionally if I look at it under a sufficiently bright light, but it’s more a cute coincidence than a regular feature of the ink on the paper I’m using.  Might be fun to try it on the iroful paper to see if it happens more consistently there; my current notebook is a leuchtterm.

My swatch card for Colorverse Black Hole, a black ink with a tiny hint of sheen in the bigger swatches.

I’m not too worried about getting the sheen to show up more, though, since the only other black ink bottle I have is a black with sheen from Inkvent Black (uuuh, Good Tidings I think it was called?).  I’m guessing that Black Hole dries quicker, though I didn’t actually test that.  I did, however, have some fun painting with it in the margins of my journal.

Some margin patterns in my notebook using Colorverse Black Hole ink on a paintbrush. One side has curly vine-like shapes, the other a geometric zig-zag with partial triangles.

Fun bottle and a nice practical ink.  Overall a very nice present!  And I think this is the last ink bottle or sample I had that I hadn’t swatched in my collection, so I’m all caught up and there’s no ink purchases on my horizon until the weather warms up, and maybe not even then — I’ve got so much to play with now!

#SwatchWednesday #FountainPens #InkSwatch this is Salted Caramel from the #Inkvent 2024 calendar. Swatch with a glass dip pen & zebra G nib dip pen & brush. This is a rival for Edel. Golden Beryl but is more ochre. It’s very dry but gorgeous. It has a synesthesia-vibe of writing with gilded, burnt sugar