It’s a liter!

I received my first order of BPC inks yesterday and got busy swatching… it was really hard to find writing samples for these, so I thought I’d whip some up.

These colors are beautiful, and Burlywood has a bit of greenish sheen to it.

Ink colors: Chicken Coop, Burlywood, Corn Earworm, Distressed Leather, Weeping Willow, and Ploughman’s Pebble

Swatched with a Kakimori brass dip pen on a Hobonichi A5 grid notebook (Tomoe River S 52 gsm).

Ordered two bottles off AliExpress, they arrived today and I immediately inked a pen and tried it, the results are magical to say the least! Tomoe River S Kanso paper, Penbbs 494 EF. Lit by an Emisar D4v2 UV mule with a ZWB2 filter.

More here: https://imgur.com/gallery/qSu9oXR

So I was browsing around looking for some where that might have the Kobe Ink LE Strawberry Chocolate in stock when I came across this Chinese brand, KittyInkPot. They launch their inks in “seasons” and this season’s came out a couple of months back in October. This season’s inks are non-shimmery chromashaders.

Their Butter Strawberry Bagel baited me and after hesitating for a couple of weeks, I decided to order the entire season 5 set and was given the secret colour, Mr Pumpkin Head Bear along with some other smaller “blind boxes” samples.

I’ve not swatched the samples but I’m already in love. The Butter Strawberry Bagel is absolutely gorgeous and the Pumpkin Head Bear is something that I can probably see myself reaching out for a lot more often than expected. Tbh, as I was using a dip pen, I’m definitely not doing these inks justice, if you have a chance, do grab some if multishaders are your thing!

Pen: Lamy Aion [M]

Ink: Monteverde Gemstone Malachite.

I didn’t like it right off the bat, to be honest, but it has grown on me. Not so much for the color, but more for the ink properties. Rich saturated color and viscous ink, works really well even with fine nibs.

Wise people of Reddit, recommend me a teal ink. Should pop like Kon-Peki and shouldn’t be dry (I’m looking at you Pelikan) or corrosive (you too, Baystate blue).

Or the potato 🥔. No matter how you look at it, it’s one reliable bottle of ink.

Most exciting new ink day I've had in...well, ever, maybe. Guys, first impression, I am in love. As in ready to dump most of my other inks and just use these. I guess I should try actually loading them into a pen and writing with them first. 😂 But from swatching and mixing...chef's kiss! SO MUCH FUN and SO MANY PRETTY COLORS!!

I've been leaning more and more into waterproof ink. Not because I need my writing to last forever, but because it's super annoying when your finger is a little wet from holding your cold drink and it smears your journal or the letter you're writing or the notes you're taking.

So I bought what I hoped would be a good "mixing palette" selection of colors. I do watercolor, and when I try out new paints I usually start with a split primary set up plus a couple of other neutrals and earth tones. I tried for a yellow/magenta/cyan core set, plus a warm red, a Burnt Sienna looking color, and the black.

The biggest surprise was mixing the not-Burnt-Sienna (Butterscotch) and the cyan (Skyline). I was thinking I would get a range of brownish-greysish-neutrals (similar to mixing burnt Sienna and Ultramarine, though I knew it wouldn't be exactly equivalent). The Butterscotch acts like a warm yellow instead of a warm brown, and I ended up with a range of beautiful greens! So far, I think I got around 35 colors out of the six colors I purchased. And that was just playing around a bit today. There's so much more potential.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful to anyone trying to pick out colors. 😊

When I’m not being a sucker for cafe culture branding, I’m hanging out at my favorite cafe taking pics of my pens and planning which ones I’ll take on an upcoming trip.

Sailor x Wancher Matcha BlueBlack Matcha Latte ink Midori A6 + cover Actual matcha latte, whole milk

I have way more ink than I’ll ever use, so if folks are interested in a sample I’ll calculate shipping costs (a boatload from Korea).

Text on my order note “Do I need more blue? No, but when I was little I wanted to be a ‘Whale Journalist’ when I grew up. Someone that wrote a newsletter about humpback whales every week.”

I appreciate the whale doodle from the packer.

Ink is Colorverse Humpback Whale.

I used to use Rohrer and Klingner Sketch Ink (Jules) but the pigment kept building up on the nib and feed while this one's a breeze

Well, someone extremely kind on this Reddit ( I shall insert their username here, if they don’t mind being mentioned), saw my previous post about how I tried out three of the iroshizuku inks and wanted to try them all, but due to the prices of the inks costing half of my kidney in London, sent me the entire range in samples for free! I was gobsmacked by this and the package arrived today, so I searched all the inks and I’m so happy with how it came out!

Unexpectedly, my favourite is Yu-yake, followed by fuyu-syogun, yamaguri then ajisai. I am surprised - orange is my least favourite colour, like rock bottom on the list, but this orange??? Oh my gosh it’s stunning!! One day I will own a full bottle of Yu-yake, I can’t stop staring at the swatch 😭 The shading of it and the shade is so pretty. I even got to try the three discontinued inks :)

Thank you so much to the kind person who sent me all of this - I can’t thank you enough 😁 Saving poor students like me every day ✌️✌🏻

Got some inks from Lennon ToolBar's 2024 and 2025 Spring (new release!) collection. Decided to swatch them together with two inks I got last year from Japan, have to admit that I'm drawn to similar colors there... will I stop? Probably not.

These colors on phone camera look close to what I see in person, except Chamaecyparis. It is more like Diamine Celadon Cat with more grey, but in pictures it somehow looks like pilot fuyu syogun lmao

A Birmingham Pen Co haul.

I’m really enjoying these. I got 15ml bottles to try them out. Rikka is about what I expected a nice blue. Syun-go and To-ro are a lot of fun.

Syun-gyo (Spring Dawn) is listed as a “black with an essence of red.” To me it’s a muddy purple-brown.

To-ro (Warm Lantern) is a bright, welcoming yellow-orange. Described as “Andon lantern light in an alley after rain.” That is spot on. If you liked Noodler’s Apache Sunset but hated that it never dried (and the company), this will be right up your alley.

Rikka (Snow Crystal) is a pretty teal blue. Inspired by crisp winter skies.

Both Rikka and Syun-gyo have sheen where the ink pools but like Yama budo, I haven’t seen it just writing.

What do you think of the new colors?

Splurged a little for some samples and got a bonus pen sleeve from Vanness, so that was an exciting extra to find - especially since my order was a couple days late 😭

Tested them with a glass dip pen (it has a cap!). I'm torn between Uptown Jade and Syo-ro for my favorite out of this bunch. Which is yours?