While I was in Houston, I grabbed the Little Craft Fest exclusive ink colors from Dominant Industry. The irony was that the first day of the show, they did not have swatches of the colors to show so I went back the second day and someone had swatched them. One of the bottles in clearly labelled on the box and the bottle as A Day in Arpril (yes, there’s a typo). I will refer to it by the misspelled name since that is what is printed on the bottle and the box. It may be listed elsewhere with the spelling corrected to A Day in April if you are searching for more information, FYI.
From a quick glance the inks: A Day in Arpril (sic) and A Field of Bluebonnets are remarkably similar. Bluebonnets appears to be the same color ink with shimmer and Arpril (sic) is just a shading blue lavender ink.
Both bottles are 25ml. Arpril (sic) is $17 per bottle and Bluebonnets in $20. To be honest, the bottle of Bluebonnets I got did not have much shimmer particles in it making the upcharge not worth it particularly. Also, buying both bottles seems unnecessary as the base ink color is the same.
When compared with other inks in my stash, I discovered I have a lot of inks in this family of mid-tone blue lavender shading inks. Clearly, its a color that appeals to me.
Pen BBS inks are hard to find these days and Bungbox/Bungubox inks are much more expensive so the Dominant Industry inks are a good alternative if you’ve been looking for a dupe for these other inks.
All these ink colors have a little multichromatic effect that causes the colors to range between the bluer violet tones to the more pinky colors depending on paper, saturation and nib size. If you own any of these other colors, it might not be necessary to purchase the LCF 2025 edition inks. But if you don’t have any inks in this family, the price is right for the Dominant Industry versions.
Despite the typo on the bottle, I would recommend the A Day in Arpril from this limited edition release. There is just not enough sparkle in the Bluebonnets to make it worthwhile (YMMV).
Tools:
- Paper: Odyssey Notebooks A5 Softcover 68gsm Tomoe River with 5mm dot grid and 500 pages ($49)
- Pens: Midori bullet pencil modified dip nib holder with Zebra G titanium nib ($33.50 per 10-pack), Dominant Industry Ink Muddler ($15)
- Swatches: Col-o-Ring Ink Testing Book ($10) & Col-o-dex Rotary Cards ($15)
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Nice writeup, Ana.
I do think that Bluebonnets is slightly more saturated than A(r)pril, giving it a little more usefulness/appeal (although I must admit that the lighter shimmer content is a positive for me, as I’m not a shimmer fan). This, despite A(r)pril giving a little more pinky/purple in the sheen/chromatic department, which I like.
As writers, though, neither does much for me, which pains me to say because I love Little Craft Place so very much.