Releasing at the Pacific Northwest Pen Show, Dromgoole’s in unveiling two new shimmer inks. These inks are exclusively created for Dromgoole’s by Monteverde. Ice Queen and Ice Dragon are the same shade of deep blue-teal but Ice Queen features silver shimmer and Ice Dragon features gold shimmer. These inks end up looking like slightly different colors as a result of the shimmer powders with Ice Queen looking slightly lighter and brighter and Ice Dragon looking darker and a tiny bit more greenish-teal.
The inks sell for $12 each for 30ml bottles and $36 for a set of both colors plus a 30ml bottle of pen flush.
The mica powders are very fine and will transfer when ink is dry if the application is heavy. Overall, these are wet inks which dry fairly quickly but may feather with some nibs or papers. In writing, even with my folded nib, did not feather but droplets from a pipette did feather a little bit.
I did not have a lot of shimmery blue inks so I pulled a couple to compare and a few non-shimmer inks. Pen BBS #338 is a lighter aqua ink but also has a gold shimmer. I think Callifolio Ohlanga is similar in color to the base ink color but looks more like Ice Dragon. Birmingham Pen Co. Blizzard Twinkle is a blue teal with silver shimmer but is also noticeably lighter when compared to Ice Queen. I am sure there many other blue shimmers available for comparison but I just didn’t have many to compare.
Overall, I think Monteverde inks are always a good value are good performers. I think this is a great direction for Monteverde to dive into and I’m glad to see Dromgoole’s taking the first steps by offering these inks.
I’ll have my swatches and samples at the Pacific Northwest Pen Show and you can grab a set of your own while you’re there.
Tools:
- Paper: Odyssey Notebooks A5 Grid 68gsm Tomoe River and Ink Swatching Guidesheets
- Pens: Dominant Industry Ink Muddler, Sailor Hocoro Dip Pens, Zebra G Dip Nib and Tachikawa T-40 Nib Holder
- Swatches: Col-o-Ring Ink Testing Book ($10) & Col-o-dex Rotary Cards ($15)
DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by Dromgoole’s for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.