In January I shared my intentions and fears as I started a Midori 3-Year Diary. You offered some great suggestions on what I should write each day. I mashed up all your advice and wrote what stood out to me on each day.
Before I wrote on the first page, I knew that I wanted to use a special ink for it. My requirements were:
- It must be fountain pen ink (why buy an FP-friendly notebook otherwise?)
- The ink must be waterproof or highly water-resistant
- The ink must be fun to use since I want to use it for all of 2026
A tall order for any fountain pen ink!
Maybe I could’ve bought a bottle of ink that met all 3 criteria, but I wanted to use what I had on hand as part of my low buy commitment for this year. Time to pull out my ink mixing supplies!
My Ink Mixing Supplies
I dug through my various bins of ink, mica, and shimmer potions. Faced with so many possibilities, I finally narrowed it down to De Atramentis Document Violet ink and Wearingeul Frost shimmer potion to match the diary’s lilac cover.
Other tools I used (and not pictured): De Atramentis Dilution Solution, a 5ml test tube for mixing, a stand to keep my test tube upright, a dip pen for ink testing, a metal cocktail stirring stick, and my 2026 Pen & Ink Journal (Rettacy B5 softcover notebook).
Lightening the Ink Color
I’m not always good about recording the process for my custom mixed inks, but I knew I wanted to use it for all of 2026. Hence the step-by-step records, drop by drop, milliliter by milliliter.
De Atramentis Document Violet is a very saturated pigment ink. I wanted a color closer to lilac. De Atramentis Dilution Solution to the rescue! Dilution solution is basically a colorless fountain pen ink and is specially formulated to work with the D.A. document ink line. The ease of mixing with De Atramentis is why I continue to use it for my Mad Scientist Ink Mixing classes.
It took a couple of tries to get the color close enough to how I imagined it. Why only close enough? Because I needed to. . .
Add Shimmer
Based on my past experience I knew that the shimmer color would also affect the color of my ink. I initially debated between Wearingeul Frost (blue) and Wearingeul Silver Shoes (silver).
I guessed that the Frost would make a good contrast to my now lilac ink solution. I was right! It made the color interesting enough without overwhelming the delicate lilac. It was a matter of testing to see how many drops of the glitter potion I needed in order to get the effect I wanted.
If you look at the photo, you can see I was worried about it having too much shimmer at 10 drops so I added more D.A. Violet.
Testing Water Resistance
Not being a chemist or professional ink-mixer, I had concerns on how much the potion affected the waterproofness of my new ink. The dilution solution had also thinned out the amount of pigment particles per mL so I could safely assumed the shimmer potion had done the same.
On the other side of my test page, I used a wide dip pen nib for my writing sample. After letting it dry completely (probably 30-60 seconds), I dipped my finger in some water and ran it over the writing.
You can see that my first attempt didn’t have enough DA Violet and it smeared. It wasn’t terrible but I wanted stronger water-resistance. My subsequent iterations didn’t smear as much as the first, which I could live with.
Final Thoughts
The process took me maybe thirty minutes. I ended up with 5mL of my custom color, which I’m calling Frosty Violet. Not a super original name, but I’m open to suggestions.
To keep with the lilac vibes, I inked my Mythic Pens with a Kanwrite <EEEF flex> nib with an ebonite feed. It’s been almost 3 months using this combo in my Midori 3-Year Diary. I’m extremely happy with it and haven’t had any clogging issues.
It’s so easy to be lured in by all the new ink releases that show up on my social media feeds. Because my brain likes new and shiny things. But I have to remember that I can mix almost any color I want and have plenty of shimmer options.
The next time my brain tempts me about buying more ink, I’ll dig around my collection and see what fun colors I can create.
Do you make custom fountain pen ink colors?
All items in this post were purchased with my own money. Some links may be affiliate links. Thanks for supporting Well Appointed Desk!