I think I have possibly mentioned my love of stationery, especially fountain pens.

Back in the day, when I was at Junior school we had handwriting lessons. Starting out with pencils, once you reached a certain level of neatness you were given a red plastic fibretip Berol handwriting pen.

Once you had mastered that, you were upgraded to a Platignum school fountain pen.

I wanted one of those Fountain pens more than anything in the world and I practised and practised until I was granted my wish.

Plastic and very basic, it meant more than anything to me and I took great pride in using it.

This has not changed much at all and I still delight in using a fountain pen and do so virtually every day. This means I have managed to garner a lovely little collection of both pens AND inks.

It was during my calf injury that I was shown a lovely little pen by a friend, Smita. She told me the pen had been in her family quite awhile but she had struggled to get ink for the pen.

This was due to the fact that it was the slimmest pen I had every seen; the Sailor Channa

I started to investigate if there were cartridges or an ink converter to allow the usage of bottled ink.

Eventually I managed to find some slim cartridges and during this search, I came across a lot of stunning ink manufacturers and could not believe the sheer amount of brands and colours available.

One of the first I looked at was the Diamine brand.

This brand has been making ink in England since 1864 and has a huge range in colours, shimmers and special edition inks.

I first noticed the special festive range, Ink-vent. A calendar filled with 24 little bottles of specialist inks containing 12mls each. On day 25 there is a standard 30ml size bottle which is in a pretty glass bottle.

You could also buy the individual inks online, and as there were some shades that I wasn’t too fussed about, I decided that I might buy one or two of those instead of £80 for the whole calendar.

In the end I opted for just one bottle; “Happy Holidays” which is a shimmery blue/turquoise colour priced at £10.99.

Diamine has hundreds of colours I found one of the best ways to try then was by looking at the packs of twenty cartridges which come in seven sets; “Sovereign”, “Elegance”, “Fiesta”, “Prestige”, “Floral”, “Regal” and “Classic”.

Each set of twenty has five colours chosen from their ranges of blue, red, orange, green, grey, pink, purple and brown.

I ordered two packs, “Fiesta” and “Prestige”.  Priced at £4.10 these ticked all the boxes when it came to trying out a variety of shades.

Another product that caught my eye was the set of ten floral inspired shades including “Pansy”, “Marigold”, “Iris” and more.

Again  you can buy the full set for £59.99 but I wanted to get a wider range of products so ordered “Carnation” which is a pale baby pink.

I ordered the 30ml bottle for £3.99 and then moved on to their main shade range where I was taken by the shades “Amaranth” and “Earl Grey”

Again these were 30ml bottles for £2.35 each.

I popped them both in my basket and decided to move on to another brand I had come upon, Wearingeul.

A Japanese luxury brand, the company bases a lot of their shades and names on well known books and characters. The first character I noticed was “Alice In Wonderland”.

When I went to have a look at this particular shade, I found out there were several characters from the novel; “White Rabbit”, “Cheshire Cat” and “Mad Hatter”.

My favourite though was “Queen of Hearts”. A  red-black base colour highlighted with gold glitter and a dark brown sheen. This was so stunning that I had to purchase it.

This literally sent me down the rabbit hole and I spotted two other inks; “For Whom The Bell Tolls” and “Wayfarer”.

I found both of the inks so spectacular that I could not resist them, The thought of my handwriting varying in shade and colour as I write really spoke to me.

The shades of teal, black and magenta in “For Whom The Bell Tolls” is a real showstopper and will look exceptional when writing my pen-pal letters.

“Wayfarer” is a different kettle of fish though; Aqua, red and violet glitter all form a pretty combination and one I have never seen the likes of before.

These are luxury inks and have a price tag to match compared to my earlier choices; all three 30ml bottles are £16.99 each.

The final purchase was my biggest, however it has been purchased for me as an early Christmas present; “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”.

Apart from the fact that I love the novel, I also adore the fact that this set comprises of a deep red ink for “Dr Jekyll” but “Mr Hyde” is a do-it-yourself ink!

You get a conversion liquid, syringe and bottles of liquid which turns into a completely different colour.

What a hoot!

This set is a little pricey at £43.99 but you do get a lot of product for your pennies. The bottles are large at 30mls which means they will last a long time.

I placed the two orders from different companies as sadly not all of them in stock on the same site. This isn’t a massive issue however and the first box arrived and I eagerly started using the products.

I had also included some nib cleaner to wash out old fluids before changing shades. This was a couple of pounds but should stop cross-contamination.

This cleaner will also be handy when using the glittery inks from Wearingeul as I do not wish to clog up my nibs with the glitter residue.

In fact I will probably only use these inks for dip pens as I am concerned about the flow of ink through the chambers and how it could damage some of my older vintage pens.

All I need to do now is step away from the websites as I have enough ink to last a lifetime!

Till next time,

SPSG xxx