Birthday pre-haul: Fountain pen inks!

It's my birthday on Thursday and for the past few days I've been searching online for presents for myself from my family. I had a bit of a rush because I still hadn't decided what I wanted, and time was running out to get it delivered!

In my Filofax I have a wishlist of things I want, but shouldn't buy immediately. A few months ago I also made a list of things I'd like for my birthday. It's really interesting to come back to these lists a few months later and see how your desires have changed. Sometimes, you've changed your mind on something so completely that you are very happy you didn't buy that thing on impulse, because you know that if you haven't been missing not having something over the past few weeks, you didn't really want it badly enough, and if you now look back and think 'I really don't want it now', it would have been a waste of money if you had bought it on impulse!
So I consulted my lists and transferred the things I still really want onto a new birthday list. I worked my way through the items on my new list- things like Sims 3 University Life and a Pilot Prera fountain pen- and worked out that if I wait, I can get them cheaper in a couple of months, and do I really need them for my birthday now anyway? Choosing to not get these things for my birthday opened up some money for other options for presents. For example, the Pilot Prera fountain pen would have cost me just over £40, plus I wanted some more things, but in the end all of my presents cost less than £40!! My mum (who was paying for my presents) doesn't give me a budget, but she and my dad have always taught us to be careful with our money, and I feel bad asking for too much money.

I had a few things I really wanted for my birthday: fountain pen stuff!! A new pen, a few inks, and an ink syringe to fill my converters and cartridges from the bottled inks. This is my new hobby, and I know I'm really going to enjoy it! However, I also know it's going to get really expensive! Although a bottle of ink can cost as low as £5.80 (much cheaper than buying a Filofax to get your stationery thrills!), it's difficult to stop at buying just one! I think I will have to put myself on a tight leash and permit myself to buy only 1 ink per month!
I already knew where I would buy most of this from: Cult Pens. This is an excellent stationery online shop, with the most amazing customer service! I will be doing a review of this company soon in my Retail Recommendations series! The reason that buying from them was so brilliant is because I know that, even though I've placed my order only 3 days before my birthday and today is a Bank Holiday so Royal Mail isn't operating, I will get my order on my birthday! If you order before 3pm, Cult Pens will ship your order on the same day!, and they are based in Tiverton, which isn't far from where I live in Plymouth, so I know it will get to me even if they post tomorrow morning (when Royal Mail starts working again!). I recently bought a pen from them at 2pm, and received it before 9am the next day!!

So how to decide what to buy?

I decided to evaluate the inks and pens I already have, so I laid them out like this:

L-R: Diamine Registrar's ink with Lamy Al-Star Raspberry; blue cartridges with Parker Urban; Parker Quink black, Herbin black and a little vial of black with a Waterman silver f-pen; Herbin Rose Cylamen cartridges with Kaweco Ink Roller; Waterman Havana Brown with Lamy Safari Aquamarine; Waterman Violet with Lamy Al-Star Purple; My 'Raspberry' ink made of a mix of Diamine Cerise and Waterman Violet with Lamy Safari Pink pen; Herbin Bleu Azure ink; Rosetta Magellan pen, Lamy Safari Apple Green pen and Lamy Vista pen.

I realised I have a lot of blacks (I don't know how that happened, since I've never bought any, and don't really use them!), and blue-black, brown, purple, turquoise and a raspberry colour. Therefore, I could see a few gaps in my colour palette. I consulted my wishlist of inks, and realised that they would slot into those gaps nicely!!
I really love the colour of Diamine Ancient Copper, and I also wanted a vibrant pink, so I chose Diamine Deep Magenta. When I heard of Diamine Eau de Nil, I realised that as an Egyptologist I needed this ink as it's named after the Nile!

Then I set about working out which pen would be used for which ink. This was harder than it looked! Finally I decided on a sensible arrangement (the pens on the picture above show which pens are now assigned to which inks, and the 3 on the right are assigned to inks that I don't have yet, but will be coming from Cult Pens!). I realised that I don't have an ink that suits the gorgousness of my Rosetta Magellan, so I chose Diamine Red Dragon for it, which was another one to add to my order! Then I thought that Diamine Ancient Copper was such a gorgeous colour, that it deserved a wonderful pen- so I decided to get a Lamy Al-Star in Ruby Red as another birthday present specifically for that ink :)

Picture from www.cultpens.com

List so far:
Diamine Ancient Copper
Diamine Deep Magenta
Diamine Eau de Nil
Diamine Red Dragon
Lamy Al-Star Ruby Red

However, there were a few more things I had needed for ages, including the ink syringes with needles and a converter for one of my Lamys, and I decided to buy them out of my own money, as I have some money in my paypal. The only place I could find the ink syringes was The Writing Desk, which is another great stationery website. I decided to buy three, just in case I lose a couple, and I also wanted a waterproof ink because I've been having trouble with my Diamine Registrar's ink, so I consulted The Writing Desk's list of permanent inks and, after a lot of deliberation, decided to invest in De Atramentis Document Ink in blue! This would be one of my normal everyday inks, so would go in one of my favourite pens, my Lamy Safari Apple Green!

List so far:
Birthday-
Diamine Ancient Copper
Diamine Deep Magenta
Diamine Eau de Nil
Diamine Red Dragon
Lamy Al-Star Ruby Red
Me-
Ink syringe with needle x3
De Atramentis Document Ink Blue

But the bug had bitten me and I wanted some more ink! Once you pop, you can't stop!! So I went back to Cult Pens, and shopped for some more things to buy myself (not for my birthday!).

I decided to get some more pretty inks, maybe not ones I would use all the time like the ones I had chosen for my birthday, but ones I could use when I felt in the mood :) I chose the gorgous Diamine Sunset, and Diamine Emerald!
Unfortunately, I then didn't have enough pens to put these inks in, so I decided to buy some Platinum Preppys, which are cheap and cheerful fountain pens at £3.25 each, which I can use to hold my occasional inks by refilling their cartridges with my ink syringe needles. I bought a pink one for a handbag pen, 2 blues to hold Herbin Bleu Azure and Diamine Eau de Nil, a red one to hold Diamine Sunset and a green one to hold Diamine Emerald. I have assigned my Lamy Vista to be the pen I use to hold whichever of my occasional inks I love the most at any one time, to use instead of one of the Preppys, to just switch the ink out whenever I want!

Final shopping list:

Birthday-
Diamine Ancient Copper
Diamine Deep Magenta
Diamine Eau de Nil
Diamine Red Dragon
Lamy Al-Star Ruby Red
Me-
Ink syringe with needle x3
De Atramentis Document Ink Blue
Diamine Sunset
Diamine Emerald
Platinum Preppys

I noticed a pattern when I had finished choosing my inks.

Swatches from http://www.thewritingdesk.co.uk/
L-R, U-D: Ancient Copper, Deep Magenta, Eau de Nil, Red Dragon, Sunset, Emerald (looks darker in writing)
Swa

I love really deep, gorgeous, brooding colours. Ones that look like they would have been around hundreds of years ago, as if Shakespeare could have used them! Although I'm attracted to bright, fun colours, like lime green, I stop short of buying them. I like inks that look like they have a story to them, inks that I can use when I'm feeling in a certain mood. I'm attracted to Diamine Oxblood, and I saw that someone said it looked like you were writing in blood- well, if I'm feeling really melancholic one day, I might just buy it and pretend I'm writing in blood! I want a fountain pen inks to make me feel.
I think writing is such a passionate thing. I love the process of a thought or idea shooting down your arm, out of a pen and onto paper. So I want my inks to feel like they are my thoughts and emotions in liquid form, coming out of your pen, the extension of your fingers, and to soak into the paper. It's almost as if the ink is your thoughts' essence, your emotions' blood. If I want my writing to be magenta pink, or Nile blue, then it will be. If I want it to actually look like blood, why not? Ink is the blood of your thoughts.

NatStatWeek- My favourite stationery: Pens!!

It's National Stationery Week in the UK!! I think it should be international really, so everyone around the world, come and join us celebrating!!

 

To celebrate, I am doing a series of blog posts this week, showing you my favourite stationery items!

Today: Pens! 

I really love pens, they are some of the greatest tools for me. Besides paper and my laptop, I really can't think of anything else that I NEED for my working life (university included), hobbies, projects and personal life. 

I really think that pens are some of the best things to invest in. I don't mind using poor quality paper, cheap sticky notes etc, but pens are something I prefer to spend money on to buy quality. If you buy cheap pens which are of poor quality, you could end up with a pot full of pens that don't work well, and feel obliged to use them up. But if you buy quality, those pens will last you ages, won't dry up, won't fade, etc etc. And you will enjoy using them!

My aim is to get rid of all my cheapy pens (I recently gave loads of cheap biros to my mum, who doesn't care about good stationery, she will use anything!!), and only have great quality pens that I actually need!

Some pens I don't really like, e.g. gel pens, which always skip for me :(

My favourites!

Fountain pens:

Lamy Safari Aquamarine, Safari Pink, Al-Star Raspberry, Vista, Safari Apple Green, a Waterman pen, Rosetta Magellan, and Parker Urban Pink. (I also have a Al-Star in Purple, but I can't find it at the moment!)

I LOVE Lamy fountain pens, specifically Lamy Safari, Al-Star and Vista. I have a couple of more expensive fountain pens, and some more on my wishlist, but I love my Lamys more than any of them! They are lightweight, pretty colours, I love the design, and the strong clip! I have to have quite lightweight pens because I only have small hands. The Parker and Rosetta pens are too heavy for me, so they make my hand hurt and my writing poor- but the Lamys are perfect.

My other favourite writing pen:

Uniball Eye Micro in black!
I use this when I'm not using my fountain pens. I love it because it is a great writer, it never skips (ever!), it doesn't tend to bleed through cheap paper (including Filofax paper), it's permanent and it's waterproof, which means you can use a highlighter over it and the ink won't run!

More lovely pens:

A Vera Bradley ballpoint pen from the lovely Kristin; a big chunky resin/glass ballpoint pen I bought years ago from The Works; a pretty Swarovski lilac ballpoint I won from Karina; a Hello Kitty Liberty ballpoint; and an Egyptian Exhibition souvenir ballpoint pen from The British Museum where the mummified body moves through the Book of the Dead's judgement scene to the sarcophagus as you tilt the pen!!

Favourite coloured pens:

Stabilo Point 88s in the pen wrap my mum helped me make!
I love these pens, the colours are so vibrant and they work great for my colour-coding! They bleed through cheaper paper a tiny bit, but it's worth it :)

Multi-coloured pens:

Pilot Coleto Lumio with black, blue, red and pencil inserts (I have a pink Coleto with green, light blue, purple and pink, but I can't find it at the moment!); Muji 3-colour plus pencil multi-pen; Zebra 4-colour pen; Bic Fashion 4-colour pen.

More coloured pens:

This tin pot contains lots of assorted coloured pens, including my favourite felt-tip pens, from Crayola; sparkly gel pens; two more Muji multi-coloured pens, and some more coloured biros :)


Tune in for more posts this week about my other favourite stationery items! 

Fountain pen ink on Day Timer paper in my Filofax

This is a quick post for Joshua, who commented on Twitter about how poorly Day Timer pages take fountain pen ink with his medium-nibbed Lamy. Rori suggested that he try a finer nib, and I have medium, fine and extra fine nibs on my Lamys, and Day Timer pages, so I thought I would conduct an experiment!

When I tried to write with my beloved fountain pens in my new Day Timer diary at the start of this year, I also noticed the terrible bleed-through on the pages. This surprised me because in other ways the Day Timer paper seems generally better than other paper I have used in my Filofax. Even my Registrars' ink, which doesn't even bleed through on thin paper, bleeds through Day Timer!
So here's the test I did with my different nibs and different inks.

It doesn't look too bad on this side, and you can only see the minor feathering if you look closely. But on the other side of the page...

Really bad bleed through, which makes the other side of the page practically unusable!!

That's why I use biros in my agenda... I would love to use my fountain pens, but the paper just can't handle it! Filofax paper repels the ink, and Day Timer paper just sucks it in too much! I haven't tried other wet inks such as my V5s, but I might soon, although I'm quite happy with my 4-colour pens at the moment!