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Notebook Review #001: Colorverse Nebula Note

Introduction

Hello everyone and welcome!πŸ™‹β€β™‚οΈ

Today I have for you something very special and interesting! I recently (well today) got my hands on a new product soon to be released by Colorverse and I’m telling you it’s going to be great! 🀯Especially at the price point they are targeting for the current design. Naturally before we delve into anything I would like to thank C.K. for providing me with samples!

Oh and let’s just do a quick recap of who Colorverse are!

Colorverse is a South Korean ink maker best known for their beautiful colors, their use of natural dyes in their inks and of course their unique glass bottles. If you want to check out there inks please click here.

Okay I think that was quick enough. πŸ˜‰πŸ˜‚ Let’s get down to business!

Colorverse decided they are going to expand their product range with a new product and they called it the Nebula Note. Now if you have read the title or have seen the cover photo you already know that the Nebula Note is their notebook that’s going to appear in the near future.

Check out their website here.

I personally think it was a nice idea and the next natural step in growing their business. It gives them the perfect medium where they can show off their beautiful and unique colors!

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Ink Review #4: Pelikan Edelstein Olivine

Pelikan Edelstein - Ink Review

Hello everyone! Here we are, another week and another ink review! This week’s choice is the Pelikan Edelstein Olivine Ink of the Year 2018. It’s available in limited quantities since we’re already in 2019 so get yours from your favorite retail outlet if you like what you see in the review. πŸ˜€

Before we continue I just want to give a shout out to the Fountain Pen Companion! Thanks to this nifty website it’s really easy to track your inks, participate in leaderboards and share your collection with others! πŸ˜€ If anyone wants to have a look at mine, you can see check it out here.

If you would like me to do a review of one of the inks from my collection let me know in the comments below, on the PenAddict Slack on reddit or through e-mail. πŸ˜‰

If you’re interested in the review process please check out this blog post. I’ve written it down in detail. Reviews in the future might have updated methodology but I’ll let anyone know if anything changes! πŸ˜‰

1. Introduction and personal thoughts

Pelikan is one of the oldest fountain pen and ink manufacturers in Europe and they are known worldwide for giving us reliable writing instruments and inks alike. In this part of the world one of the most popular inks is made by Pelikan, the 4001 Royal Blue.

Now you may or may not have known that Pelikan also has a line of premium inks called “Edelstein” which translates to “gemstone” or “jewel” (or “drΓ‘gakΕ‘” in Hungarian πŸ˜‰ ). Of course each ink is named after a precious stone/mineral from which the ink derives it’s color from. In total there are 16 colors available, with the original 8 standard colors and 8 Ink of the Year colors. Later on Pelikan announced that they’ll include Aquamarine and more recently Garnet in their standard line-up.

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Ink Review #3: Diamine Oxford Blue

Diamine Oxford Blue - Ink Review

Greetings! πŸ˜€ I have another ink review ready and this time my choice fell upon Diamine Oxford Blue! This ink has of course been reviewed by a lot of people already but I thought I would share my thoughts on this one because it was the second ink I bought from Diamine back when I was getting into the hobby. πŸ™‚ (The first was Diamine Sapphire Blue which I’ll definitely cover in a couple of weeks).

Before we continue I just want to give a shout out to the Fountain Pen Companion! Thanks to this nifty website it’s really easy to track your inks, participate in leaderboards and share your collection with others! πŸ˜€ If anyone wants to have a look at mine, you can see check it out here.

If you would like me to do a review of one of the inks from my collection let me know in the comments below, on the PenAddict Slack on reddit or through e-mail. πŸ˜‰

If you’re interested in the review process please check out this blog post. I’ve written it down in detail. Reviews in the future might have updated methodology but I’ll let anyone know if anything changes! πŸ˜‰

1. Introduction and personal thoughts

Diamine is a UK πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ based company which creates all kinds of inks for different purposes. They have been around since 1864 and thanks to this heritage I think we can safely deduce that they know a thing or two about how to make inks. They offer a large assortment of colors (over 100 actually) so it’s more than likely that they have a color you’ll like. They are also fairly inexpensive thus they are easily accessible to anyone, especially if you’re from Europe.

The ink is available in 30 ml plastic/glass bottles and 80 ml glass bottles. I myself have got one in the 30 ml bottle as anything bigger than 50 ml is a huge commitment (especially since I have enough ink already to last me a lifetime). Before moving onto the ink itself I would just like to praise how neat their 30 ml plastic bottles are since look great and can be placed nicely next to each other. The downside is that the mouth of the 30 ml plastic bottle is really small and a lot of pens might not fit through it. This won’t be so bad if you use converters or refill with a syringe but a piston filler will be impossible to fill with these bottles.

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Ink Review #1: Pelikan 4001 Dark Green

Pelikan 4001 Dark Green - Ink Review

Hi and welcome to another ink review at Pennonia! Before we delve into it I just want to talk a little bit about the review process. On upcoming reviews I won’t post this info but I want take a little time and talk about how I’m doing the reviews and what I came up with. πŸ™‚

Okay so I only did two “proper” reviews on the site but as part of the 2019 refocus of Pennonia I decided to take things more seriously and come up with my own standardized process because I’m sure everyone values consistency and it’s basically needed to somewhat compare inks between themselves. So actually this first post will feature the “prototype” page I have created and the actual standard post will come after the next review (although only the presentation is slightly different).

Here’s how I’m going to do my ink reviews and what elements it includes:

1. Brief presentation and personal opinion about the ink
2. Scanned writing sample + water test scan
3. Ink swatch and similar inks (naturally only those which I own)
4. Optional: Some product/studio shots if I have the time to set up the lights, camera etc.

My monitors are color calibrated so I’ll try to match the inks as closely to what I can see in real life, but it’s really hard to get them to look like as they do and not to mention that everyone’s monitor displays color slightly differently.

The scanned writing sample includes the following information:

1. Paper: For my paper I chose Rhodia 80g/m2 (DOTPAD No 16) because I think it’s a fairly accessible paper and it seems highly regarded in the eyes of most people. I’m sure it won’t satisfy everybody’s needs but I don’t want to complicate things for myself by using different brands as there are simply way too many of them.

2. Writing test: This will be done using capital and cursive handwriting. I think both are necessary because capital letters show shading more easily due to the fact you have to raise the nib a lot more than using cursive (where you can write down whole words without lifting the pen). I chose to write down one of my favorite childhood ballads: “Toldi” by JΓ‘nos Arany. Each review will feature one stanza. I will choose a random pen from my collection to write it and I won’t do different nib sizes.

3. Very rudimentary doodles: Literally a square drawn with lines and a square drawn with circles/loops.

4. Ink swab: Ink swabs are an integral part of most reviews and I wanted to include them in mine as well. Over at the Pen Addict slack user @Inkantadora suggested that I should turn the pen over and just drag the nib across the page instead of using a cotton swab and I have to say it’s a great idea because it’s super fast, doesn’t waste ink, no risk of contaminating your bottle and personally I think it spreads the ink more thinly so it’s not that unrealistically saturated.

5. Star rating system: Okay so the star rating system goes from 1 to 5, I don’t think I need to explain how numbered ratings work. Categories include flow, lubrication (yeah I know it can be considered the same as flow but to me lubrication means smoothness when writing, while flow refers to how much ink goes onto the paper), shade, sheen and water resistance. The only thing I want to talk about here is water resistance and how I’m doing my test. I write one line on a mini Rhodia Dotpad No 12, tear out the paper, put it into the sink and pour on it one mug of water (300 ml, simulates a spill on your desk)

Okay! So now that this is out of the way here’s the actual review

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