Ink Review
Shumibun Writing Time Jasper Green is a Sailor store exclusive ink from Shumibun in Japan. The store itself is makes a Fountain Pen magazine for the Fountain Pen market. The store describes the colour as a "deep green mixed with jasper". There are two other inks in the series (from which I only have a bottle of Jasper Green): Coral Blue (a dusty turquoise colour) and Lapis Blue (a rich blue).
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Colorverse String and Brane are the pair of inks from Season 3 "Multiverse" series of inks that I, personally, thought was the most interesting pairing. A nice golden brown and a soft olive green. Brane, which comes in the small 15ml bottle, as opposed the String's 65ml bottle, is also a shimmering ink but is much subtler than many shimmering inks out there.
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Pen's Alley Shaker Green is a pretty unique and special ink; a green ink with gold sheen. I've never seen anything like it before! Pen's Alley is a stationary and pen store in Okazaki, Japan. They have a series of Sailor Store Exclusive inks in the tall "vase" Sailor bottles of which this is one. Where this ink stands out is it's sheen!
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Kobe's ever increasing list of inks were for a while only available from Japan. These were more easily available than some other Japanese exclusive inks because they shipped internationally from Nagasawa's - the store that sells Kobe inks - Global Rakuten store. More recently they began being sold by some US stores such as Vanness and Pen Chalet and this year they came to Australia which I'm, personally, pretty happy about. Kobe #07 "Kaikyo Blue" is named after the water under the Akashi KaikyΕ Bridge, a suspension bridge, and the longest in the world, in Kobe, Japan.
A new store called Desk Bandit has opened in my city (that does international and national deliveries with free-shipping thresholds and a 15% discount code if you subscribe to their Newsletter) and I emailed them asking whether I could write something small about them. After ordering a few Kobe inks, some Colorverse inks, and an Opus 88 Koloro from themthey added an extra bottle of Kobe Kaikyo Blue to my order. This isn't a sponsored review in a traditional way, but it is in another sense in that I think the people behind the store are doing a great job getting new and interesting stock and at good prices plus these are local to my so I have my own selfish interest in their success! I'll talk a little about them later in the review but there will be no affiliate links and I'd like stress that I was the one who reached out to them.
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Krishna inks were previously overly expensive to ship from India but are now much cheaper. If ordering from The Pen World in India then a large order is still recommended to get the most out of shipping but after having made a second order just recently the total price of the order has now dropped to what shipping was alone in the first order so there has been a huge improvement. In good news though Krishna inks are now available, in addition to iZods in the UK, at Pen Chalet and Vanness in the US so it should be a lot easier to try out a bottle without committing to several now. Krishna Sakthy is from the RC series of inks which is are all designed to be sheeny (or "sheentastic") and are made in limited batches.
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