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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The Pent inks from the Pen-house store in Japan have been out since the last half of 2017 but they recently expanded their retail presence into the US via Vanness Pens so I thought now would be a good time to show off some one of their inks. The inks are, of course, made by Sailor for the Pen-house store. There are eight total inks with two for each seasoning the year: Himekeshi (a pink, and Aomidori (a teal) for Spring; Gensoukai (a blue), and Matsukaze (a dark green) for Summer; Shukei (an orange), and this Ebizome for Autumn; and Jakujoya (a blue black), Yukizukiyo (a light blue), and Sakura (a pink) for Winter. Pen-house recently released eight new inks from the series in the new square 50ml bottles.
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Colorverse inks are new to the scene inks from late 2017 and early signs were pretty interesting so I took the plunge and bought three of the inks. I was told by Colorverse (who were very helpful!) that the Season 2 "Astrophysics" inks were the sheenier inks so I naturally gravitated towards them. Quasar is indeed from this second season of inks (Season one was "Spaceward" and the latest, Season 3, is "Multiverse"). I went in with high hopes for these inks and I have been blown away. Granted, I've only inked two different bottles but I'm loving them.
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