Montblanc HonorΓ© de Balzac Dandy Turquoise is a well regarded discontinued Montblanc ink. Because it's discontinued it commands a premium price on the second hand market. However, while it is a well behaved and pretty ink I always felt it was quite similar to other turquoise coloured inks out there.
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Ink Review: Robert Oster Orange Rumble
in Ink Review
Orange Rumble is a relatively new addition to the Robert Oster lineup. It looked nice when I first saw photos of the ink from Rob, but upon seeing it in person I was very impressed! Rob describes the ink as a 1970's inspired ink. I can see where this is coming from; browns, burnt oranges, yellow-greens are certainly some popular 70s colours schemes!
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Swatch Card Comparison
I like to keep swatches of all my inks in a binder. In the past I've used Rhodia 80gsm but paper never felt right; too flimsy and I was never good at cutting accurate and consistent rectangles. In the past there was Maruman Mnemosyne Word Cards (which I never used), this year (2017) there is the new Col-o-ring cards, Robert Oster has some swatch cards as well and I have also found some good card stock myself. I'll be comparing these 4 different card stocks with Rhodia 80gsm and Tomoe River (as baselines). They all often perform quite differently and bring different attributes to the table! This is a very image heavy comparison with over 135 images!
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Pen & Ink Review: Robert Oster + James Finniss Serendipity β Robert Oster Lake of Fire
in Ink Review, Pen Review
The Serendipity Hybrid Pen is a collaborative pen between James Finniss of Pensive Pens and Robert Oster. The Serendipity is a hybrid between a dip pen and a fountain pen where it functions without a filling mechanism and only operates with whatever ink is in it from dipping the pen. Because, however, it has a standard #6 nib and feed it will hold a lot more ink than a dip nib, even one with a reservoir. Lake of Fire is a new ink in the same colour family as Fire & Ice from Robert Oster's new line of InkArt inks. It came bundled with the Serendipity pen for the first 50 purchasers (but won't be released until later in 2017 on its own).
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