Fountain Pen Day Giveaway - Winner!

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I am once again humbled for the turnout for this giveaway - almost 300 entries!  Thank you all so much for your readership, and I hope you had an awesome Fountain Pen Day!

The winner is.......

UPDATE:  Mary did not claim her prize, so I've drawn a new winner - Brian S!  Brian, keep an eye on your email - I'll be reaching out to you to notify you that you've won!

Congratulations Mary!  Mary spent Fountain Pen Day inking up her new Lamy 2000 (love that pen).  Keep an eye on your email for a message from me - get your address to me by next Friday!  Thanks so much to everyone else for participating - I'll do another giveaway soon!

Ink Review: Platinum Pigmented Rose Red

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Platinum Pigmented Rose Red - May 2015 Ink Drop 
Pen: Pilot Metropolitan M
Paper: Rhodia Dotpad 80gsm
Shading: low to moderate
Saturation: low
Flow: medium
Dry Time: 15 seconds

The next ink in the Goulet Ink Drop this month unfortunately didn't appeal to me much in terms of color.  If you know me personally you know that I'm not a fan of pink, and despite it being called "Rose Red," the ink is definitely pink rather than red.  Platinum's Pigmented series of inks were created to be a fountain-pen friendly ink that is water-resistant.  Vintage pigmented inks were not meant for use in fountain pens as they typically cause clogging.  As I understand it, they contain "particles" which would cause clogging issues in the feed system.  According to their website, Platinum's pigmented inks have "ultra-fine" particles, so that isn't an issue.

Pigmented inks are highly favored by the artist community for ink washing since they are waterproof.  So if you are an artist, you should definitely check out this line.  Platinum markets their pigmented inks as "quick-drying" but I just didn't find that to be the case.  With my medium nib, it took 15 seconds to try, so if you're ink washing that might be a pain for you if you're trying to do things quickly.

Shading was fairly low with my medium nib.  The ink isn't highly saturated from my experience, but it does flow nicely, though not extremely wet.  As I mentioned the dry time is fairly high at 15 seconds, so it may not be well suited to left-handed writers.  I did test the waterproofness and it performed quite well; so if you're looking to do some ink washing, this should do quite nicely for you.

Considering I don't care for pink inks, this one just didn't do it for me - but that doesn't mean it's not for you.  Performance-wise it's a nicely behaved ink, and is as advertised.  If you'd like to pick up a bottle, you can get 60mL for $20 at Goulet or a similar retailer.

Ink Review: Platinum Mix-Free Sunny Yellow

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Platinum Mix-Free Sunny Yellow - May 2015 Ink Drop
Pen: Pilot Metropolitan (M)
Paper: Rhodia Dotpad 80gsm
Shading: moderate to high
Saturation: low to medium
Flow: medium
Dry Time: 8 seconds

I'd heard a lot about the Platinum line of inks, but hadn't had the opportunity to try one yet.  Luckily, Goulet Pens always comes through with new and interesting inks to try in their Ink Drops.  Platinum Mix-Free Sunny Yellow is an ink that is specifically designed to be mixed with any of its sister inks in the Mix-Free line.  I'd heard that there was some confusion around the name "Mix-Free" because some folks took that to mean that it *shouldn't* be mixed, when in fact it's just a somewhat poor translation of the term "mix freely."

The other inks in the mix free line include pretty much every color of the rainbow, along with black, to give you free reign to create any color that you wish.  Platinum has a nice little chart that shows what a 1:1 mixture of any of the inks will look like.  I wouldn't mind trying this out one day just to see what kind of results I can get.  To date, I've only mixed one ink - the Pen Addict "Scabix" mix of Rohrer & Klingner Salix and Scabiosa.  That result was awesome, so I can only imagine what kind of fun a full rainbow of colors could be.

Sunny Yellow is a pretty basic yellow (likely because it's meant to be mixed), but I was surprised by the shading that the ink gives.  I expected the Mix-Free line to be pretty muted and dull, like a lot of the pen manufacturer inks are - but surprisingly it was anything but that.  I'm not even a huge fan of yellow, but if I were I could see myself using this as a stand-alone ink.

Along with a good bit of shading, the ink flows really well from a medium nib.  It's not hugely saturated, but from what I've experienced, most yellows and oranges aren't.  It has a very decent dry time at 8 seconds as well.

As you can see from the swabs, Sunny Yellow almost exactly matches De Atramentis Mahatma Ghandi in swab form.  On paper, Mahatma Ghandi is slightly different in that it doesn't shade nearly as well, and is a little more neon and "glowy" on the page.

I think Sunny Yellow has prompted me to give the Platinum Mix free inks a try.  Goulet sells a sample kit of those inks, so I might give them a try.  If you're interested in a bottle of Sunny Yellow, you can pick up a 60mL bottle for $20.  Definitely not cheap by any means, but you do get a decent volume.  I would probably try the samples first to get an idea of what colors you want to mix, and then spring for the bottles.