I recently received a lovely package from izumi Pen Company – a bottle of their store exclusive Pink Rose Gold ink, made for them by de Atramentis. The ink came wrapped in a beautiful bag with tissue paper surrounding it. The packaging alone made the ink feel extra special. Thank you, izumi!
I had not heard anything about izumi before this. The store is in the UK which brings to mind overseas shipping costs. However, even for international shipping, the price is 11 pounds ($15.50 at the moment) which feels reasonable for distance.
In the bottle, the ink appears reddish orange with plenty of sparkle. LOTS of sparkle. One interesting observation – the sparkle seems to be present in more than one slake size. As the larger particles settle, a very fine sparkle stays suspended in the ink.
The ink only looks reddish in the bottle. On a Col-o-ring card, it is PINK. A bright bubblegum pink that leans just a bit towards blue.
Pink Rose Gold is a bit darker than ColorVerse Girls Just Wanna and a bit more blue than Private Reserve Rose Rage. Diamine Cerise is the closest, but Pink Rose Gold doesn’t have the sheen you find in Cerise.
I used a JOWO 1.5 stub in a Woodshed Pens pink ribbon demonstrator as an eyedropper. Pink was everywhere.
I found that the sparkle in Pink Rose Gold is quite dependent on the lighting and angle of the page to that lighting. In the photo below, I have tried to show what the page looks like with non-direct lighting.
But angle the same writing towards the light and it shines.
I noticed that the sparkle stays in the ink much longer than other sparkle inks, even others from de Atramentis. Typically, the first line of writing with a sparkle ink contains the shine but the sparkle is gone halfway down the page. Pink Rose Gold had sparkle during this whole page. This page is in a Cosmo Air Light notebook from Musubi.
I had to see just how much sparkle I could get in big drops.
In the right lighting, it is super shiny! While the ink was still wet, it was difficult to tell the color of the sparkle. Once dry in these large drops, though, the coppery rose gold is obvious. A small amount of feathering occurred at the edges of the drops but the ink didn’t bleed through the page! Plus one for Cosmo Air Light paper.
On Tomoe River paper, there was no feathering, but the bubblegum pink was slightly less saturated.
The sparkle was still everywhere, though.
Overall, Pink Rose Gold was not what I was expecting from a sparkle ink. The particles stayed suspended much longer than other sparkly inks I have tried but I never experienced the dry writing or clogging I have seen in other inks. In fact, I’ve had it in my pen for over a week now and have yet to see even a slow start.
For me, that means I will absolutely use the ink often, although I will keep it to large nibs and use it only in pens that are easy to clean out. One small note of caution – this sparkle will stick to facing notebook pages and your fingers even after the ink is dry!
I loved the personalized note included with this bottle of ink, complete with a store sticker. I look forward to seeing the future of izumi!
- Swatch Cards: Col-o-ring cards (100 for $10)
- Paper: Musubi Tomoe River Folio and Musubi Cosmo Air Light Folio (Approximately $35 for 384 pages and $25 for 208 pages)
- Ink: izumi Pink Rose Gold ink by de Atramentis (10.95 pounds ($15.50) for 45mL)
DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge for the purposes of this review by izumi Pen Store. Please see the About page for more details.
