Between working with hand-dyed yarns and now ink samples, they way I see color has evolved over the years. So I’m especially tickled when the ink samples I’m working with (yellows and golds) match my new project!
Yarn: Miss Babs Yowza in Old Gold
Inks: Robert Oster Honey Bee and Franklin-Christoph Honeycomb
La Paper Lover is an Etsy shop that produces a line of Snail Mail Kits as well as a variety of other paper products. The Snail Mail Kits all feature foil stamping and/or screenprinting for vibrant looks. There are three designs available: Pansies, Air Mail and Telegram. Each style comes in a variety of color choices though the owner of the shop recommends the lighter paper stock colors for use with fountain pens. The darker paper colors work better with gel pens or other tools.
The Not Your Granny’s Air Mail Stationery Kits are available in a dizzying array of colors. The owner of LA Paper Lover, Esmeralda sent me a few sheets of paper and an envelope for the colors she thought would most appeal to the fountain pen community: white paper with pink & blue foil, yellow paper with blue & white foil, pale pink with white and gold foil and the classic white with red & blue foil (white or kraft envelope options). The Air Mail Stationery Kits feature three A6 envelopes (US A6 envelope size which does not relate to European paper sizes AT ALL. It measures 4 3/4″ x 6 1/2″) and nine sheets of 6″ x 8.5″ paper that can be folded in half to fit into the envelopes. Each set is $15 each and shipping is free in the US.
The Pansies set features three, large A7 (US A7 envelope sized — not EU A7 5 1/4″ x 7 1/4″. I know, it’s all so confusing!) envelope with 12 flat sheets of writing paper. The Pansies Set is $14.50 with free shipping in the US too.
The Telegram sets also feature all feature three, large A7 (US A7 envelope sized — not EU A7 5 1/4″ x 7 1/4″. I know, it’s all so confusing!) envelope with 12 flat sheets of writing paper. The paper in all the Telegram sets is white but shoppers can choose envelope colors from the available inventory. Current colors listed are lavender, red, and turquoise. Each set sells for $14.50 and includes free shipping in the US.
All sets use paper that is 70# text weight. Esmeralda sent along some gorgeous writing samples — far nicer than anything I could do.
There was ZERO show through or bleed through on the reverse of the samples that Esmeralda sent.
Esmeralda’s penmanship is top notch! I wonder if she does a lot of work for weddings?
I just think the LA Paper Lover Snail Mail Kits are excellent — the packaging, the foil stamping, the typography— and I am a TYPE SNOB so that’s saying something. These are worth the investment and will make your correspondence extra special! I can’t wait to send these to my favorite pen pals.
Prices for envelope sets start at $5 and Snail Mail letter kits start as $14.50.
DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by LA Paper Lover for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.
I loved hearing about what you all would store in your new cases and, as always, I wish I had enough for everyone! However, the random number generator picked two winners for the Shibui A5 Life Organizer and the 3-pen case:
Congratulations Brad and Theresa!
Diplomat inks just became available through Vanness Pens, so of course I grabbed samples of each. But this is not a small lineup of inks. 15 inks actually.
I’ve broken the inks into groups of five so the colors can be compared to each other and to already familiar inks.
The first group is Black, Sepia Black, Pine Tree, Caramel, and Orange.
Diplomat Black is much more accurately called a blue-black ink.
Sepia Black is very close to Kobe Antique Sepia but has more shading.
Diplomat Caramel is quite close to the ever-popular KWZ Meet Me In St. Louis from 2019 – Butterscotch. the colors are nearly identical but Caramel has great shading.
Diplomat Pine Tree was actually tough to match. Not only is it a strange-ish color but also looks different in every light. Bungubox Nostalgia was the closest I could find that is similar in more lighting.
Diplomat Orange is just like Bungubox Fresh Oranges. Orange is a good option since it is cheaper, not to mention the fact that Fresh Oranges is currently not produced!
The second set of inks includes Diplomat Moss Green, Deep Green, Caribbean, Royal Blue, and Deep Blue.
Diplomat Moss Green has a base color identical to Diamine Ultra Green but the shading and sheen are close to Monteverde Green.
Diplomat Deep Green has a base color just like that of Monteverde California Teal with shading and sheen similar to Lamy Crystal Peridot.
Diplomat Caribbean is a touch darker than Kobe #48 Water Source Marche.
Diplomat Royal Blue and Deep Blue have the same base color which is close to Monteverde Blue (now called Malibu Blue). Royal Blue is closer to a washable blue while Deep Blue is what I would call a Royal Blue.
The final set of Diplomat inks contains Red, Burgundy, Orchid, Purple, and Lilac.
Diplomat Red is a slightly more saturated version of Diamine Classic Red. A bit on the pink side of a true red.
I believe Diplomat Burgundy is closer to true red than Diplomat Red. Diamine Red Dragon is a close match.
Diplomat Orchid would be better named Hot Pink. It is nearly identical to Bungubox Sweet Love Pink, complete with gold halo sheen.
Diplomat Purple is a bit less saturated than Manyo Akebi but has a hint of the same sheen.
Diplomat Lilac is a wonderful purple similar to Papier Plume Violet although a touch less blue.
So that concludes the overview of all 15 Diplomat inks. I swatched each ink in both Tomoe River 52 gsm Paper and Cosmo Air Light 83 gsm paper to give you an idea of the colors on each paper type.
I covered up one swatch which made it into these pages but isn’t part of the Diplomat ink line. Oops!
Finally, here are all 15 Diplomat ink swatch cards. In my opinion, Lilac and Orchid are absolutely the best inks in the line, with Sepia Black and Pine Tree being the most original colors. Other than disputing the color names, I have nothing bad to say about the new Diplomat inks! As I use them further, I’ll post other reviews diving deeper into individual colors and their performance in a pen. Hopefully, though, this helps when browsing for a new ink!
DISCLAIMER: The inks in this review were provided at a discount by Vanness Pens for the purpose of this review. All other items in this review were purchased by me. Please see the About page for more details.
You come here for the pen and ink reviews but I know you want to see the bodega cats. It’s okay. I’m here for you. These kitties are super cute.
Seriously, this week has been crazy and this Link Love is paper crazy. I am kitty crazy. Stay crazy, pen people. Love you all!
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In case you missed it, last week Ana reviewed some Leather Stationary Cases from Shibui. This week we’re excited to offer two of those cases for giveaway!
We have one of each of the following, and each will go to one lucky winner:
3-Pen Case XL (₱2,350, approx. $48.50USD)
The Shibui 3-Pen XL case is designed to hold longer and/or larger pens, the ones that many standard 3-pen cases can’t accomodate. Featuring a Pull-Tag detail, snug leather loops and an interior pocket.
Life Organizer A5 (₱3,995, approx. $82.60USD)
An A5 case with a sturdy plastic zipper and pull tab. Room for a notebook, interior pockets (large enough to hold a standard credit card!), pen loop, and smaller zippered compartments.
THE DETAILS: Two lucky winners will be selected from the comments on this post to win their choice of either the 3-Pen XL or the A5 Life Organizer.
TO ENTER: Leave a comment below and tell us which case you’d prefer to win and what you would put in your new case! Play along and type in something. It makes reading through entries more interesting for me, okay? One entry per person.
If you have never entered a giveaway or commented on the site before, your comment must be manually approved by our highly-trained staff of monkeys before it will appear on the site. Our monkeys are underpaid and under-caffeinated so don’t stress if your comment does not appear right away. Give the monkeys some time.
FINE PRINT: All entries must be submitted by midnight CST on Friday, April 30, 2021. All entries must be submitted at wellappointeddesk.com, not Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook, okay? Winner will be announced on Saturday. Winners will be selected by random number generator from entries that played by the rules (see above). Please include your actual email address in the comment form so that I can contact you if you win. I will not save email addresses or sell them to anyone — pinky swear. If winner does not respond within 7 days, I will draw a new giveaway winner. Shipping via USPS first class is covered. Additional shipping options or insurance will have to be paid by the winner. We are generous but we’re not made of money. US and APO/AFO only, sorry.
DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge for the purposes of this giveaway. Please see the About page for more details.
All of us at The Desk keep trying to outdo ourselves with our ink reviews. Last week, Jesi posted a full overview of all the new Colorverse Series 7 inks. This week, I’m kicking it all off with an overview of the Colorverse Standard Model ($200 for seventeen-15ml bottles). This set, based on The Standard Model of Particle Physics, includes seventeen bottles of ink, each themed around particle physics. I know ZILCH about particle physics except what I can glean from watching sci-fi movies so I will not even pretend. If anything, playing with this ink set is teaching me a little bit about particle physics — just enough to attempt to guess a question on the NYTimes crossword puzzle and not much else. But I digress…
First and foremost, who doesn’t want an ink set that comes in a Halliburton-style plastic suitcase (okay, it’s more like a Pelikan case) with perfectly cut out foam slots for each bottle? Let’s just say I’ve been living out various James Bond-esque “saving the world from a dangerous color conspiracy” storylines over the last week. (I’d like to blame pandemic isolation for this level of goofiness but alas, I would have been doing it no matter what the state of the world.)
Inside the case is also some stickers, a card on a larger sheet and a three-page brochure with information about the set in a manner consistent with previous Colorverse releases.
Each page in the booklet features a picture of the ink bottle, a swatch of the color and a breakdown of the RGB, web hex number and Pantone color matches as well as surface tension and Ph. I have, in the past attempted to verify the accuracy of the Pantone values (FYI: they are not all the accurate) but have never bothered with the RGB or hex numbers. The only place that would be useful is when entering inks into the FPC database.
The Quarks sub-collection are blues and purples and the Leptons are mostly warm reds plus a green and grey.
Of the seventeen bottles, five feature red caps. These are the Bosons sub-collection. These colors are a more diverse range of colors.
The bottles included in the Standard Model are the “mid-sized” 15ml bottles from Colorverse. Not the giant 60ml bottles included in their regular sets nor the tiny sip sized 5ml (essentially sample) sized bottles. In this day and age, with new inks coming out on an almost daily basis, I think 15 to 20ml sized bottles are just about perfect.
I organized the initial swatch photos by sub-collection: Quarks, Leptons and Bosons. The first set, pictured above, is the Quarks. It’s a good range of blues and violets.
Next up is the Leptons, shown above, which is four reds, a green and a grey.
The Bosons sub-collection colors are quite the range of colors. I will continue to assert that I know nothing about particle physics so maybe there’s a reason that Colorverse chose these colors for these particles? Let me know in the comments.
Finally, I put all the colors in the set together to show the full range of hues. It breaks down like this:
None of the Standard Model inks contain glistening particles. A couple of the inks show a bit of sheen — mostly the deep blues — but many colors show a range of shading. There is also a nice range of high chroma and low chroma colors. I’m not suggesting that any of the inks are under-pigmented but rather that about half of the colors are earthier tones while the other half are bright, vivid colors.
Only three ink colors included in the set have been previously released by Colorverse — Photon, Gluon and Electron (Poor Selectron got left out of this party). This version of Gluon does not include the glistening particles which makes the color a little lighter and more green than yellow. The LE version of Photon is a bright shamrock green not the more teal blue-green of the original Photon No. 23 and the LE Version of Electron is more tomato red than the orangey color of the original Electron No. 31.
While a collector of ink might have initially been bothered by the duplicates, the change in hue for the LE set will set their minds at ease.
Keep going for ink swatch color comparisons and my conclusion…
