Ink Review: De Atramentis Pearlescent Amber Yellow

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I have been hearing about the De Atramentis Pearlescent inks a lot recently, so I decided to give them a shot. The Pearlescent inks have added shimmer, and come in 35ml bottles. The interesting thing about these inks are that each color comes in four different variations. Each variation has a different color shimmer, yellow, silver, bronze or copper. I decided to choose one to fully review, and to compare them with the other three variations. Today we are going to start with Amber Yellow, and just looking at the swabs I like the gold version best, so most of the photos will feature Amber Yellow Gold. I purchased my samples of ink from Vanness Pens. 

Left to right, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Copper. Gold is very bright, and I think the most useable. Silver is a bit too light for me. Bronze and Copper look pretty similar to each other, and almost have a mustard tone to them.

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The four different inks look very similar when using a paint brush, but have more contrast in actual writing.

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Swabs:

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In large swabs there is a ton of shimmer.

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Writing samples:

Let's take a look at how the ink behaves on fountain pen friendly papers: Rhodia, Tomoe River, and Leuchtturm.

Dry time: After 40 seconds the ink is completely dry, but you can still smear the shimmer.

Water resistance: Low

Feathering: None

Show through: Medium

Bleeding: None

Other properties: no shading, no sheen, and lots of shimmer. There could be some shading in there, but I didn't notice any since it was covered in shimmer.

On Staples 24 lb copy paper there was feathering and bleeding in every nib size. The broad nib completely clogged up and had to be cleaned out. I also had some clogging issues with the medium nib along the way.

Comparison Swabs:

Ink swabs for comparison, left to right (top to bottom for mobile RSS): De Atramentis Amber Yellow Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Copper.

Robert Oster Heart of Gold, Diamine Golden Sands, and Robert Oster Aussie Liquid Gold. Click here to see the yellow inks together. Depending on the shimmer color, Golden Sands or Aussie Liquid Gold might be the closest, Heart of Gold is much darker than all of the Amber Yellow's. All of these behaved better in my testing than Amber Yellow did. 

Longer writing:

I used a broad Kaweco Al-Sport Rose Gold with the Gold version, a broad Kaweco Sunrise with the Silver version, an Edison Collier Persimmon Swirl with a broad SIG nib for the Copper version, and a broad TWSBI Eco Pink for the Bronze version. I still…

I used a broad Kaweco Al-Sport Rose Gold with the Gold version, a broad Kaweco Sunrise with the Silver version, an Edison Collier Persimmon Swirl with a broad SIG nib for the Copper version, and a broad TWSBI Eco Pink for the Bronze version. I still think the Gold is my favorite of the four. All had some clogging issues, even with the wet flow. 

Overall, I think it's interesting that they have different colored shimmers, but I think some of them are too close to necessitate different versions. All four versions had lots of clogging issues, and the Gold version actually stained one of my converters (even though it was only inked up for about 24 hours). Out of the four the Gold is my favorite, but I don't think I would actually recommend these inks to anyone, mainly due to flow issues. If you are looking for a yellow shimmer ink, check out Diamine Golden Sands or Robert Oster Aussie Liquid Gold.

Disclaimer: I purchased this ink myself, and all photos and opinions are my own. This page does not contain affiliate links, and is not sponsored in any way.