Ink Review #162: Diamine Arctic Blue

Diamine released a new collection of Shimmertastic inks this year, which included 10 new colors. Today we are going to talk about Arctic Blue. First off, I gotta stop trusting the label on the ink sample. This is the second time that the label has had incorrect spelling so I end up spelling the ink name wrong in the writing sample.  I now know it's spelled Arctic Blue, not Artic Blue, so my bad-please ignore my spelling error since I don't have enough ink to re-do it. I purchased my sample of ink from Vanness Pens.

The color:

Arctic Blue is a medium blue with shading, sheen and shimmer. 

Large swabs of this ink blow me away-the ink is beautiful.

There is so much silver shimmer packed in. Since this ink does have shimmer, it requires some rotating before use to make sure the shimmer particles are in suspension. 

Dry time: 20 seconds

Water resistance: Low

Feathering: None

Show through: Medium

Bleeding: Low-just a little bit in the flex nib and swab on Tomoe River paper.

Other properties: Medium shading, high sheen, and silver shimmer. I was really impressed with the sheen-every paper showed sheen in the flex nib, and on Tomoe River paper it showed sheen in every nib size. 

The ink performed really well on 20# copy paper-I was really impressed. There's some shading and even a little bit of sheen.

Ink swabs for comparison, left to right (top to bottom for mobile RSS): Diamine Blue Lightning, Diamine Arctic Blue, and Diamine Tropical Glow (reviews of Blue Lightning and Tropical Glow to come another day). All three of these are from the Shimmertastic collections. Click here to see the Diamine inks together (the Shimmertastics are at the bottom of the page). Blue Lightning is a much lighter blue than Arctic Blue, and Tropical Glow has a lot more green in it. 

Blackstone Barrier Reef Blue, Robert Oster Blue Water Ice, and Lamy Pacific Blue. Click here to see the blue inks together. Blue Water Ice is the closest to Arctic Blue (without the shimmer of course). 

Longer writing:

I used an Edison Nouveau Premier Seaglass, medium nib, on Tomoe River paper. The ink is a little bit wet, but I didn't have any flow issues. 

Overal, this ink is beautiful. On Tomoe River paper it shows some amazing shading, sheen and shimmer. I'm still not sold on the idea of shimmer, but this one is gorgeous. 

Disclaimer: I purchased this ink myself, and all photos and opinions are my own. There are no affiliate links on this page.