Ink Review #147: Diamine Golden Sands

Today's ink is Diamine Golden Sands, from the 2015 Shimmertastic collection. The holidays are coming up, which means it's shimmer season. 

The color:

Golden Sands is a yellow with gold shimmer. 

In large swabs, the ink looks like a sheet of gold shimmer, it's beautiful.

Dry time: 50 seconds, which is a very long dry time.

Water resistance: Low

Feathering: None

Show through: Medium

Bleeding-Low, there was only bleeding in the flex nib on Tomoe River paper.

Other properties: Low shading, there could be more if it wasn't hidden under the shimmer. No sheen, and gold shimmer.

On 32 pound copy paper, there was a little bit of feathering, mainly in the flex nib, but other than that it behaved well. 

Ink swabs for comparison, left to right (top to bottom for mobile RSS): Robert Oster Gold Antiqua, Diamine Golden Sands, and Robert Oster Yellow Sunset. Gold Antiqua is a cooler gold tone, while Golden Sands is a warmer gold. Click here to see the yellow inks together, and click here to see the Diamine inks together. 

Longer writing:

I used a Twsbi Diamond 580 AL with a medium nib on Tomoe River paper. 

I did have a little bit of a flow issue with this one, it wasn't that ink wasn't coming out, it just felt a bit too thin. Every pen I tried it in felt overly scratchy, even the ones that usually feel smooth. I did find it helpful to have the ink in the Twsbi, just because it's a demonstrator, so I was able to see when the ink had begun to settle and needed some adjusting. I ended up rotating the pen about every four or five lines to keep the shimmer in suspension.

Overall, the color is great, it's a nice warm gold, and would be a great fit for holiday cards. The flow of the ink was a bit of a problem for me, so it's not one that I would use often, but I would absolutely use it for the holidays, just because it's so pretty. 

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