Ink Review #129: Jacques Herbin Amethyste De L'Oural

Today's ink is the first shimmer ink I have reviewed, Jacques Herbin 1798 Amethyste de L'Oural. I plan on doing a lot more shimmer reviews in the next few months. The holidays are coming up, which I consider to be the best time of the year for shimmer. Amethyste is part of the new 1789 line from Jacques Herbin, which is different from the 1670 inks from the last few years. Lisa Vanness came to the Seattle-ish Pen Possee meet up this month, and had a bottle for us to try, so I snagged a sample. You can find the ink at Vanness Pens.

I always think that glitter was created in hell to drive moms crazy. When kids use it for art projects it gets EVERYWHERE. I swear, days later I still find some random glitter in their hair and in the carpet and no matter how hard you try, you just can't get rid of it. I don't know a lot about shimmer inks, so I'm learning as I go here, but hopefully it will be better than glittery art projects.

The color...

Amethyste is a dark purple with lots of silver shimmer.

In large swabs you can see the little bit of gold sheen among all of the silver shimmer.

So let's talk about tricks for dealing with shimmer ink. If your pen has been sitting for a while with a shimmer ink in it, put the pen between the palms of your hands and rub your hands together, which will turn the pen and warm it up, redistributing the shimmer particles in the ink. If you are writing and you suddenly lose all shimmer, do it again to keep the shimmer in suspension. It is easier to see when the shimmer has settled if you put the ink in a demonstrator pen. I do shake the bottle/sample before filling a pen to make sure the shimmer hasn't settled to the bottom. 

Dry time: 35 seconds

Water resistance: Medium-I was surprised it held up as well as it did. Some ink washed away and blurred, but you would still be able to make out what was written.

Feathering: None

Show through: Medium

Bleeding: None

Other properties: Low shading, low sheen, and silver shimmer. The shimmer did show up in all nib sizes, just a lot less in the smaller sizes. If you run your hand across the page, you will come away with a glittery hand. If you touch the page a lot, it will eventually lose a lot of its shimmer.

On 32 pound copy paper there was a little bit of feathering on the flex writing, but other than that I didn't have any problems.

Ink swabs for comparison, left to right (top to bottom for RSS): Diamine Purple Pazzazz, J. Herbin 1789 Amethyste de L'Oural, and Diamine Grape. Purple Pazzazz is the closest-the purple color is pretty close, but it has gold shimmer, where Amethyste has silver shimmer.

Diamine Flowers: Pansy, Diamine Cult Pens Deep Dark Purple, and Diamine Imperial Purple. Click here to see the purple inks together.

Longer writing:

I used a Pelikan m400 White Tortoise with a vintage 400N nib for the top portion, then I switched to a Pilot Vanishing Point Raden, broad nib. I used Tomoe River paper. I found this ink to be on the wetter side.

Overall, I didn't have any problems with this ink, other than a little bit of feathering on copy paper. I like that it has some sheen along with all of the shimmer. I do love that the shimmer is silver, since I prefer it over gold. Occasionally you will get a letter or a word that has less shimmer, but then it usually starts back up.

I wouldn't say this ink is super consistent, since there are so many variables with the added shimmer-did you shake before filling, did you warm up the pen and rotate it to redistribute the shimmer before writing, have you left the ink in a pen for a really long time so the ink has dried out? There are a lot of opportunities for problems with shimmer inks, so you have to be more intentional with them, and make sure you clean them out regularly (I would say a month at the longest, but that's just my opinion).

I'm still not crazy about shimmer so far, but I think this ink is worth a try if you do like shimmer.

Disclaimer: I received this sample of ink for free, but all photos and opinions are my own. There are no affiliate links on this page.