Ink Review #203: Robert Oster Heart Of Gold

At the beginning of this year, I decided to be a bit more organized about my reviews. The first week of the month for 2018 is reader requests, the seconds week is all about one color, the third week is new releases, and the fourth is focused on one specific brand. This week is devoted to Robert Oster inks. Robert Oster has recently been delving into the world of shimmer inks, which he calls Shake 'N' Shimmy inks, and the first ones released were a Holiday 4-pack which includes 15ml bottles of Heart of Gold. Red Gold, Peppermint Candy, and Silver Fire and Ice. I purchased my Holiday 4-Pack at Pen Chalet (they are on sale right now, by the way).

The color:

Heart of Gold is a bright gold with tons of gold shimmer. Seasonally, I consider most metallics to be neutrals, and as such, I use them year-round. 

Usually when I receive new inks, I swab them and place them on the schedule for review around three months from now. Occasionally I will get an ink that's so interesting that I place it on the schedule as early as I can. When I first swabbed this ink I knew I would have to make room on the schedule to review it soon. It looks like liquid gold. I'm pretty sure it was love at first sight.

The ink drops are nothing but bright gold shimmer.

Dry time: 35 seconds

Water resistance: Low

Feathering: None

Show through: Medium

Bleeding: Low-there was some bleeding in the flex nib on Tomoe River paper. I think if you used 68 gsm Tomoe River it would be fine, but I use 52 gsm for ink reviews.

Other properties: No shading, no sheen, but tons of gold shimmer. You get shimmer in every nib size, including extra fine. I was blown away by the amount of shimmer in this ink. The feed only seemed to clog once in the fine nib, but after writing three more words the ink ran smoothly again. 

I would suggest rotating your pen after every paragraph to make sure the shimmer stays in suspension, but this is not unique to this ink, it applies to all shimmer inks. If clogs do happen with shimmer inks, I just prime the feed a little bit and keep writing. Make sure you have good pen hygiene, and clean out your pen thoroughly. I usually clean pens with shimmer in them about every two weeks, and I use an ultrasonic cleaner if I feel there is still shimmer in the feed, but I've never had a problem using shimmer inks.

On 20 pound copy paper there was a little bit of feathering but other than that the ink behaved well. 

Ink swabs for comparison, left to right (top to bottom for mobile RSS): Robert Oster Gold Antiqua, Robert Oster Heart of Gold, and Diamine Golden Sands. Click here to see the Robert Oster ins together, the Shake 'N' Shimmy inks will be at the bottom of the page. I suspect that Gold Antiqua is the base ink for Heart of Gold, but that's just my guess, I don't have confirmation on that. Heart of Gold is more of a pale gold, but has at least ten times the shimmer that Golden Sands does. 

Robert Oster African Gold, Robert Oster Yellow Sunset, and Bungubox Sweet Potato Yellow. Click here to see the yellow inks together.

Longer writing: 

I used a Pelikan M400 White Tortoise fitted with a vintage 400N nib on Tomoe River paper. Holy cow Batman, it's amazing. I didn't have any clogging, and as long as I rotated my pen after every paragraph the shimmer kept flowing freely. The ink does have a wet flow. If I didn't use this pen daily for ink reviews, this ink would live in this pen, because the combo of pen and ink is freaking awesome.

Overall, I'm seriously in love with this ink. I haven't been crazy about shimmer inks so far, but there have been a few that I have liked a lot more than others, Nemosine Blue Snowball Nebula Twinkle, for example, I really like. I love this ink so much that I wish it came in a full 50ml bottle because I can see myself using it for Christmas cards and special occasions. The downside to this ink is that it's only available in 15ml bottles in the 4-pack, and is pretty pricey for the amount of ink you get. 

I love that the Holiday 4-pack is full of inks great for Christmas cards. After using this ink, it makes me wish I could create my own shimmer 4-pack. I wish there was a metallic 4-pack, full of this ink, a silver version of this ink with silver shimmer, a rose gold version with rose gold shimmer, and a copper or bronze version. I love to see ink collections with a theme, and hope to see more of them from Robert Oster. Give this one a try, you might love it.

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