Cityluxe is a new-to-me stationery shop in Singapore, and they have kindly sent over a few items for me to give away and share with Pen Addict readers. First up is the very cool Vinta Inks Sandugo, a dark red fountain pen ink with a green sheen. I have one bottle to give away, so read the rules below and enter away.
Posts filed under Vinta
Vinta Azure Fountain Pen Ink Review
Vinta Inks have been one of the more popular inky releases this year, with an interesting product lineup of pastel colors, shimmer, and sheen - all in beautiful packaging.
While I could hav gone with one of the wilder colors for my review, I stayed in my wheelhouse with Vinta Azure. Experimentation, right? Mostly, I’m a chicken, and a little stuck in my ways when it comes to ink colors. There aren’t many shades I prefer over a beautiful blue, especially with the shading and sheen this one offers.
And sheen is king with this one. The base ink is a blue that is deep, but retains some brightness where it goes down thinner on the page. Once it dries, Azure is a sheen machine, with 80-90% of the line covered in a bright red/pink sheen. It looks fantastic.
For this review, I used an Aurora Optima with a fine flex nib on a Yoseka Notebook. The combination of heavy ink flow from the nib and this paper made this ink look darker than it will on other pages with other nibs. You can see more of the base ink color on the Rhodia and Tomoe River samples. It gives off a very Bungubox Sapphire vibe, with a hint of Sailor Sky High, albeit it with a lot more sheen.
At $12.50 for a 30 ml bottle, Vinta Inks are good quality and fairly priced. Plus, for each bottle they sell, Vinta donates to educational initiatives in their home country of the Philippines. That is something I can definitely get behind.
(Vanness Pens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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Vinta Pink Sands Shimmer Santa Cruz 1983 Ink: A Review
(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)
Vinta Ink is made in the Philippines, with Pink Sands named for the coraline sands that line the beaches of the Great Santa Cruz Island in the southern part of the Philippines.
The ink comes in a box labeled “Santa Cruz” with a tiny swatch of the color. Although the box looks nice, I found the lettering really hard to read, and assumed that the ink color was called Santa Cruz. That’s not a big deal, because the bottle itself has “Pink Sands” written clearly on it (if you’re smart enough to look closely, which admittedly I wasn’t, which is why all my writing samples call the ink “Santa Cruz.” I need bifocals.
Although the ink name is Pink Sands, the color is definitely more of a bright peach. This is explained in the ink’s description, which says the color is supposed to evoke the pink beach at sunset. The shimmer in the ink is both pink and rose gold.
When I opened the bottle, I was surprised to discover what looked like sandy growths on the bottle threads. This “ink crud” seems to plague orange inks, but, in this case, the shimmer definitely contributed to the crusty deposit.
I’ve had the ink in my TWSBI Eco for over a week and the crud didn’t collect on my nib. This is likely because, being a ding dong, I didn’t realize this was a shimmer ink. I didn’t shake the bottle before inking my pen, thus, no shimmer was drawn in. I suspect, had I shaken the bottle and inked the pen properly, sandy formations would’ve appeared on the nib.
Vinta Pink Sands is a bright peach color with yellow and pink gold shimmer. The color is fairly uniform on the Col-o-dex card swab and offers little shading (but lots of shimmer) when writing with a Brause Blue Pumpkin nib. The ink splats are interesting because they actually dry with tangible edges to them.
I tested the ink on Rhodia dot pad paper. Again, you can see that the ink is uniform in the swab and on the ink bottle print. The color is bright and quite readable. It is a slow-drying ink and it is not waterproof.
Chromatography reveals only slight variations of color in this ink. It contains some pink but peach predominates.
Big ol’ Texas-sized nibs really show this ink off. I used my Handwritmic nib on MD Cotton paper, and . . . just wow! There’s gorgeous shading, pooling, and sheen.
Overall, I’m not a fan of this particular color. It’s a little too bright for my tastes (I prefer darker oranges with lots of shading). And, I’m not too keen on shimmer inks. I always worry about the shimmer gunking up my nib and clogging the converter or piston mechanism.
I plan to try other Vinta inks, first because they’ve created some really interesting colors. Second, I appreciate that the company donates 25 Philippine pesos to Teach for the Philippines, Inc., an organization that advocates for quality education for all Filipino children.
You can purchase Vinta Pink Sands Shimmer Santa Cruz 1983 from Vanness Pens for $13.99 (30ml) or $3.00 for a 4ml sample.
(Vanness Pens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.
Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!
