Late October inxperiment

Finally swatched the October inxperiment. Novembers is due this week...

Cult Pens is evil, TK Maxx ditto

All items below were purchased by me from my own money and no inducements were offered to create this post and I plan to do more of these to shame myself for over-spend.

Cult Pens have at the time of this post (30th of July 2018) a 3 for 2 on entry-level pens.

I have a weakness for Pilot Preppy's and the Monami Oilka looked interesting.  I have a dislike relationship with the Zebra and Pilot V-Pens - I have yet to find a paper that they don't bleed through and feather and basically I don't regard them as good everyday pens.  If you want a pen to sign things regularly where you want to be assured which is the original document they're great, they also start well every time, I still find them blooby bleedy monsters and when I'm done with the few I have I'm getting rid of them.  I've seen a lot of people recommend them as starter pens, I wouldn't.  I plan to do a (more) ranty post about them some day with samples.

Anyhow, I put a few fine and extra fine Preppys and Oilkas into my shopping cart and then I put a couple of the Anniversary Diamine wedges  By that point I was at almost £35 and at £50 Cult Pens offer Free Shipping.  So 3 Diamine Samples: Regency Blue, Espresso and Purple Dreams, one Callifolio: Inca Sol; a platinum adapter for ordinary refils and a clutch pencil sharpener and I was just over the £50. Now I just need three more of the Diamine Wedges and I have the 8 to make the circle.

Samples are below and images of the pens. I haven't added the ink to the Preppy's as they're backups for the ones I have and possibly give to people pens for them to try reasonable cheap fountain pens  The Monami Oilakas are quite nice, the extra-fine is a little scratchy but they're quite solid and they take standard international cartridges..

 

I also visited TK Maxx during the week not expecting much, occasionally they have some nice bits and pieces and I have picked up some interesting things.  I was actually looking for a water bottle as I've found the Twining's Cold Infuse and with the current weather the idea of drinking hot tea is just not really appealing (except for some medicinal Lemon and Ginger, which I have found quite good for my sinuses) and Tesco have them on special offer.  I did get  the water bottle - a borosilicate one but seeing as it's going to live on my desk the weight isn't going to be an issue.  

Before I got to the kitchenware section the stationery section sang it's siren song.  I came across a Loooq Koyoto Notebook cover and some notebooks. There's plenty of space in the cover for a pen and it will take a standard A5 notebook.as a replacement. The cover pocket has a tab to help pull smaller things out, there's one large interior pocket as well.  It sits nicely open and it would be a nice single notebook cover.

The notebooks are Punch Studio with Write, Compose and  Notes written on them. 

For me TK Maxx is useful for finding  unusual notebooks that are hard to find and then I can, for a relatively inexpensive price, try different paper producers.  It's also a terrible drain on my wallet.

July Appelboom Inxperiment

 The July inxperiment all swatched up, I've been staring at the
postcard and the colours aren't really inspiring me to work with them and it.

Ah well.  I do like the brown., the Petit Prince is interesting, the Iroshizuku is incredibly vibrant.  The Lamy green is very green and the yellow is indeed very yellow.

I'm not sure I'd buy a full bottle of any of it but they're interesting colours.

The swatches are on a light cream notebook I got from Tesco that's perfect for swatches so the colours may be a little off.
I'm getting a bit better with the writing with the glass pen.

All items purchased by me and no inducement was offered by anyone to write this post.

Wyvernfriend's Desk

I now have anew lap desks (more commonly known as a writing slope) and a new desk.  I plan better photographs of this stuff.  I purchased them at the Victor Mee Auctions of the contents of Cafe en Siene, most of the contents were Art Nouveau and I'm a sucker for that era.  I plan to clean them a bit and possibly do minor restorations but otherwise they're actually quite good. There were a few others that I kinda wanted more than the writing slope I got but they would have taken much more work to restore.  The paper on the writing slope is the same piece of paper on the desk writing space.

June inxperiment

I've been staring at these colours for a while wondering what to do with the postcard... I'm thinking of picking up some masking fluid and going a bit crazy with washes.  If I do I'll update this post.

I found one of my glass pens recently and made use of it.

May Appelboom inxperiment

I subscribe to the Inxperiment project by Appelboom, I pay out of my own pocket for it and receive nothing for this post only the joy of playing with ink and inky fingers. None of the linked sites offer me any reimbursement for linkage.  I've tried to link to the manufacturer website for the inks but if not I'm linking to companies I've shopped with.

I got distracted last month by life and Woollinn where I spent a breathtaking amount of money on Yarn. Then I went to Galway to visit my parents, the end of May has my birthday and I always take a few days around it to the Irish June Bank holiday.  It's also the weekend of Bloom and I went there on the first day before going to Galway on the Friday. I was off on the Wednesday and my husband wan't and the weather was lovely so I set up one of the outdoors tables and got playing with the ink from Appelboom's Inxperiment. 

The usual postcard came in with the rest, not a lot of space for painting this time.  This shot has what I used for the play.  The ink comes in a plastic bag each time, well sealed.





So the colours are (in the same order as tested)  Mont Blanc Swan Illusion - an interesting grey/brown); KWZ Honey - a colour that's somewhere between brown. orange and yellow, intense; Kyo-Iro Cherry Blossom of Keage - a pink that dries with an interesting texture; Diamine Beau Blue  - a bright summer sky colour; and last, but not least, Aurora Black - a deep, intense black.

 So I played with the colours and decided not to paint the background; the only colours I used were what was in the pack so the green is a mix of the blue and the honey, painting the honey over the blue made a slightly different green than vice versa. The black stayed very black even when I pushed water through the paintbrush.  I would recommend that shade if you wanted a solid black ink.

I also sampled up my ink journal.

I've been using last months KWZ Cappuccino in a pen all month, I may have to buy a full bottle for use another time.  I'm currently trying to use up the ink in pens because I want to use and test all the pens.

Flashback to the 90s

In case of any queries, I bought these many years ago, both the filofax and the StyleFax, possibly in O'Gormans newsagent in Galway (that's now Easons) I used my own moneys.

I should probably rotate this but I wanted to get a post up.  I'm working on a post about the latest Appelboom post, which should go up later today.

I found this in a filofax from back in the early 90s.  Back when they made books to go in your filofax!