Inkventpocalypse 2025 Day 14
We're back to the inks! Day 14 is a nice, low key, but saturated day of inks, the watercolour is a lovely standard & the tea is top tier for winter & summer.
Starting off with the Inkvents, we have one from a maker I do not endorse, but I don't mind samples when they come my way.
Enigma Stationery Inkvent Day 14 is Ferris Wheel Press (boo, hiss) x DC Heroic Blue, it's a (am I slipping?) really stunning shimmery, sheening, AND surprisingly lightly shading mid blue with red sheen, gold sparkle and pink flashes. I may not be fully a blue hater. I don't know what it is about this Superman themed ink, but it was really dense & fun to work with. Don't expect me to like more blue inks unless they're this over the top. I don't know if I'd put this in a high value pen, just to note. I was covered in blue splatters after this swatching session. The doodle is of whatever the latest Superman iteration logo is.
Diamine Inkvent Teal Edition 2025 Day 14 is another pigmented ink, this time in a pink (the M in CMYK) called Mittens. It doesn't have a shimmer like the cyan/blue one did (Day 11's Brr! blue pigment ink) but that's okay. It seems milky in the bottle, but applies kind of watery. I tried comparing it to another pink pigmented ink I have - Roher & Klingner SketchInk in Vroni, but Vroni is bluer, denser and thicker. It's much more magenta than the lighter pink of Mittens. Of course I doodled a pair of mittens.
Last up is Colorverse Colorvent 2025 in the very deep sheeny violet of MAVEN Mission. This is another really lovely dense ink. I love a violet ink. This one might be a good substitute for the original green/bronze/gold sheening Lamy Dark Lilac . I have both the original version of the ink & while sheeny, it's not over the top like the reformulated 2024 version is. (In order to limit the dragon hoard piles of full bottles of ink around here, I tend to limit my collecting to grey, pink & purple inks. I focus on pens that are primarily pink & small/compact.) I (attempted) to doodle the solar rays impacting Mars, like on the NASA MAVEN mission's main page. The door to the ink says: "After a solar storm brushed past Mars, a violet aurora bloomed across its sky."
Next up is a lovely standard watercolour in the Greenleaf & Blueberry Watercolour Advent in Seashells & a cute little doodle (I got a little carried away with it).
Day 14 in the watercolour advent calendar is French Red Ochre (PR102). It's a warm red finely ground natural pigment. It reminds me of a specific Crayola Crayon that I loved from the 64 colour pack. I never really paid attention to the names, but I really loved the crayon for it's deep, ruddy colour that was always super smooth & dense. Even when crayons became more wax/fillers and less pigment, that one colour was still very buttery smooth & easy to work with. This pigmented watercolour is no different. You can tell by the drawing below that it handled very beautifully and was so easy to work with. French Red Ochre is a good earth colour to have, it's inexpensive and currently available at G&B (one of the few that are when I link to them). If you're looking to start a landscape set, this is a good start, especially for the autumn & iron rich landscapes.
I did the little doodle of a cozy cottage, as suggested. I have drawn/painted so many of these little cottages thanks to my Dad and Bob Ross. I will never tire of a little log cabin in the snow to paint. Gosh this one is TINY though, which shows how easy this particular pigment was to work with.
Last up is the tea I am currently drinking and am putting a reminder to buy in bulk when it's back in stock.
Friday Afternoon Tea Day 14 is Spicy Peach Cobbler Rooibos. It's a deceptively warming tea with the rooibos and chai spices, but it smells like a pastry warm from the oven. There are big pieces of peach that perfume the whole room. It's a summer-hinted version of my always favourite cinnamon rooibos type teas. It's cooled off in the mug and is still delicious. It'd be amazing as an iced tea during the summer months (when it's available) and would absolutely hold up to a touch more sweetness with honey and some cream added. I brewed it as recommended, as I do all the teas in the advent, but I would brew it doubly strong and a bit longer to really enhance the sweet fruity spiciness.
Well, it's been a lot longer than I anticipated to get to this day's post. I'm glad I was able to get it done today. I still need to post my Roll of 28 for today, but I'm not so great at context switching when I'm in one focus zone (hello AuDHD!) so it'll get done after posting this behemoth. I had a lot to discuss today!
Now the questions for you, dear reader: Did you have a favourite crayon or coloured pencil that you tried to use no matter what when you were young? Does it translate to what you like to use or surround yourself now? Does a colour's name (ink, watercolour, paint, in general) affect how you feel about it? What colour is puce to you? (that's a random one)
Happy February, I hope you have a lovely week & fully enjoy all the sweets in the sales after this weekend. (We end up doing electronics for this holiday, we're not a terribly traditionally sentimental couple.)
-subgirl your still stained blue inkygeek