Inkventpocalypse 2025 Day 4
How long has this been going on? I feel like I'm always doing these. It's never going to end...
Just kidding. This is Day 4 of all the advent calendars. Yes, it's now more than a week behind, but I'm not looking back, I'm looking forward. I think swatching one day and writing/publishing these things the next day is probably the best for my mental health, so I'll be doing this forever... but that's fine. I actually am enjoying doing it this way. I have less overwhelm. I'm finally caught up to the extra bits I did when I was trying to get this blog started, so as we go forward it'll be all at once.
Anyway, enough explanation, this bunch of advents was... a lot of sensory struggle for me. We have a scented ink (eugh), a tea with my least favourite ingredient in the world, and a watercolour with a pigment that I cannot quite figure out. So, let's start with the inkvents.
First up is Enigma Stationery's Inkvent 2025 day 4 with Bungubox's Kanda Festival Sarugakucho (link in Japanese) which is a reddish brown-orange with some shading. The blurb I found for the colour is that it is an orange-red colour from the traditional "hanten" coat used during the biannual Kanda Festival in Tokyo. Here's a link to more info on the Kanda Festival. I doodled the coat from the bottle label.
Next up is the first unpleasant sensory experience for this year's Inkvents. Diamine Inkvent 2025 Day 4 is the worst part of these things for me. It's a scented ink, Smoky Tobacco. I have to swatch scented inks with different tools and on different paper (quarantine). This would normally be a sort of appealing sepia brown with some green and grey (very fugly pretty) but the sharp adolescent-male-cologne smell of the scent is so off-putting I can't manage to like this. It was very dry and yet wet at the same time. It didn't seem to feather, but the swatch card I used is not coated, so it's too absorbent and so the ink spread quite a bit. I just don't know man. I just cannot do the scented inks. The doodle is of a cigarette in an ashtray. I used a Rosetta Notes swatch card cut down to fit the notepad & a Dominant Industry glass Ink Muddler (purchased from Wonder Pens Canada)
Last ink to swatch was the real standout for this set. Colorverse Colorvent 2025 Day 4 is Milky Sea (glistening). It's a dark, saturated blue with fine turquoise green shimmer. The blurb from the door of the calendar explains: "In some oceans, bacteria emit light, and for one night, the sea glows like a galaxy." This is a very accurate description of the ink and despite not being into blue ink, this one charmed me. I really appreciate the dark blue and how the very fine shimmer appears once it dries, there's no sheen to muck up the sparkle. It does give it that effect of a glowing night sea. I doodled some calm waves at night.
Next advent up for bids (sorry, been watching too much vintage Price is Right during the day) is the Greenleaf & Blueberry watercolur shell advent. This is the next difficulty. I tried looking up info on the pigment & the description, and I guess this is one of the ones that isn't in the archive and I'm not sure how to figure it out.
Day 4 is Titanium Warm Grey (Buff) PW64 with the doodle suggestion of a snowflake. I can find Titanium Buff but nothing looks quite like this and the pigment number doesn't exist (at least in that format). So I have no idea what exactly it might be, other than a version of Titanium White. It is a bit green looking in the pan (shell), but it's much warmer of a colour when painted out.
Last advent up for day 4 is the Friday Afternoon Tea Decaf Advent (Pyramid bags).
I ... uh. Thought it was pretty. It smells nice. But I cannot actually drink it. I really really tried. I just. Cannot.
Day 4's decaf pyramid tea is in Wonderland & has three ingredients: Apple, Blueberry & Hibiscus. I just cannot do hibiscus, at all. I got zero of the apple or blueberry and all of it was the sour bile flavour (for me! I have a lot of weird tastebuds I guess) of the hibiscus. It does smell lovely and if you're okay with hibiscus teas, you'll love this. I just can't handle it. I did keep trying to drink it, thinking maybe if it were cold, and I just could not. I tried!
Well, that's it for Day 4. Do you like scented inks? Do you like prugly (pretty ugly) colours? How do you handle scented inks if you're able to use them?