Inkventpocalypse 2025 Day 8

It's so dreary and rainy here that everything feels super late until it IS late then it's surprising. Today's Inkvents are a bright standard, yet another blue sheener & a watery taupe. The watercolour brings the sparkle & the tea is very fragrant.

First up, as usual, are the three Inkvents.

Enigma Stationery Inkvent 2025 Sheaffer Skrip Pink is a bright, almost highlighter blue-leaning hot pink. Sheaffer Skrip inks with the Skrip-wells in blue-black and black were my first ever bottles of ink I ever used. My father had kept them from his college years and he would let me try them along with his dip pens and calligraphy supplies. This is definitely a pink he would have loved, and I am a big fan, too. It's very bright and close to the colour I like to dye my hair in the summer. It leans blue & has some slight shading. I did my doodle of a very pink cotton candy cone.

Diamine Inkvent Teal Edition 2025 is Dream Catcher (extreme sheen). This is yet another (dark) blue with red sheen. We're up to how many already? This one is EXTREME sheen, so it's mostly red/pink with some background blue. It takes a long time to dry and feels thick on the nib due to the sheen. I doodled a dream catcher, which I won't comment on the appropriateness of.

Colorverse Colorvent 2025 Snow Angel is another super insipid watery taupe (?) coloured ink. I am not sure how to classify this one. It's giving slightly dirty water and applies that way. The darker bits in the swatch are where the Kakimori nib burnishes the wet paper and leaves a different texture. You'll see this in lightly pigmented inks and drier inks. This one was both watery and dry, which caused the burnishing. The blurb on the door for this one says "Snow Angel: Through Hubble's lens, the silhouette of an angel drifted like a taupe colored mist." I doodled the nebula coined as Snow Angel.

Next up is a really fun sparkly watercolour.

The Day 8 for the Greenleaf & Blueberry Watercolour Advent Calendar 2025 (with seashells) is Faux Pearl. There's no pigment number for this one. It's a super shiny, sparkly silver in the pan (shell). The doodle suggestion is a Snowman. This paint was hard to see on the off-white watercolour paper, as you'll see in the next photo.

The faux pearl is VERY sparkly and not exactly silver, it reflect silvery, but it was more of an idea of sparkly pearl on the page when not under a direct ringlight. The suggested doodle is of a snowman, which was very difficult to make look like anything since the pearl sparkle would work best as a highlight or on dark paper. I am definitely a fan of the sparkle!

Last up is the teavent which is so relaxing and herbaceous.

Day 8 from Friday Afternoon Tea Advent (decaf, pyramid bags) is Moonglow. There might have been a sparkly moon in it, but it's hard to tell when it's in a bag. The ingredients were 90% stuff I've never had before: Heather flower, lemon myrtle, moon sprinkles*, lavender, yarrow flower (*Moon sprinkles contain: dextrose, corn starch, dextrin, magnesium stearate, confectioner's glaze, mica-based pearlescent pigments, carnuba wax).

All I can really smell and taste is the lavender, but that is only really because I have no idea what any of the other herbs taste or smell like, so it reads as lavender with some other herbal notes. It's not bad at all, but I definitely want to take a nap now. Very relaxing and a tea I would probably get a bag of next summer if it's available again, if nothing else because of the sparkly moons.

So day 8 wasn't as traumatic as day 7 was, for sure. We're still plodding along doing the inkvent swatching/tea drinking/painting/photos one night and the next night doing the photo editing & typing things up. I really enjoy doing the swatches, less so this part of things, but it's so much easier only doing it in one place. I might take a day off this week (the week of 21-27 Dec. 2025) to just relax, but we'll see.

Time for the questions: are there any pens or inks that have extreme sentimental value for you? What kind of story do they have for you? Also, do you have opinions on sparkly sprinkles in mixed teas? What might you use a sparkly watercolour for? Thanks for reading this far & engaging! Happy Solstice and happy winter (and happy summer if you're in the southern hemisphere!)