Pelikan M205 Duo Yellow Highlighter Ink

My Pelikan M205 yellow duo arrived a few days ago, and I wanted to play with the highlighter ink but didn't want to use the M205 pen. As I happened to have a Preppy highlighter available I made an eyedropper out of it and started highlighting.

This ink has an amazing green neon tinge to it, which you can see a bit of in the bottle in the above picture. There wasn't any feathering or bleed through (the journal is an Ecosystem with bright white paper), although the felt tip of the highlighter picked up some of the ballpen ink (which always happens).

This is just a fantastic neon yellow color, and you can purchase it at Goulet Pens (and other places I'm sure) separate from the pen itself. I don't use highlighters much these days, but I'm planning on using this one as it's just so bright and clear. If you make your own highlighters this might be an option to check out. I filled my Preppy about 2/3rds full but the 30ml bottle hardly seemed to have been used. So I'm thinking this will last a very long time with many, many highlighters filled.

Pelikan Edelstein Mandarin Ink

This is Mandarin, a clear true orange with just the slightest tinge of yellow, but that may be only when compared to another orange such as the Diamine Pumpkin. I'm not familiar with that many orange inks, but I think this might make an interesting highlighter if you wanted to dump the yellow and try this in a Preppy eyedropper (maybe with a drop or two of White of the Whale).



As you can see from the picture, this ink is not waterproof. There is no noticeable shading to Mandarin, and the ink didn't make my Muji steel fountain pen into a wet noodle. The pen's fine nib remained dry, no nib creep, and worked continuously--no dry starts or skipping, no shaking the pen to try and force ink into the capillary/feed. It's a well behaved ink, and there was no feathering on the paper and no bleed through on the Franklin Covey notepad, so this seems like a good choice for double-sided writing.

I wouldn't call this fast drying, while I didn't do a test of the Mandarin I have tested the Topaz and Jade and it's neither slow nor fast. It's definitely a fun color, not as serious as black, as soft as blue, nor as bold as red. If you're into orange inks or just want a change, give this one a try.

On the top right, courtesy of The New York Times, is a recent pic from the Milan fashion shows that actually does a good job of explaining Mandarin and Pumpkin. The Edelstein Mandarin ink is the color of the skirt, the Diamine Pumpkin is the top; jacket and model not included.

Pelikan M205 Duo Is Here

Just picked up the package so I haven't had a chance to try it, but am looking forward to inking this up and highlighting everything in sight. I also purchased an extra fine nib, for when I want to use this yellow beauty straight. This will make a nice addition to my collection, as I already have the M205 Clear Blue pen with a fine point.

Pelikan Edelstein Ink -- Jade

The one color among the much-anticipated Pelikan Edelstein inks that I very much wanted was Jade, which looked to me from the various pictures to be a soft yellow-tinged green that was different yet acceptable in polite company. I was thrilled to find that the color lived up to my expectations, it's a beautitful soft green with distinctly yellow overtones.



Jade is a very well-behaved ink, so polite and gentle you almost forget it's there. No ink creep on the nib, no skipping, flows very well, and while it almost made my Lamy Al-Star EF into a very wet writer the ink flow never quite reached that point. Just a bit wet, but not too much that it became annoying and messy. Drying time was average, neither incredibly short or long.



But the color is the main attraction for me. Jade is as close to a darker, more visible version of J. Herbin's Diabolo Menthe as I've seen; the latter is a touch more blue, but for me it's way too pale to use as an everyday writing ink. The above picture shows the two colors side by side, as well as the bottles. Jade is quite to my liking, and will definitely get a lot of play in my fountain pen rotation.


Finally, the bottle is a tie with Pilot Namiki's Iroshizuku as being one of the most elegant designs in glass. The picture above compares Edelstein's Jade on the right with J. Herbin's Diabolo Menthe on the left, showing off the Edelstein bottle's rectangular shape and larger bottle mouth. All four sides of the rectangle are slightly concave and give a nice, tapering look and feel to the thick glass, while the printing raised--also giving the bottle a distinctive feel and look.

The Edelstein Jade ink is a very pleasant surprise, with nothing usual or boring about either the color or the marketing design. I'm looking forward to trying the other colors I purchased, Topaz (a deep blue) and Mandarin (clear orange).

Diamine Twilight Ink

One of the new Diamine inks I really wanted to see was Twilight, a deep blue with just a hint of black in it that looked great in The Goulet Pen Company's pre-release swatches. The twilight time is a favorite of mine, so this became a must purchase. And as I had my De Atrementis Sherlock Holmes at hand, I decided to compare them.

First, the Diamine Twilight is a well-behaved ink. No skipping or nib creep, great saturation on the paper, and the drying time is okay. The color is rich and dark, and it's a great addition to your lineup. I used a Cross Century II fountain pen with an extra fine nib to try the Twilight, and was surprised at how dark the line was and how smoothly it flowed through the pen.

What I hadn't been expecting was how close it was to Sherlock Holmes, which is also a deep night blue color. The Diamine tends towards black while the De Atramentis has a touch more green in it, but at first glance they were hard to tell apart. Oxidation led to the Twilight looking a bit darker than the Sherlock, but I'm inclined to say that if you have one you might not need the other.

Erin C. Reviews Iroshizuku Syo-Ro Ink

(Guest Post by Erin C. with some fantastic ink pics!)

Having followed pen, ink & paper blogs for the past 2 or 3 years, it was quite a thrill to be the lucky winner of Pocket Blonde's one-year blogiversary giveaway. I promised Diane a review several weeks ago and today, having just read Notebooker Esq.'s review of Private Reserve Burgundy Mist, I am inspired to finally review Diane's giveaway prize: a bottle of Iroshizuku's Syo-Ro ink. Diane was also so kind as to include a Field Notes memo book.

I laughed in recognition at Notebooker, Esq.'s describing the goal of writing "the world's best ink review" as daunting as there are so many variables involved in an ink's performance. That said, I will list the two variables I can control.

Paper: Basics notebook journal with Clairefontaine paper (sent to me by Karen Doherty, VP of Marketing at Exaclair)

Gallery Leather Co. planner
Field Notes notebook (Diane sweetly added this with the ink she sent)

Pens: Parker 51 Flighter (F)

Lamy Safari (F)
Commander - American vintage lever-fill (M)
Parker Vector (broad Italic nib)

The ink flowed silkily across the Basic notebook's Clairefontaine paper, as you seasoned inkophiles might have guessed, with minimal to no show-through and no feathering. This held true with all of the pens, except where I wrote over a letter 3 times and of course you couldn't expect it not to go through in that case.

In the Gallery Leather Co. planner, the ink did show through as the paper is not as heavy as the Clairefontaine. The paper in the Field Notes memo book was absorbent, so bleed-through did happen, but no feathering.

The Iroshizuku ink has been reviewed as having “nice flow” and therefore is more prone to those characteristics. I would chose Noodler's or maybe Lamy ink in a fine point, such as Pilot 78G to use in Field Notes journal.

Iroshizuku's bottles are as beautiful as perfume bottles, if not more so. It has been discussed by many as a pricey ink, but if there is a color you like, it would be a worthy splurge. Plus, as mentioned in other reviews, there is the feature of a cone-shape at the bottom to enable you to draw up the last drop of ink.

I want to thank Diane at Pocket Blonde for the opportunity to try this ink. Syo-Ro (Pine Needle Dew) is a beautiful color, combining blue with green in a very subtle way. I would have called it Ocean.

De Atramentis Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Ink

Another De Atramentis Historic Persons ink I recently purchased, as a companion to the Sherlock Holmes Night Blue ink, was this bottle of Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle. The color is Oriental Red, which should be reddish orange but looks too dark and with a slighrtly blue tinge to it.

I've included the above photo of some of my reds to show where it it on the red ink scale. The photo to the left hasn't been enhanced, but in that pic it looks more like red-orange than the above. Perhaps a difference in paper (Rhodia vs. copy paper) or light or...whatever.

There's no obvious tie in between Arthur Conan Doyle and the Oriental Red color De Atramentis chose for his ink, just as Sherlock Holmes and Night Blue ink also have no particular connection. The color is not bright like the Diamine Poppy, and I think of it as being a good editor's red, something I could see marking up a handwritten page of fiction dealing with ratiocination and hell hounds.

Like the Sherlock Holmes, the ink isn't particularly quick drying. It flows well from my Platinum Affection fine point fountain pen, and there was no bleed through on the paper (copy paper in a very pretty notebook). It's a muddy red more like claret that hasn't been decanted--something Conan Doyle and Holmes would have seen as a clue to the time of Lord Something-or-Other's death, perhaps (after the cheese tray but before the butler could do it).

Reds are hard to describe, harder to use and not make it seem as if you're critiquing something or someone. To me they're more personal, a Greek chorus in a bottle warning of lemurs. A great addition to your red collection, if you're looking for something a bit different.