Diamine Shimmertastic - Arctic Blue

My penultimate shimmer ink from Diamine – Arctic blue and WOW!.  Paint manufacturers describe this colour as a light breezy bay blue with a twilight blue undertone  - whatever that means.  I suspect the colour is simply because the blue is similar to the blue of the arctic.

​Arctic blue to me conjures up a bright crisp light blue and as you can see from the photo below it should be very pale and not so bright.

This ink is so much more.  I did some writing samples while waiting for swatches to dry so was not prepared for the sheen.  If you like Happy Holidays from the 2019 inkvent calendar then you will love this.
The colour in the bottle is quite dark.  It is brighter on opening, the shimmer is silver.

Chromatography is still almost monochromatic like all the shimmer inks but the red at the leading edge gives this ink some lovely properties.

On col-o- ring it’s a ‘tealy’-blue but the shimmer makes it look quite dark.  On Tomoe its quite bright but it wasn’t easy to get the shimmer to show in the swatch.

Col-o-ring

I can't believe I didn't notice that sheen before

Tomoe and surprisingly the sheen isn't obvious

As with all my shimmer ink reviews I used a TWSBI go pen and copy, Midori and Tomoe paper.
On copy paper the shimmer was quite obvious without changing the angle at which you looked at the writing, it was slower drying than the other shimmer inks I have reviewed but still acceptable.  The other inks have been dry between 20 and 25 secs, it may not be obvious in the photo but there is still a slight smear at 25 secs.  There was no feathering but there was slight show through.

I then used Midori and this is when I became impressed as I was waiting for swatches to dry.  The shimmer is not so obvious but the sheen is.  Unfortunately dry time increased noticeably.

The sheen is more noticeable depending on the light

As I expected this ink on Tomoe – wow!  You can see the sheen but a slight change to the angle you look at the paper and it gorgeous.  Dry time sadly is very very slow.

sheen

shimmer and sheen

I think the fact I like this ink is pretty obvious – I am very impressed with the sheen and the shimmer.  I am going to use it a lot as it is fun.  I was so surprised when I started this as I thought I had just bought a turquoise ink with silver shimmer.
If you don’t like shimmer inks credible dupes are Electron from Birmingham pens though I find that a very wet ink, Bungbox Tozai line (a Sailor ink) and Blackstone’s Barrier Reef blue.

In summary -
Saturation – high
Shading – no
Sheen – yes - red
Shimmer – yes - silver
Flow –good
Nib dry-out - none
Nib creep - none
Start-up – Excellent 
Feathering – none, not even on cheap paper
Drying – slow on better quality paper
Cleaning - good
Water resistance – not good, everything would have been gone if I had held it any longer under the tap.