Scribal Workshop are a small family-run business, and among their wares are several fountain-pen-friendly inks, such as a particularly lovely one named Amethyst Purple. It comes packaged in a small cardboard box, and the ink itself comes in a cute glass bottle. I always prefer glass bottles to plastic ones - they look and feel better, and don't create plastic waste!
This ink is a delicate shade of lavender unlike any other one in my collection, as my tastes lean towards darker and more vivid colours. I actually like this shade very much - it is pale, but not so pale as to be difficult to see.
However, my trusty Montblanc notebook has found its Kryptonite...
I have used countless pen and ink combinations in this notebook - De Atramentis in a broad nib pen (a combo that sends most notebooks into a state of feathery shock), sheening inks, thin inks, thick inks, and it takes them all. But this Amethyst Purple feathers astonishingly when used in my TWSBI medium nib pen, even bleeding through in many areas. Not ideal.
There isn't an ink in the world that agrees with all papers (though Diamine comes close) so I tried it on some Tools to Liveby paper. That stuff is truly invincible!
Luckily, the ink perfrms perfectly fine on that. No feathering or bleeding, and both shading and shimmer can be seen. The gold shimmer goes well with the gentle colour, though you have to roll your pen in your hands occasionally to prevent the shimmer settling too much.
It isn't too dry or wet, I'd say it leans on the wetter side, but drying time is still very quick (under ten seconds). Shimmer distribution is good, and the shading ranges from a pale lavender to a darker light purple.
There's also a surprising feature that is new to me - the ink is waterproof!
I know of the existence of waterproof ins, but until now, I'd never tried one. To test Scribal Workshop's daring claim, I soaked a writing sample under a running cold tap for about thirty seconds.
It turns out that it actually IS waterproof!
The ink faded, has leached a bit of pink into the paper, and has bled a little onto the other side, but it has held up better than any other ink I own. To be fair, it was a light colour to begin with and was under running water! My non-waterproof inks turn into a blotchy mess if water touches them! While the Amethyst Purple did fade, it is still perfectly legible. I'm not sure if it counts as fully waterproof since my writing did not remain the exact same colour, but I'll leave that to the experts to figure out.
I'll be adding this ink to my regular rotation, and it is certainly the only ink in my collection that I would ever use in the rain! It performs very well, despite the high shimmer content it hasn't blocked up my medium nib TWSBI and I haven't had any issues with the consistency of the ink. It's definitely a good one to add to your collection!
DISCLAIMER: This sample was provided by Scribal Workshop for review purposes. All opinions expressed in this article are my own.
The water proof-ness improves a bit on paper that it absorbs into, like cheaper paper(but feathering...). It also improves on drying for a few days. It is also bleach resistant, which is very entertaining to me for some reason.