Diamine - Shimmering Seas
Diamine Shimmering Seas - sheen and shimmer!
Shimmering Seas is part of Diamine’s Shimmertastic Series. This is a deep, midnight blue, almost an oily black-blue, and like other Shimmertastic inks, it’s absolutely packed with shimmer! The shimmer appears as a sparkle of yellow gold in writing, but it has a bronze-brass quality in areas of pooling, where it can be seen forming along the wettest edges. The midnight blue and shimmer combination is particularly successful in the swatch and splatter examples, where it really does resemble a starry, moonlit night’s reflections dancing on a calm sea.
Diamine Shimmering Seas - deep, rich blues!
In writing, it doesn’t come together quite the same way. Here, it’s either simply all golden shimmer, or all midnight blue-black. The blending of the color and shimmer that adds mystery to the ink is completely lost. In losing this essential element in written form, it becomes much more ordinary to my eyes. I wish it wrote more like it swatches, because it’s quite beautiful.
In terms of performance as a writing ink, Shimmering Seas has all of the good qualities expected of a Diamine ink. Their shimmer inks are generally very well behaved. You need to take a little extra care to ensure feeds are properly rinsed, but there’s less worry than with some other brands. Written strokes maintain a crisp, clean stroke profile, with no feathering at all on the usual friendly papers. It even performs reasonably well on cheap office copy paper, with only a hint of feathering in most cases. Drying times are also quite acceptable. This is a nice writing ink.
Diamine Shimmering Seas - ink swatch card and drying
All-in-all, Diamine Shimmering Seas is a fine ink, and many people will be very happy with what it provides. The swatch really is quite stunning. If it wrote like it swatched, my expectations would have been more than met. I do think that this is a wonderful ink for artistic projects, and possibly a good calligraphy ink, and that will make a lot of people very happy.
September 2020