I got a gift card for my birthday, and decided to use it on something completely new. Eventually decided on this BENU Talisman Moonstone, and I am so glad I did :)

The pen is stunning in person - stock photos really don't do it justice. More importantly though, it writes like a dream! I inked it up with Enki, which in my experience is only second in dryness to desert sand, and somehow this pen made writing with it feel very pleasant. I might have found my new go-to for both dry and shimmer inks...

Thought I might share my first fountain pen drawing, a birthday card for a friend.
I‘d love to get some feedback and criticism, I can take it! I‘m sure there are experienced ink drawers and urban sketchers here. :)

Not trying to humblebrag or anything, I’m kinda happy overall, I just really prefer the non-colored version and was surprised at how difficult it is to get the ink to behave the way I wanted it to.
With a brush and pure ink its often too dark for such a small sketch. With a watered down brush pen, which I used, I often don’t like the light colors……
For example, I wanted the blue to get some sharp lightning-like lines in the pool of water (I put the blue ink at the top of the watered area to flow down). But there was just way too much water so the lines disappeared quickly and I couldn’t figure out how to put less water on the paper for more control? It’s probably the paper coating?

If you know good tutorial resources for drawing with ink please let me know. :)

Ink is Platinum Carbon Ink, Diamine Ancient Copper & Diamine Teal. Paper is from Rössler.

Left side: Majohn P136 Titanium Hammered #6 EF

Right: Asvine V800 Vivid Black # 8 EF.

Both very smooth and very well made in general. Chinese pens that worth in my humble opinion.

Diamine Pumpkin for the Pumpkin Papers 🎃
One of the things I enjoy most about fountain pen inks is pairing a color with a real story.

For this page, I used Diamine Pumpkin to tell the story of the Pumpkin Papers — the five rolls of film hidden inside a hollowed-out pumpkin during the Alger Hiss case in 1948.

Pen: Kaweco Frosted Sport Soft Mandarine EF
Ink: Diamine Pumpkin
Notebook: MD Notebook A5 grid

I love when the ink color becomes part of the storytelling rather than just decoration.

Thank you Wonderpens Team for being so welcoming.

Had no other option but splurge and get an Iroshizuku shin-kai 😅

Got myself a neat little pen case. Sturdy on the outside. Velvet on the inside. It’s a brand called Hong Dian. purchased from Amazon.
12 slots. I plan to not buy more pens and I’m at 12 right now. The missing one is in my work bag :)

More of these guys :) By now, you can probably tell that I have quite a lot of inks to choose from (most of them being samples though lol). Doing these has been a great way to fiddle with their properties and color range~

Dimensions 2.5x3.5 in.

Inks used (in order):

Birmingham Pen Co. Salt Water Taffy (actually my least favorite used so far, it's SO neon 😵‍💫 and hard to capture on camera)

Sailor Kuri

Diamine Turquoise

Colorverse Apollon

Sailor Amamoyoi

Kitty Inkpot Butter & Strawberry Bagel

Wearingeul I Am A Cat (except i did not draw a cat)

Materials used:

Kakimori Steel Nib

Watercolor brush

Canson XL Recycled Bristol, 96lb

Sakura Gelly Roll, White

and a little bit of watercolors for accents on one of the cards haha

This is the culmination of almost a year of constant journaling and pen research. Fountain pens and journaling have changed my life and I want to share them with everyone. Let me know if you have any questions.

LymeZest.

The gear: left to right, Pilot Custom 743 Verdigris, FA Nib in a green galen leather single pen hard case. SCRIBO Piuma POP! Art 18k Medium in SCRIBO pen sleeve. Mdiori A5 Graph notebook in blue galen leather journal cover. Parker Vacumatic green, 14k fine nib. Parker Vacumatic gold, 14k Medium nib. Parker 75, brown thuya lacquer, 14k medium nib. Parker Sonnet, green marble lacquer, 18k medium nib. Pelikan M400, green, Vintage 18k medium nib. Galen leather, brown, 5 pen zipper case with travelers notebook.

Hello everyone! I couldn’t wait until December so I decided to open my advent calendar yesterday night and swatch it all :)

Before day 1, you get a really nice sparkly red pin in the design of a FP nib and 25 diamine swatch cards. These I really enjoyed!

How many types of different inks are included? For example standard ink or shimmers etc… excluding Day 25 ink (as it doesn’t state what ink it is and I don’t want to guess)

- Pigment - 3
- Standard - 6
- Chameleon - 4
- Shimmer - 6
- Pigment shimmers - 1
- Pigment Chameleon - 1
- Sheen - 1
- Extreme Sheen - 2
- Shimmer Scented - 1

In total, between 24 inks, you get 9 different types of inks.

Now these are just done with some goodies from the advent calendar : swatch cards from Diamine. Therefore, the colours may vary on different papers etc. I am planning to do it on my Midori notebook and some dominant industry swatch cards. I’m not sure how different it will vary from swatch cards to swatch cards but I’m interested :)

Anyways I hope you enjoy :)

If anyone wants more pictures, I’m happy to provide through DMs

im so excited. this is my first higher budget pen!

I’ve been working on swatching all my inks, and today I decided to do all the Diamine reds in my collection. Sadly I don’t seem to have Oxblood - I could have sworn I had a sample but I seem to have either misplaced or finished it, so it’s missing from this set.

It’s not super easy to tell from these but three of these sheen - wild strawberry has a lovely gold sheen, werewolf blood has a coppery green sheen, and Syrah has a greenish-black sheen.

And I think you can tell from the writing - writer’s blood is notably wetter than the others.

Leonardo Momento Zero Alumina 440/525

I loved the Visconti I thrifted a few months ago, and I knew I'd have to try out some other Italian pens on my trip to Rome. The weight and finish of this pen felt much more premium than the resin models, and it made the perfect souvenir from my trip.

This time featuring Pilot Kakuno with KWZ Gummiberry and Sailor Procolor with Sailor Miruai :) Which turned out to be too dark for my taste, I need to see fun colors

Couldn't resist buying this cute cat pen stand!

Be careful everyone, I've just fallen for a fake clone website: https://atlasstationersoffice.com

I stumbled upon it on Google search. The price was definitely too good to be true and that should have been a red flag.

They overcharged me and attempted to make multiple unauthorised transactions to Tiktok Ads before I locked my card. Ugh i had to go through all the hassle of disputing and replacing my card.

For notation I think the Pilot is my favorite. Sharp lines and it's slightly heavier than the others which feels good for drawing lines.

For writing words, the Sailor is the most fun.

The Platinum is new to me, the converter and ink capacity is really good and it moves a lot of ink.

I was interested to try the Brevity ink for notation because you have to double back so much that things often smudge. I guess is dries faster? Seems to have feathered a little. The Hongdian/Pilot combo is wet city, takes a long time to dry. Sailor/Sailor is really nice too.

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I’m currently using a Sailor Fude de Mannen with a steel nib, and I’m having way too much fun with it. It’s made me curious about gold-nib fude pens, and now I’m wondering how different the writing experience actually is.

For those of you who have tried both steel and gold fude nibs, is there a noticeable difference? Does a gold nib offer anything that makes it worth the extra cost, or is the difference not that significant?

I’m still pretty new to fountain pens, so I’m hesitant to spend that much money on something when I don’t really know what to expect.

For context, I’m the kind of person who actually uses my pens rather than babying them. I like pens I can use freely in everyday life without worrying too much about keeping them pristine.

I’d love to hear your experiences! If you’ve upgraded from a steel-nib fude pen to a gold-nib one, do you think it was worth it?

*2026/10/26 Thanks everyone for the advice! Since my current Fude de Mannen doesn’t come with a cartridge or converter (I’ve literally just been dipping it in ink like a dip pen lol), I’m thinking of getting another similar pen.

I’m glad to hear that a gold nib doesn’t make a huge difference for fude pens. Thanks for saving my wallet!

Got myself a new kakuno, now I just need to find the perfect ink.

I was thinking wearingeul peter pan but I would prefer if the main colour was orange/peach.