Shop here! I’ve gone through all my inks in my Ink 100 series and chosen selections and now is your chance to acquire all my overages. Inks are priced at approximately half of retail. And there are several rare and limited edition inks too! The inks have been used for reviews, swatches or a fill or two so most bottles are almost completely full. They have all been stored out of the light and at room temperature. Shop here and don’t delay. Patrons got an early preview of the sale so many items are already gone. If you want to be “in the know”, you can join our Patreon too. We’d love to have you ..read more

This is the final part of my Ink 100 series. If this is the first time you’ve seen these posts, check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 to get caught up on this journey. Since I started this project, my goal was to keep at least one or two bottles of ink across the ROYGBIV spectrum. For the sake of organziation,  I am going to reveal my final “ink keepers” in that same order. What I didn’t consider was some of the more unusual inks like the multi-chromes and shimmer inks. I have separated out the multi-chrome inks but I left the shimmers within their color category. The biggest s ..read more

This is Part 4 of my Ink 100 series. If this is the first time you’ve seen these posts, check out Part 1, Part 2 or Part 3 first to catch up on my inky adventure. Now onwards…! The Ink 100 project is reaching its conclusion (thank the ink gods… it feel like this went on forever!). While I had some large collections from specific brands left, some of the inks left were onsie-twosies and other oddball inks. Some ink bottles only had a dribble of ink left and those were culled immediately. That eliminated six bottles. I also had some inks decanted into nagelene bottles from an ink purchase Jesi ..read more

I am continuing my planner/journal/diary set-up the same way each month this year (check out my March and April set-ups, if you missed them). May will continue this process and each month my process is getting a little more streamlined and easier to do. I start by pasting in a monthly overview calendar. The last few months, I’ve been using both a two-page spread monthly overview that I cut out of a planner I was not using and a Midori single-page, self-adhesive diary stickers. I use the Midori sticker calendar to track habits and the 2-page calendar for events, birthdays, pen shows — you know ..read more

As the reality of my new life has finally settled in on me, I’ve had some serious moments of doubt and terror about the foolishness of throwing away the security of a steady job, healthcare and a regular schedule. So, when I saw the post Check In On Those Around You (via Kottke.org) this week, I remembered that I am not the only person going through big scary life events. There are other people out there fighting their own demons, maybe you are one of those people. So, I want to ask, “How are you doing this week?” Did you have a bad case of the Mondays or did you find lucky clover on the way t ..read more

In the hotly debated Safari vs AL-Star I think the Aquatic AL-Star squeaked past the rest but there were lots of shoutouts for the Safari Violet Blackberry as well. Early in voting, it looked like the AL-Star Fiery was a real contender and the Safari Pink Cliff had lots of votes too. Overall, the votes were pretty evenly divided. Here’s how the voting broke out: Aquatic -22 Violet Blackberry – 17 Fiery  -15 Pink cliff -10 AL-Star-8 Safari – 4 Undecided -3 So, the AL-Star Aquatic won but just by a few votes over the Violet Blackberry. If I tally all the Safari votes and all the AL-S ..read more

I only have a few more ink samples in my quest to find the perfect peach fuzz ink for 2024. I can let you know that not only did I buy one sample twice (oops!), none of them are going to give us that ethereal look like the Pantone color. And today’s color is no exception. Robert Oster Peach (50mL, $18) is all that a ripe juice peach should be, with lovely orange shading. It screams of summer and stone fruits and peach bellinis (my favorite!) and vibrant, lovely orange. It is not that delicate peach fuzz, but it is lovely just the same. The ink shades lightly with various nibs, and those go ..read more

After falling in love with the Plotter ring-binder system, I started wondering if there were any more budget-friendly options available. There’s lots to love about the Plotter but there are a couple big cons: they are VERY pricey, they are only available with leather covers and the rings are extremely small at just 0.375″. I found a vendor on Etsy who makes a slightly less expensive Plotter alternative but its not what I would consider “budget-priced” (prices start a $83.99)  called Wuhzi Studio. They also make leather covers so it doesn’t solve for the cons listed above.  I dug deep ..read more

I have moved on to the “swatch the unswatched” phase of my Ink 100 Project. Check out my previous posts including, Part 1: Admitting I have a Problem and Part 2: Color Inventory is Hard. I needed to swatch 37 bottles of ink in order to move forward in my Ink 100 project. It was a whole afternoon project to just get all the inks swatched in order to move forward with this ridiculous project.  As I was swatching, I realized I have WAY TOO many blue-greens, turquoise and teal inks. I also buy a lot of grey and dirty purple colors. How do I pick which one stay and which ones go? I swatched ..read more

For years, my friends and I have played the “Safari Forever vs AL-Star Always” when we see the “colors of the year” released by Lamy. Some years, we have felt like Safari won and other years AL-Star. One year, we all agreed that Kaweco’s release of their five fruity colors stole Lamy’s thunder. We even made pin badges and distributed them at pen shows to show your enthusiasm for your favorite. A rep from Lamy saw us handing out pins and was shocked at the strong enthusiasm for one or the other. Clearly, they aren’t acquainted with the enthusiasm of the community. The whole Dark Lilac nonense t ..read more