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 seven different greys and blacks. I person, the Colorverse Under the Shade and Dominant Industry Downpour look almost identical. Sailor Ice Gray shipped with my Sailor First Snow fountain pen and is very light. Each of these groups will get compared with the inks I’ve already chosen and then pared down.
I sampled the Manyo and multichromatic Sailor inks … the ones in the grey boxes. Do those have an official group name? I had a bad case of FOMO when the Sailor multichromatic inks came out so I bought them all. Now I realize that was a rash decision. I need to stop buying ALL the inks and think about which ones I’ll actually use. I prefer fine nib pens so, as much as I get enticed by light, bright colors, they often do not work well in my pens. They end up being too light to be readable. These multichrome colors are so pretty to look at but I’m not sure if I’d ever actually use them in a pen. These might be good candidates for one of those inky journals Jesi reviewed.
Above are the few purples in the “need to be swatched” pile. Delightfully, they were all notably different from one another. Next step will be to determine how different they are from the inks I’ve already put in the “to keep” pile.
The above two images are the shameful number of swatches of even more blue and green inks. I need to be stopped!
The last grouping was the orange and green inks. Despite loving green more than any other color, I have a hard time finding the perfect pea green ink. Folks always recommend then to me but I am still on the hunt.
Of the 37 inks I swatched, about half of them will be leaving. Kicked off the proverbial ink island.
My box of “keepers” has been added to but I’m not done yet. I still have another two drawers to review. Then I need to review the selections I have made and see if there’s any additional inks I can let go of.
I already have 77 inks in my Col-o-ring and I’m sure to exceed my goal of 100 inks — and probably by quite a bit– I will have to do a final culling to reach my goal. Ink brands still left to review: Pen BBS, Kaweco, Pelikan, Ferris Wheel, and a lot more. Stay tuned for Part 4 where I end up in a puddle on the floor.
I think Marie Kondo would have classified my ink collection as personal items to be culled last and not like clothes which she feels should be the first thing to be weeded. Where do inks fall on your hierarchy of tidying?