Diamine - Golden Sands
Diamine Golden Sands - a golden splatter
Diamine Golden Sands is one of the great, golden fountain pen inks. Originally released in 2015, in the first series of Diamine’s Shimmertastic inks, it’s perfectly named. Inks in this series come in 50ml bottles, and the cap color conveniently lets you know whether it’s a silver or gold shimmer.
Diamine Golden Sands’ lights and darks
Some gold inks are cold and soulless, with a gold that looks poorly plated over an inferior and unforgiving metal. Diamine’s Golden Sands suffers none of those qualities. This gold is gorgeous, rich, and luxurious and comes from a combination of the base color and the shimmer. The base here is a warm, deep, golden, mature banana yellow. From ripe to well overripe all of the variations in color are all present here. Together with the shimmer, it has the softness of 24-karat purity, and a comfortable personality. In written strokes, it shades proudly, with sun-kissed light accents, and burnt darks that have a slight amber glow. A well-defined stroke profile is emphasized by a nice, strong edge. It’s an all-around beauty!
Diamine Golden Sands - range of shades
As a writing ink, Golden Sands performs well, but you do need to bear with the quirks that come with many shimmer inks. It never clogged completely, but it did benefit from a bit of rotation in my hand from time to time during long writing sessions. Strokes were clean and crisp on all six test papers. Shading and halo were consistent across premiums, but they were more animated on coated papers. Drying was 15-20 seconds on most premiums (Rhodia was 25 seconds), and under 5 seconds on office copy. It’s a good writing ink, but be mindful of the shimmer in some pens.
Diamine Golden Sands - ink swatch card
This is a beautiful, rich, golden amber yellow ink. It’s very readable, and it looks great on all papers. It’s shimmer-heavy, so cleaning requires attention to detail. Diamine shimmer inks normally inspire confidence, but I felt like there was potential to clog in some feeds with this one. It didn’t pose a big problem in my experiences with the ink, but in some pens, it might be more significant. Be mindful of the shimmer, but I definitely recommend Diamine Golden Sands.
Diamine Golden Sands - chocolate brown darks