Diamine - Holly

Diamine Holly - intense ink drop!

Today’s ink is Holly. First released as part of Diamine’s 2019 Inkvent calendar, it’s currently available as part of their Blue Edition inks. Diamine’s Blue Edition bottles are among my favorites. The name Holly comes from the plant that is traditionally used to make decorative Christmas wreaths.

Visually, this is a deep, rich, emerald green that closely resembles the evergreen plant that it honors. It’s a moderate shading ink, with nicely distributed accents of light areas adding character to written strokes and passages. Key features of the plant are its small clusters of bright red berries. In the ink, this is mirrored in a brilliant, deep red sheen that covers areas of pooling and frames strokes on premium papers. This is a heavily sheening ink.

Diamine Holly - ink swatch card and drying

As a writing ink, Holly delivers a consistently good writing experience. It’s a slightly high viscosity ink, but has a nice smooth flow. This promotes both the sheen on premiums, and a well-defined stroke profile on all papers tested. Sheen and shading were strongest on coated papers, but showed on uncoated premiums, as well. There was no sheen on office copy, but it did show shading. Drying times were nice. Coated papers were 15-20 seconds, uncoated premiums 10-15 seconds, and 5 seconds on office copy. This is a nice writing ink.

The more of Diamine’s Inkvent inks that I try, the more I wish I’d bought each original set! Thankfully, Diamine continues to make them available after the holidays in the Blue Edition. Plus, they come in the beautiful, legged bottle! If you missed out, too, I recommend considering them.

February 2021