Diamine - Magical Forest
Diamine Magical Forest - magical ink drop, too!
This is Magical Forest from Diamine. Released in 2015, it’s part of the Shimmering series. The name Magical Forest is a great match for the combination of color and shimmer in this beautiful ink.
Visually, this is indeed a magical ink! The base color is a vibrant, emerald green. It’s the green of a cartoon forest’s perfect canopy of leaves. It has a very appealing glow, and projects health, positivity, and abundance. This is a silver shimmer ink, and it goes very well against the base of green. The soft, supple look in the splatter image carries over to written strokes on the page. Areas of pooling show a dark red sheen edging, but I didn’t find any visible in writing. There is, however, a dark, defining stroke edge on premium papers. It really makes everything pop!
Diamine Magical Forest - ink swatch card and drying
As a writing ink, Magical Forest performed well on premium papers, and fairly well on office copy, as well. (Many of Diamine’s shimmer inks seem perform better than expected on office copy paper.) On the premium papers I used testing, strokes were very sharp, in part due to the dark edging that gives them contrast and a strong visual definition. There was little in terms of shading, as it’s largely overtaken by the shimmer. Drying was 20-35 seconds on the premium papers. There was some feathering on office copy, but it wasn’t too distracting, and readability remained high. Shading was equal or better compared to the premium papers, but the dark edging disappeared completely. Drying time was 5 seconds. Overall, it’s very usable on office copy, but it was flatter, and didn’t have the same magic. As always, you need to take a little extra care to fully rinse out feeds, Diamine is good with shimmers. This ink flows well, and it didn’t cause any problems with clogging.
Diamine Magical Forest is a very attractive ink, and a good writing ink, as well. I’m not a huge vibrant, emerald ink fan, but I don’t recall another true emerald with silver shimmer (I’m sure there are, of course.) Nevertheless, I happily recommend this one! It’s a great holiday ink!
December 2020