Diamine Inkvent 2025: Day 1 — Celestial Skies
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*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.
Inkvent is here!
Welcome everyone! It’s finally time to look at the 2025 Inkvent Teal Edition inks, and we’re starting with Celestial Skies.
The Color and Properties
Celestial Skies is a shimmering ink. The base color is a deep yet strong and vibrant blue with a golden shimmer. There’s some shading, with a soft gradient in cursive and a soft cut when writing in print, where the ink will get slightly darker and less vibrant, but there’s not a lot of tonal variation overall. More notably, there’s a minor red sheen that can easily be seen around the edges of letters and where the ink pools the most. It’s not a heavy sheen, but it’s distinct. As far as the shimmer goes, it’s bright, easily visible, and well distributed.
Ink splat
Ink droplets
Performance | Cleaning
Rhodia
Leuchtturm
Celestial Skies has an initial medium flow, but there’s a quick drop-off after a few lines. It doesn’t have any major effect on the appearance or usability of the ink, but it’s noticeable in feel. While it never gets unpleasant, the initial slick feeling is quite nice and I wish the ink maintained that throughout the writing experience. I also experienced a lot of clogging with the fine nib, though this isn’t uncommon with shimmering inks. The medium and broad nibs performed just fine. As mentioned earlier, the shimmer distribution is excellent and the ink only required minor agitation to get consistent shimmery letters when writing. Overall, it’s a good shimmer experience. As far as the papers go, I didn’t notice any traces of bleeding or feathering on any of the papers I used, and it seems well-behaved.
When cleaning, the color took a few rounds of soaking and flushing with a bulb syringe, which isn’t abnormal for a more saturated ink. Once the flushes were done, there was still a lot of remaining residue from not only the shimmer but from the color as well around the barrel of the pen. This was easy to scrub out with a cotton swab, but it still required the disassembly of the pen.
Writing Samples
Written on 52 gsm Tomoe River paper (white, 7mm ruling) with a medium nib.
Written on Midori MD paper (cream, 7mm ruling), with a medium nib.
My personal thoughts…
So, I’ve had a roller coaster of opinions here. When I saw day one, I thought “Inkvent-y? Not really”. And I still stand by that. Maybe it fits Inkvent in terms of being a little over the top, but I would still say it feels like a bottom-of-the-hat idea. With that said, I think it’s a phenomenal color. Just beautiful. It feels to me like a more extravagant Edelstein Golden Lapis, and for how shimmery it is, it performs surprisingly well. I’m just unsure if it really needed to be an Inkvent ink to exist.
Written in a 52 gsm Tomoe River notebook
More Images/Info:
Featured in the photography and writing samples:
Diamine Celestial Skies
Traveler’s Company “Have a Nice Trip” brass clip — Endless Pens | Amazon
Nanami Paper Tomoe River Cafe Note B6 Slim - Ruled
Midori MD A6 lined notebook — Amazon
Current text: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens — Amazon
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Tools and materials used in the writing samples:
A TWSBI Diamond 580 AL with 3 nib units including a Fine, Medium, and Broad. All nibs are tuned to perform at the same wetness.
A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad
A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook