Swatch Wednesday: Colorverse Black Hole

This was a gift from a friend who said it was more for the fun little bottle than anything exciting about the ink.  It’s a pretty cute little bottle and I didn’t have one since I think the only colorverse ink I have is a sample.

Colorverse Black Hole ink bottle, which has an unusual teardrop shaped base. This is the front view showing the bit sticking out on one side. The illustration has a stylized black hole and a little planet saying “SOS” on it.

Love that little picture on the front.  The bottle has a teardrop shaped base which I guess makes it a bit less likely to tip over and mostly just makes it interesting.

Colorverse Black Hole ink bottle, which has an unusual teardrop shaped base. This is thebottom view showing the teardrop shape, though it sits nice and flat because of the flat label on the front.

Inside, the ink is as one expects, a pleasant black.  There’s a tiny bit of sheen visible in the swatch on the right, and indeed I can see that in my writing occasionally if I look at it under a sufficiently bright light, but it’s more a cute coincidence than a regular feature of the ink on the paper I’m using.  Might be fun to try it on the iroful paper to see if it happens more consistently there; my current notebook is a leuchtterm.

My swatch card for Colorverse Black Hole, a black ink with a tiny hint of sheen in the bigger swatches.

I’m not too worried about getting the sheen to show up more, though, since the only other black ink bottle I have is a black with sheen from Inkvent Black (uuuh, Good Tidings I think it was called?).  I’m guessing that Black Hole dries quicker, though I didn’t actually test that.  I did, however, have some fun painting with it in the margins of my journal.

Some margin patterns in my notebook using Colorverse Black Hole ink on a paintbrush. One side has curly vine-like shapes, the other a geometric zig-zag with partial triangles.

Fun bottle and a nice practical ink.  Overall a very nice present!  And I think this is the last ink bottle or sample I had that I hadn’t swatched in my collection, so I’m all caught up and there’s no ink purchases on my horizon until the weather warms up, and maybe not even then — I’ve got so much to play with now!

September 2025 Ink & Pen palette

Back to school for my kiddo! And I bought the Pelikan Pura to replace my Pelikan Twist and I have zero regrets.

Here’s this month’s stationary supplies:

Stickers

• household stuff sheet from Eggtart Studio (via stickii; I think this was an advent sheet)
• day to day icons sheet from Neko Mori Arts (via stickii, I think I bought this one specifically because I needed more habit stickers. Currently tracking writing days with these!)
• Calendar from Mossy Pine (as usual; I got a whole year’s worth!)

These were the intersection of being a little bit back to school-ish and also having the right colour vibe to go with the inks I wanted.

Paper Products

• Campus Diary free monthly calendar (new)
• Clairfontaine Triomphe blank notebook (going since April 2025)
• Koyuko campus notebook cover

I already talked about my new calendar for the year, a Campus free monthly diary. It worked great with the fountain pen I used for numbers in September so I’m pretty happy with it so far, and I’ve got it slotted into the green cover (pictured above) on the opposite site of my current journal. Because they’re slotted in opposite sides rather than using strings or clips in the middle, there’s a bit of a gap in the centre. I was worried this would be a problem for writing but so far it seems to be fine. I’ll try some ink testing with dip pens on the back pages when I next do swatching.

Fountain Pens and Inks

• Pilot Elite E95S <m> – Diamine Aurora Borealis (dark teal, carry over from last month)
• Pelikan Pura <b> – Diamine Snow Globe (blue with blue shimmer)
• Pelikan Twist <m> – Diamine Winterberry (red with red shimmer)

The theme of this month is “omg I finally have pens that work with shimmer ink“. I loved these colours in the Inkvent 2024 calendar but was worried I woudln’t be able to use them.

Since my blog post about the Pelikan Twist I managed to find someone selling the particular model of Pelikan Pura that I’d fallen for with the broad nib I wanted at a sale price, so I decided to jump on it even though I’m unemployed and should probably not be buying $100 pens. But I *love* this pen as much as I hoped I would and it fills a gap in my collection so I don’t feel like I made the wrong choice. The Pelikan Pura anniversary design with the little Y geometric snowflake shape and the pretty teal colour is fantastic, and obviously I’m very excited about having a feed that doesn’t clog up with sparkle. It has a round grip so no issues with that (the way there were with the Twist’s odd triangular grip). I expect this pen will be inked almost constantly since it will likely be my sparkle pen going fowards, and I have a lot of sparkle inks from Inkvent to use. Honestly, this pen jumped immediately into second place in my collection (behind my beloved Pilot Elite).

After this month, the Twist will probably go back to being relegated as a sometimes pen because of the annoying triangle pen, although I’ve been playing with a coil grip thing on it that helps a bit and we’ll see how I feel about it after a month of use.

#FountainPens #InkSwatch #stationery

Main St. Marmalade ink from Ferris Wheel Press.

It looks much tanner in this picture than it looks to my eye. I even tried in a couple of different lights but it wasn’t cooperating.

It is a little more orange/peach color than it shows in this picture.

It is a pretty color but a little too light for longer writing for me. I got it in the Twilight Garden charger set.

#fountainpens #inkswatch

Reading Notes from
On Tyranny
By
Timothy Snyder

Ink is TWSBI Emerald Green
A nice greenish teal.

#books #inkswatch #fountainpenink #SwatchWednesday