12 Days of Inkmas: Day 12 Birmingham Blizzard Twinkle

I absolutely love that Birmingham Pen Company took their ink making process in house. Over the past year, they have been fine tuning and streamlining their  process and getting a crash course in the fine art and chemistry of ink making. Of their several different formulas, their Twinkle inks seem most appropriate for the holiday season — like icicles, holiday lights and sparkly decorations.

Blizzard Twinkle is an icy, turquoise blue with silver shimmer. It looks cold and icy in the bottle — like the color of those icy pops in the plastic tubes we used to get at the 7-11 when we were kids.

The color does remind me of twilight skies and snowy nights.

On Col-o-dex cards, with a dip nib, the shimmer is very vivid.

The big bonus with Blizzard Twinkle is that it is a trifecta ink: shimmer, shading AND sheening! Depending on how much the ink is shaken or settled in your pen, how much pressure you apply, if you are dipping with a flex nib, etc — all three effects will be revealed. The color will shade from a deep teal to turquoise. Sheen will appear along the edges of letterforms or where ink pools to a red-almost-purple. The silver shimmer can be visible with wider nibs and dip pens. The more ink on the page, the more shimmer will be visible. More is more!

When comparing Blizzard Twinkle to other shimmery blue inks, I pulled a small selection of turquoise-to-teal inks. Some have gold shimmer and some have silver shimmer. I am sure there are more options but these were the ones I could find (Where are all my swatches!?!?).

Pen BBS No. 338 Guardians of Good Fortune and Blizzard Twinkle are similar in color but No. 338 uses gold shimmer instead of silver. Robert Oster Morning Shine is more greenish but does have silver sheen.

I was able to find a few more shimmery blue inks in my Col-o-ring cards. Diamine Jack Frost certainly has more visible sheen but its an entirely different shade of blue. The other shimmery blues I found from  Diamine were also distinctly different hues. So, at the moment, I feel like Blizzard Twinkle is filling a nice gap in the ink color/shimmer rainbow.

Hope you have a shimmery holiday!

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Tools:

• Paper: Rhodia Uni-Blank No. 16 with 6mm guide sheet and Elia Notebook with 68gsm Tomoe River paper (RM145.00 MYR)
• Pens: Midori bullet pencil modified dip nib holder with Zebra G titanium nib ($33.50 per 10-pack), Acrylic dip nib pen (Approx. $15), Pensive Pens Serendipity hybrid dip pen ($79 AUD)
• Swatches: Col-o-Ring Ink Testing Book ($10) & Col-o-dex Rotary Cards ($15)
• Brush: Scharff 3000 Fineline Round #3 ($34.50 — my favorite paintbrush)
• Ink:  Birmingham Pens Blizzard Twinkle ($29 for 60ml bottle)