Eye Candy: Papier Plume Bad Bad LeRoy Brown & Lake Michigan Winter (Chicago Pen Show 2019 LE Inks)

For the third year, Papier Plume is offering a limited edition set of inks for the Chicago Pen Show. This year’s offering is a riff on the extremely popular Lake Michigan Summer (from Chicago Pen Show 2017) called Lake Michigan Winter and a new deep brown called Bad Bad LeRoy Brown.

The ink comes in Papier Plume’s classic glass, 30ml bottles with wax topped caps. Lake Michigan Winter features an icy blue wax seal on the cap pressed with the signatue Papier Plume fleur de lis seal and Bad Bad Le Roy Brown has a deep chocolate brown wax seal with the same seal.

Lake Michigan Winter turns up the density on the deep sea teal tone of Lake Michigan Summer creating a deeper, denser color. As this was one of the most popular limited edition colors that Papier Plume has released, I can fully understand why they would do a remix of this color. It’s a stunning color and I expect there will be a rush of people wanting to grab a bottle of this.

When compared with the copious amounts of teals and blue-greens already in my collection, I was flabbergasted to discover that I had few things truly similar in color. Robert Oster Morning Mist was probably the closest. I have Robert Oster Peppermint but it was too green. Other colors like Kaweco Paradise Blue  went too vibrant or too turquoise.

Bad Bad LeRoy Brown is a deep, rich brown. In a wide application, its almost too dark but in a finer nib, it has a lovely milk chocolate quality. I find that when you find a good warm brown ink and a good cool brown ink, I don’t find that I continue to look for more. I then start looking for golden browns or more unusual hues. That said, LeRoy Brown is a good, solid deep brown.

When compared with other brown inks in my stash, You can see the range of values. Kaweco Caramel Brown is more reddish, Smoky Quartz has an orange undertone, Diamine Espresso is definitely a cool brown, Robert Oster Chocolate is clearly red-brown and the new Lamy Crystal Topaz has more red with a green sheen. LeRoy Brown is almost a neutral brown by comparison — at least, based on these initial swatches.

Both inks will sell for $10 per bottle and will be available starting Friday, May 3 at the Chicago Pen Show. There will be 180 bottles of each color at the bottles are $10 each.