* This photo is from Vanness Pens

The Jungle set – well, I haven’t been able to purchase this set yet. I’m pretty certain it has sold so quickly because the animals are incredibly cute.

I did purchase several samples of the inks and Ana sent me the rest of the samples so I could review them all together. So here we go! (These samples were all purchased from Vanness)

The first ink here is Monteverde Jungle Toucan. It is a slightly blue-leaning black, and not incredibly dark. It’s an average black ink.

Jungle Elephant is a dark blue-ish purple. It’s close to Kobe #32 but has more blue undertones.

Jungle Chameleon surprised me when I swatched it. It’s close to KWZ Brown Pink or a dark, slightly less pink version of Monteverde Rose Noir.

Jungle Crocodile comes in as a forest green with a touch of black sheen on the edges and is very close to Vinta Elysium. it could definitely work in an office setting as an adventurous black.

Jungle Zebra is a beautiful navy/blue-black. It looks greenish next to true blue inks and blue when it’s compared to greens. Lovely color.

Jungle Turtle is slightly lighter than Pilot Ebisu. I think it’s too light for me to use in most pens, but would be amazing in a highlighter pen. Also, it is absolutely my favorite illustration on the Jungle set!

Jungle Hippo is a medium blue in hue but darker than most blues I have in my library. I’m not typically a huge fan of blues like this but Hippo is dark enough to be pleasant. A touch of purple undertone helps!

Gorilla is an interesting orange-ish burgundy. It has a touch redder than Urushi Red. I did see some feathering on the Col-o-Ring card here which I will discuss more in a bit.

Jungle Giraffe has plenty of orange in the mix – very close to Papier Plume Red Beans and Rice. This ink had significant feathering on the swatch card but I love the color.

Jungle Lion is my favorite of the entire Jungle set. It also has an adorable lion on the bottle! It’s an interesting orange-yellow-brown mixture that is unique to my collection so far, like a lighter version of 3 Oysters Hwangto. I love how the ink color looks in writing – light enough to see the unique color but still dark enough to be legible.

Now to talk about the feathering I’ve seen in this set. Giraffe is by far the worst with Gorilla coming in second. Could there be an issue with the red dye in the batch? This is typically worse when I use a dip nib as I did here, so I’m hoping in a fountain pen it won’t show as much. But this is not something I’ve seen before with Monteverde inks!

The second batch of feathering inks in the Jungle set is Turtle and Zebra. The feathering is not nearly as obvious as Giraffe and Gorilla, but still concerning. Could Monteverde have changed their typical ink formulation here? Extensive testing will be in order along with contacting the company.

Overall, I love this set. I will be testing the feathering inks further and investigating what has happened. But between the adorable illustrations and the colors of Lion, Hippo, and Chameleon, I think the set is a great new one. If the feathering problems can be remedied, I would recommend purchasing the set wholeheartedly. As of this writing, an individual bottle or three would be the better call.

DISCLAIMER: Some items included in this review were purchased by me and some by the Well-Appointed Desk for the purposes of this review and I was not compensated to write this post. Please see the About page for more details.

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The Pineider Ink Alchemy set seemed like it would be plenty of fun when I first saw it. But the price tag held me back. A few weeks ago, however, I found a set that was discounted at Truphae so I grabbed it.

The Ink Alchemy set is BIG. The outer box measures around 4.5″ x 6″ x 12″. It’s heavy (relatively). I believe the box and included bottles are around 2.5 pounds. The set came with 5 glass ink bottles that are each 50mL with a glass and plastic ink dropper, 5 mixing bottles (also glass and not shown below), a Pineider travel ink vial and a Pineider snorkel (to attach to converters to make filling a less messy affair), and an instruction booklet. These were all held in place with a molded plastic cover although loosely – Truphae added more packing material to help keep the bottles secure.

I enjoyed the packaging – bright and colorful with a place for each item. Thinking about how much packaging would have been required if each bottle was in a separate box, I believe this method was not overkill. The extra packing material added by Truphae did end up tearing the paper tray under the ink bottles but that didn’t bother me. Going forward, I plan to keep the bottles (all 10 total) in the box for storage – it was useful to have a way to keep the bottles together and not in danger of tipping over as I was mixing.

The five ink colors included were Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, Black, and Transparent. The Transparent ink is supposedly just clear ink – I did find it seemed to alter the color a bit as I was mixing, however. It seemed to add a touch of blue each time. But it was very slight.

The travel vial and snorkel are interesting. The vial is made of four parts – the clear plastic container (10cc or 10mL is the most you are supposed to fill it), a large black cap, a small black stopper, and a blue flexible sealing piece in-between. I haven’t used this yet for ink, but water doesn’t leak even in rough conditions. The booklet says the vial can be used to fill any pen that fits into the blue sealing section. I haven’t tested every pen, but those I have tested fill very well.

The snorkel can fit into variously sized converters due to a graduated section. I had a hard time using it with Sailor converters, but it worked very well with converters that fit. The snorkel would help tremendously when getting the last ink out of a sample vial or trying to fill a converter from a nearly empty bottle. However, a syringe can also solve both issues and costs less. Unless you have a situation where owning or using a syringe would be inappropriate, I would say the snorkel is probably unnecessary.

The included booklet is actually helpful. It contains extensive instructions along with examples of ink combinations. I used it as a starting place to make my own mixtures. One typo – the water green color comes from adding 6 parts transparent ink rather than 6 parts black.

This booklet also includes perforated cards to swatch your personal inks and keep the formulas as well. I didn’t use these but kept the same information on Col-o-ring cards.

The card with two holes in the lower right corner is given so you can measure a pen to ensure it will fit in the travel vial. I appreciated that small detail!

The back three pages offer a place to record your personal ink mixtures and keep it in the instruction booklet.

Now, finally, the ink! I was impressed by the brightness of each color. Each color is true to the name (rather than leaning towards a secondary color).

To mix colors, I started with small amounts of two inks at a time – 5 or 10 drops of each. I tested the mixture and wrote the current ink count with the resulting color at each step. That should help if I want to go back and replicate a mixture I passed through while trying to find other colors.

I enjoyed seeing how the ink changed with each addition.

The five ink bottles provided by the ink alchemy set ended up being filled with 5 colors I love.

I decided to name them after Colorado wildflowers – plus the sky color I love in the summer.

The big question after all of that – is this set worth the money?

It includes 50mL of each ink is a total of 250 mL of ink plus the travel vial and snorkel. The prices I can currently find for the alchemy set are between $200 and $241 and the snorkel and travel vial are approximately $32 combined. All said, this puts the price of just the ink around $0.68 per mL. As a comparison:

With the ink alchemy set, you get the four base colors plus as many ink colors as you can dream up (and figure out how to mix).  The biggest difference between using these Pineider inks and inks chosen from the lineup of other ink manufacturers is, in my opinion, the purity of the colors and the knowledge that the inks are suited to mix with one another (chemically).

I think the $200 price tag for all of this is reasonable. Worth it? Not for everyone. For me, yes. I am glad I purchased the set and will continue to enjoy it until I run out of ink. For individuals who love to explore new ink colors or enjoy making an ink in a signature or hard to find color, I believe it is worth the money. If that description fits you, you can find the alchemy set at some retailers, although some have sold out. If you do happen to purchase this set, let us know what colors you have dreamed up!

DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were purchased by me. Please see the About page for more details.

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