I recently received a set of inks from Ferris Wheel Press called Curious Collaborations. The set is has been created to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Paper Tree, a family-owned stationery store in Tokyo.
There are three inks in the set: Glimmering Greige, Chidori Cherry Blossom, and Dearest Navy.
Dearest Navy is a strong blue-black ink with a touch of purple undertone and just a hint of a red sheen occasionally – it is very close to KWZ’s iron gall blue-black (a gentle iron gall).
Hints of the red sheen show up on Midori MD Light paper:
Cosmo Air Light paper shows no sheen at all, and the purple undertones drop out:
Tomoe River paper (TR7) shows the sheen clearly in a swatch and haloing in the writing.
Glimmering Greige is a lovely warm grey with gold sparkle. The base color is close to Kirk-same – Kaweco Smokey Grey was the next close grey I could find in my collection. It isn’t very close.
Glimmering Greige on Midori MD Light – the glimmering portion didn’t show well here.
Cosmo Air Light paper shows the gold sparkle very well and brings out the blue in the ink base. On CAL paper, this ink looks like a cool grey rather than warm.
Tomoe River Paper (TR7) shows the sparkle through the swatch and the writing plus a warmer grey than the CAL paper.
The final ink today is Chidori Cherry Blossom. It seems to be exactly in between Strawberry Macaron and Lady Rose Gold (this one was a limited edition).
Again, the sparkle doesn’t show well on the Midori MD Light paper. The base ink color also comes out very pale.
Cosmo Air Light paper shows plenty of the rose gold sparkle. CAL paper also seems to let go of the sparkle fairly easily – not rubbing off, but rather spreading on the page. I’ve noticed this with other sparkle inks in the past.
Tomoe River (TR7) paper doesn’t spread the sparkle like CAL paper, but it doesn’t show as brightly, either.
Here is an overview of the three inks (plus a bonus ink that I will be reviewing soon) on Midori MD Light paper.
The inks together on Cosmo Air Light paper:
Finally, the inks together on Tomoe River Paper (TR7)
It is interesting how a change in paper can drastically change the base color of an ink. Glimmering Greige is a great example of how Cosmo Air Light paper draws out the blue undertones more than Tomoe River paper:
The three inks colors I’ve shown here today are each $22 for a 38mL bottle (or about $0.58 per mL), a price per mL comparable to Sailor Manyo inks, Montblanc standard line inks, or Diamine Shimmertastic inks. I love the idea of ink collections that celebrate special events of stationery stores and bring attention to retailers that I don’t yet know about! Glimmering Greige is also a unique grey to my collection. Thank you to Ferris Wheel Press for sending these for review!
DISCLAIMER: The ink in this review was provided free of charge by Ferris Wheel Press for the purpose of this review. The other items in the review were purchased by myself. Please see the About page for more details.
