Ink Review: Diamine Aster (Flowers Gift Set)

November 4, 2015

My latest ink is Diamine Aster from the Flowers Set. I decided I should try to complete reviewing the Flower set inks, as I have reviewed all of the Music set inks. I find the Flowers set consists of more brightly coloured inks, whereas the Music set are more muted. So sometimes I'm in the mood to write with brightly coloured inks rather than muted inks.

I decided to use Diamine Mediterranean Blue, Sheaffer Skrip Washable Blue (old bottle) and Waterman Florida Blue (now Serenity Blue) as my comparison inks this time. I chose these inks as they tend to be regular, everyday blue inks. I might have also chosen Parker Quink as a regular, everyday blue ink, but I only have it in cartridges. Aster seems like it's slightly less saturated than some of the Diamine inks I have reviewed, and although it's still quite a bright blue, I think it qualifies as a regular, everyday medium blue ink.

I used my new purple Lamy Al-Star M nib, from Amazon for this review. I didn't have one and I found they were available at reasonably low prices.

Diamine Aster behaved beautifully in the pen I selected, and I experienced no problems with it. I wrote my 'Further notes/Observations' two days after the rest of the review, and notice that section looks a bit darker. So this is an ink that could darken over time while a fill remains in a pen.

Although this isn't a waterproof ink, it shows reasonable water resistance for a relatively unsaturated ink.
Bearing in mind the paper I use is thick with a shiny surface, and I used a M nib, this ink took 16-18 secs to dry.
It tends towards wet rather than dry. I saw no skips or hard starts while I did swabs and dry time tests.
It is currently available in 30ml glass bottles within the Flowers gift set, or in 30ml plastic refill bottles from Diamine.
Diamine sell it directly to end-users on their web-site.

November 4, 2015

Ooh, I had forgotten how much I liked this color. Thanks for the review (and thanks for the reminder that I still have four inks from the Collection I've never even tried... ).