My first ink mix - Sailor Jentle Blue and Perle Noire

[Rosebud]

Hello,

 

I tried to create a blue-black ink at home by mixing 7.5 parts Sailor Blue with 2.5 parts of Perle Noire. I like it enough to have made a bigger batch and have been using it for a week.

Any thoughts ?

 

 

[mhguda]

Congratulations, and welcome to the world of mixing our own blue black inks!

That looks like a very nice color, and if you already made a bigger batch, you must like it enough to want to keep refilling your pen... but, you might wonder also about other proportions... 4:1, 5:1, and so on...

In my experience you need very little black to darken an ink!

[Rosebud]

Yes, thank you and a very valid point. My bigger batch is only 20 ml and I see myself using it regularly.

 

Do you have some 'colourful' suggestions ? I'm planning on mixing Montblanc Gandhi with Diamine Oxblood to see how it goes !

 

[mhguda]

Purples go great with blues and teals, turquoises, and the like.

I've also had some fun mixing green and red in varying proportions. One combination (sorry, don't remember the proportion...) I call seaweed green.

You can also look at the discussions on how to mix a faux Parker Penman Sapphire... a little bit of a holy grail quest here.

[Dione]

19 hours ago, Rosebud said:

Yes, thank you and a very valid point. My bigger batch is only 20 ml and I see myself using it regularly.

 

Do you have some 'colourful' suggestions ? I'm planning on mixing Montblanc Gandhi with Diamine Oxblood to see how it goes !

 

It seems a shame to use up Mb Gandhi by mixing with Oxblood. It will work and will probably become a nice enough ink but I wish I could get some Gandhi to write with.

[sansenri]

welcome to the mixing itch, from me too!

Blue blacks are an interesting starting point, as they are usually easy to achieve and reasonably safe especially if you use the same brand of inks to mix (that is not mandatory though, experiment, but look out for precipitates before you fill your pen with the result...). Also by varying the proportions you can hit your exact shade of blue black, which is a rather satisfactory achievement.
For us curious spectators on your mix (before we also give it a go) you need to show your results more clearly, on the written page text is rather small I cannot see the shade of blue-black so well (looks mostly black).

Besides written words, make some comparison swabs (they are not usually useful to understand what the ink will look like in writing, but they tend to show the colour shade better) or scribbles.

Also useful if you show side by side the two starting colours next to the result, much easier to identify the differences!

 

Just an example

[Rosebud]

14 minutes ago, Dione said:

It seems a shame to use up Mb Gandhi by mixing with Oxblood. It will work and will probably become a nice enough ink but I wish I could get some Gandhi to write with.

I am aware that Gandhi is a very sought after ink. I was lucky enough to snag it up at MRP. 

It is indeed an ink which makes me happy. However, I have more than 40 ml left, of which I will only be using 3-4 ml for the experiment.

 

[Rosebud]

3 minutes ago, sansenri said:

welcome to the mixing itch, from me too!

Blue blacks are an interesting starting point, as they are usually easy to achieve and reasonably safe especially if you use the same brand of inks to mix (that is not mandatory though, experiment, but look out for precipitates before you fill your pen with the result...). Also by varying the proportions you can hit your exact shade of blue black, which is a rather satisfactory achievement.
For us curious spectators on your mix (before we also give it a go) you need to show your results more clearly, on the written page text is rather small I cannot see the shade of blue-black so well (looks mostly black).

Besides written words, make some comparison swabs (they are not usually useful to understand what the ink will look like in writing, but they tend to show the colour shade better) or scribbles.

Also useful if you show side by side the two starting colours next to the result, much easier to identify the differences!

 

Just an example

Thank you for the advice. Seems pertinent and I would try to follow it in future.