Chivor Shimmer Showdown

Who will be crowned King? or Queen? or Shimmery?

So with the Emerald of Chivor release folks were expecting some interesting things out of the latest 1670 ink from J. Herbin. Early users were showing off a beautiful green-blue ink with lots of gold sparkle and a beautiful magenta sheen. Once it made it out to folks there was a little confusion when it came to the sheen – they were getting none or very little at best. The thing about this ink, is that it really shows it’s ability when you put it on paper that extends the dry time. The other factor is volume of ink – the more ink the pen puts down the more likely you are to see that sheen.

I decided to run a test with ten papers I had on-hand, from light notebook papers to heavy mixed media papers usually targeted at markers and watercolor. Each paper was tested with a Pilot Parallel 3.8mm pen and a 5/8″ Coit dip pen. The papers tested were:

• Rhodia No.16 90g Dot Pad 
• Clairefontaine 90g Notebook Paper
• Canson 98# Mixed Media paper
• Copic 70g Marker paper
• Mnemosyne A4 80g Imagination paper
• Copic Heavy Sketchbook paper
• Borden & Riley 108# Paris Paper
• Pentalic 110# Paper for Pens
• Strathmore 300 Series Mixed Media paper
• Strathmore 400 Series 140# Mixed Media paper

The results below show that some papers do ok with the ink, but they absorb too quickly for the sheen to form. Across the entire set of ten papers the top for sheen were the Copic Marker Pad, the Strathmore 400 Series and the top spot went to the Canson Mixed Media paper. This ink should really be put in your wetter pens and the larger the nib the better. Don’t forget to shake the pen before writing as the sparkles settle quickly when not in use.