I’m normally not the sort of person who buys an advent calendar. Hell, I usually don’t even think about buying stuff for Christmas until late November. However, Diamine might be changing me. Their advent calendar (or “Inkvent Calendar”, as they’ve named it) honestly just blows me away. It is brilliant. I have seen quite a few stationery advent calendars over the years but none have tempted me as much as this one. I mean, it’s September and I’m seriously considering hitting that ‘pre-order’ button. The biggest issue I foresee with the Inkvent Calendar is if I’ll be able to resist opening it all before December or not!
Appropriately named, the calendar features little bottles of inks – rather than the usual chocolate. Diamine ink is a staple product in the stationery world. The majority of my ink collection features this brand because they have brilliant colour choices and it’s good quality ink. The Inkvent Calendar features 24 small ink bottles to give you a good range of colours to sample from. That’s 24 different colours to play around with. You get 7ml of ink in each of these bottles. There’s also a 25th bottle, for Christmas Day itself, which is larger and holds up to 30 ml. Diamine describe the product as a ‘treasure trove of 25 inks’ and I couldn’t agree more.
The inks are all housed in a beautiful blue package, with a lovely design on it. There’s absolutely no spoilers on the package itself to tell you what’s inside – other than the fact that it will contain bottles of ink (which you should have been able to guess by the name, to be fair) – so you can rest assured that it will be a surprise. Part of the fun, after all, is in the surprise for some people.
All of the inks are new too. They consist of “standard”, “sheening” or “shimmer” – or a combination of “sheening” and “shimmer”! That’s all the hint I am going to give you. Diamine has released the names of each of these inks – which, of course, all have a festive twist to them. So if you’re curious, you can find out at any of the retailers listed below. I have excluded them from this post, just to avoid giving people too many spoilers – in case you wish to be surprised.
The Inkvent Calendar is available to purchase at a number of retailers. Here’s a couple from the UK that I’ve found so far:
1. The Writing Desk – 10% off until 20th September. [Code: INKVENT_10] – Full Price £66 with free UK shipping
2. Cult Pens – Full Price £67 with free international shipping*, I believe.
I actually caved before I finished writing this blog post and have pre-ordered mine from The Writing Desk, taking advantage of the discount that they offer. However, I am totally going to have to give mine to someone to hold until the end of November or I might actually just cave and open all the doors as soon as I get…
* Cult Pens is currently trialing Free International Shipping when you spend more than £50 and the items weigh less than 2KG. I believe this might be eligible but you will have to double check on the website before ordering.
Wherever you get it from, let me know if you get it. I would love to hear about everything you do with your new bottles of ink. I know I cant wait to start playing with my collection.
