J.Herbin Emerald of Chivor: Shimmering Ink Fountain Pen

What's up everybody, I'm Edgar and in this video I'll be reviewing J.R. Bond's Emerald of Shavor. But before I begin, I want to give a big thank you to Gold Spot Pens. They were kind enough to send me a bottle of this ink for me to try out. So if you're considering purchasing this ink, you can't go wrong with Gold Spot Pens. I will leave a link to their site in the description down below. One thing to keep in mind about this review is that although this is a fountain pen ink, I will use everything besides a fountain pen. You see I mainly work with calligraphy nibs, so I will be basing this review around how well this ink performs with the nibs I use on a regular basis and the paper I use on a regular basis. There are plenty of other YouTube videos that review this ink with fountain pens, though this is not one of those videos. So without further ado, let's begin. So the first nib I started with was my Browse Pumpkin nib with my oblique holder. I mainly use this nib when writing the copyplate script. It can hold a good amount of ink and works well on almost any kind of paper, both smooth and rough. The paper used here is Strathmore 300g watercolor paper. Straight away I found I will have to dip my pen in the ink more frequently than normal. This was because I couldn't load the nib with enough ink that I am normally used to. I tilted the bottle as far as I could without having the ink spill over. When it comes to ink consistency, it is a bit on the watery side, which makes sense. This is a fountain pen ink. If the ink was a bit thicker, fountain pen users will have a hard time getting the ink to flow evenly. The way that I'm using it here, the consistency is not much of a problem. I was able to get clean consistent strokes and the paper held the ink perfectly. No bleed whatsoever. One thing I have yet to talk about is the actual color and shimmer this ink is known for. I found that you can get two very unique looks from this ink. One look can be achieved by giving the bottle a good shake before use. The other look can be achieved by not shaking the ink at all. To show you how different each look can be, I will write the next word by giving the bottle a good shake. But first be sure to close the bottle tightly. You don't want a loose cap, otherwise you get ink everywhere, on your table and even your clothes. Trust me, I know. As you can see, this ink has gold flakes settled at the bottom. This happens if you leave the ink unused. Keep in mind this video was sped up. I didn't shake vigorously because I didn't want bubbles building up in the bottle. Once you notice that the gold flakes are no longer at the bottom, you can begin to use the ink. I tend to leave it upside down for a bit to get a much greater effect which you will see in a little bit. Once you are done, turn the bottle over and slowly open the cap. Keep in mind you just shook the bottle and some ink may splat out if opened too quickly. Don't open the bottle over your paper because ink splats can ruin your work. I heard from a few videos that ink flow can be a problem because of the gold flakes, but I didn't run into any ink flow problems with any of my nibs. If you run into ink flow problems, rinse and dry your nib. That should do the trick. Now let's see how awesome this ink looks when it's completely dry. Here you can see a reddish shimmer with almost a teal blue color. You're probably wondering where's the gold I mentioned earlier. Well this was the word I wrote without shaking the bottle. It's still an impressive look if you ask me, but since the ink wasn't shaken, I didn't get the entire look this ink can achieve. Here is the word I wrote with the shaken ink and immediately you can see the gold shimmer mixed with the reddish shimmer and mixed with the teal. The amount of color diversity this ink can achieve blows my mind. When I first used this ink, I didn't shake the bottle and was honestly impressed with the outcome, but after watching a few videos instructing me to shake the ink for best results, I immediately tried it and couldn't believe my eyes with the results. Next, I used my straight holder with my Browse Broad nib. This nib is what I use for any black letter scripts, but can be used for many more scripts. This nib isn't limited to black letter. The paper I'm using here is Tamo River 52 gram paper. For anyone new to this paper, don't let how thin and fragile this paper feels fool you. This paper holds ink better than many papers on the market. Like I mentioned before, this ink is a bit watery, so if you want crisp strokes, don't fill the nib reservoir with too much ink. Doing so will give you blobby line strokes. One thing I noticed while writing on Tamo paper was drying time was much quicker than the watercolor paper. I honestly don't know why this is. If you know why, let me know in the comments down below. As much as I wanted crisp clean strokes, I also wanted to see how good this paper was at holding a heavy amount of ink. Though you do not see much bleed around the ink strokes, the back of this paper did begin to show a heavy amount of bleed. Again, I want to say that the reason it had some bleed was I intentionally overfilled the nib with ink, which resulted in a much wetter stroke. After drying, we see the same color variation. Here I decided to use my Hero 41 nib, which gives me thin lines almost like a fountain pen would. The paper used here is the Rhodia 80 gram dotted paper. This paper works very well with this ink. I did try writing copper plate and black letter like the previous examples, but the bleed was too extreme. This paper doesn't hold a heavy amount of ink like the previous papers, but nonetheless I still got great results. These thin line strokes limited the color variation, but the shimmering effect was still very much visible in every test I conducted. Almost every video I watched recommended I use Rhodia paper, so if you are using a fine line nib like this one here, you won't go wrong with Rhodia. The last and final test was with my Brass Pumpkin nib and this HP Premium 120 gram printed paper. This was actually the test I was most impressed by. Reason being is this is considered printer paper. Every printer paper I used before had a very messy noticeable bleed to it, but this paper performed better than I expected. There was little to no bleed even with the heavy amount of ink used with each stroke, something that the Rhodia paper couldn't do. Now after all these tests, is this ink worth a spot in your ink collection? I would say yes. This has to be one of the most unique inks I've used thus far. When dry, the colors work perfectly together. Though I will say this ink is a bit unpredictable. Let's say you want some gold shimmer on this side and red shimmer on that side. You might end up with the opposite results of what you were actually looking for. So if you're looking for color control, this ink may not be right for you. But that's the reason why I love this ink so much. Every use I get different results and no two words will ever look the same. That's it for today's review. Let me know in the comments down below if you have Emerald of Shavor in your ink collection and how much you enjoy using it. Feel free to tag me or DM me on Instagram with your work using Emerald of Shavor. If you enjoyed this video, please consider subscribing and liking this video. Thank you for watching!