Goulet Pens Ink Drop April 2016 Subscription Review

Goulet Pen’s Ink Drop is a monthly fountain pen ink sampling subscription. Every month you’ll receive 5 new samples of fountain pen ink, usually themed in some interesting and unique way.

This month’s ink drop theme is Forest Foray, which are earth tones.  Let’s take a look the ink offerings from Goulet Pens.

Everything in this box. The box includes a sticker and a bookmark.

This will also be the last of the ink drops offered by the Goulet Ink Company. You can read more about the retirement of this subscription here.

The ink in this month’s Ink Drop are:

• Diamine Magical Forest
• Noodler’s Forest Green
• Diamine Sherwood Green
• Diamine Terracotta
• Platinum Mix-Free Earth Brown

The final offering from the Goulet Inkdrop held a delightful collection of greens and browns that catered to their forest theme.

Diamine Sherwood Green

I’m not a huge fan of green inks, but this shade was nice and one that I would consider buying myself.  Dark, yet still noticeably green, Sherwood makes a nice line on paper.

Diamine Magical Forest

Part of the new Shimmertastic line of inks that Diamine released, in part I think to answer J. Herbin’s popular 1670 Anniversary line, Magical forest offers a medium green with a silver kick.  Inks with shimmer are hugely popular among ink addicts and this definitely deserves a place among them.  Remember that when working with ink that contains particles, you must gently shake the bottle to agitate and mix the particles with the ink.  If you don’t, you’ll fill your pen and wonder where the magic went!  Getting a good silver sheen was a bit difficult with a dip nib and an ink sample bottle, but it did show a little.  All in all, this ink performed well and looks great!

Noodler’s Forest Green

This ink was very similar to Diamine’s Sherwood Green.  Where the Sherwood tended to become more ‘green’ as you used it (e.g. the drawing), Noodler’s held onto its darkness and maintained it even though I ran the nib dry.  I also noticed with this ink that, as with the previous month’s Noodler’s sample, it was very thick and coated my well-used Zebra G so that it wrote as though it were new again.  Since the ink is thicker, use some caution when deciding on what pen to put it in; one might consider trying some cheaper pens with it before putting it into more valuable ones.

Diamine Terracotta

This nice brown ink has some good bronze tone that really popped on my white Clairefontane paper.  The effect made it a handsome color to look at and I suspect that the same quality would give it some nice shading with a medium and larger nib.

Platinum Mix-Free Earth Brown

The unique quality of this ink is that it is made to be mixed with the other inks in the Platinum Mix-free line to create your own unique color.  The ink by itself is a nice brown with some pink undertones and shading would probably be nice in a larger nib.  If you’re into being a mad scientist, then this ink is one of many in Platinum’s Mix-free line formulated especially so that your creative juices can run wild.  The company cautions that only inks in this special line should be mixed together (other mixable or mix-tolerant inks need not apply).  When inks that are not formulated for mixing are combined, sometimes their properties will not work together and clogging of the nib and feed may occur.  Ideas for mixing of this ink can be found on Platinum’s web page.

As a member you received access to a special discount page where you can purchase bottles of the sampled ink at a discount. I purchased two inks – Diamine Majestic Blue and Private Reserve Gray Flannel – and bid adieu. FYI, you can still purchase ink samples from Goulet, a wonderful company!

FYI – This box made our list of subscription boxes $10 and under every month!

Visit Ink Drop to subscribe or find out more!