You CAN make your own shimmer inks | Wearingeul Becoming Witch Ink set Review
The fountain pen community is definitely a smaller niche compare to other hobbies similar to watches, spirits, or perfume…and brands have already been including the “DIY” element to some of their products, like Roja or Le Labo making your personal perfume, or watch enthusiasts building their own watches from parts sourced from ebay or mod shops. There exist such products in the same veins within the fountain pen hobby, but most of it is limited to mixing different shades of ink to make your own writing fluids, or turning acrylic rods and assembling them with a kit pen set.
What if, fountain pen users can do something a bit wilder than that, like adding shimmers into their favorite ink color for that extra bit of pizazz? Wearingeul - a design brand from Korea - has made this happen, with the release of the Becoming Witch set.
Disclaimer: The Becoming Witch ink set was provided to me free of charge and the opinions here are my own. I do not receive any monetary compensation from Wearingeul for this review.
Wearingeul is a design brand which interprets literature into writing fluids. I’ve been looking at their catalogue for the past week or so and I must say I am tempted to review some more of their other sheening inks.
The Becoming Witch set came to me within 3 days after Wearingeul notified me of the shipment (praising DHL this time); everything was well packed and padded to prevent inky hazards. It comes with a sturdy paper box that has debossed details inspired by the 4 witches of Lyman Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. The debossing is already hinting at what the content of the set contains and the design is not too in-your-face to the point of redundant obviousness.
Wearingeul also provides you with 8 plastic pipettes and 4 empty vial glass bottles in addition to the blue ink bottle and 4 glitter potions. It is a large pack and I would not recommend it to new fountain pen users as to use the set to the fullest potential users should have a bit of experience with handling liquids such as these - especially when mixing the glitter with your fountain pen inks. I would like to add a few things to the user instructions though:
Have different plastic pipettes for different glitters and the blue ink to prevent cross contamination between the glitters.
Be aware that using the glitter alone by itself is fine, but the solution in the glitter only contains a very diluted amount of adhesive so the shimmers will flake off if not mixed in with a fountain pen ink.
Use a small amount each time you make a new batch of mixed ink, and test them out as you go to not add too much or too little glitter into the mix.
Start with the recommended 10 ink : 1 glitter ratio, but to my experience 10 : 2 ratio mixtures show the shimmers a lot better under camera, especially with Flame and Mind Control (red/violet glitters)
Clean your fountain pens thoroughly after use as glitter inks are known to cause clogging if left inside a pen for too long; when dried out, it might require a full disassembly to fully clean the pen, thus it is advised that you do not put these shimmery inks in your most expensive writing instruments.
The glitter potions and glass vials look good in the box, but they do have certain disadvantages in my experience. There is a plastic inner cap inside the glitter bottles and they do pose some friction in the user experience: they create a seal to prevent spillage and leakage during transport, but opening and closing them multiple times are not the most effortless activity - plus there would always be that bit of leftover glitter hanging around the lip of the bottles from the previous session. A new cap design with a pipette attached would solve the problem. The miniature vials are really good for storing your mixed creations, but the opening is a bit too narrow to stick any fountain pen nibs in for a fill. If you have spare ink bottles lying around (I’m sure y’all are like me and save all of those empty ones for situations like this), put your concoctions in them and use the wider opening for ease of use.
I will be honest upfront that I am not the most knowledgeable on the witches of Frank Baum’s world, but apparently there were two good witches of the North and South, plus two wicked witches of the East and West. There was also a hidden history with a few other witches around the Land of Oz, but I am getting sidetracked here, let’s get into how the glitter potions and Wicked Witch inks look like.
Wicked Witch Blue
The blue by itself is a deep rich shade of navy blue that could come out as purple under some angles. It maintains pretty decent ink flow with all the nibs I tested and this one shines the best with finer nibs, as it can maintain a not so overbearing amount of sheen - plus, the viscosity is as good as you would like a “base” ink would be for shimmer mixtures.
Healing Light & The Witch of the North
This shade of gold shimmers is probably the most classic shade of sparkles used in calligraphy. It catches the light with ease and it plays off the shade of dark blue really well in large blobs or with monoline writing.
Frost & The Witch of the East
Frost has this vibrant glimmer to it and at low angle it can look like a light pink of sorts when used by itself; combined with Wicked Witch, it is my favorite out of the four: Frost adds a layer of brighter blue on top of the already dark blue.
Looking at the blob of ink from a low angle, all of a sudden the blotch turns into this deep purple that shines in low light.
Mind Control & The Witch of the West
Mind Control probably has the best color to pair with: it fills in the gap between the dark blue and the red sheen of Wicked Witch - and at lower angles when used by itself, the glitters show a bit of light green undertone, although it would not show off as well as when mixed in with another ink.
Flame & The Witch of the South
Last of the bunch, it is quite obvious that Flame is going to be paired with bright red sparkles. Flame does not really look that red if you smudge the glint out by itself, but somewhat of a light orange that has a bit of red here and there. When mixed in with Wicked Witch however, it adds another layer of red on top of the previously applied red sheen. The fierce nature of the name “flame” can be seen here, well, more like a blowtorch at this point…I do like it, but I’d maybe reduce the amount of glitter added to the mix.
Overall, this Becoming Witch set by Wearingeul really surprises me: it gives the freedom to the users to put any amount of glitter they want into their favorite ink, and this opens up a lot of possibilities for fountain pen users as well as artists who would love to experiment with a material like liquid glitter. Other than a few tweaks to the bottles, the set will be something I go back to use from time to time. I will surely be adding more photos of my experiments combining the glitter potions with other inks in my collection and you guys can certainly go back to this article for updated results or follow me over Instagram for the earliest notices.
Thanks to Wearingeul again for letting me review this set and I’ll catch you guys in the next one! Please check them out at @wearingeul and while we wait for more of their creations, you could read or watch my other reviews right here.
