Day 19’s ink is called Festive Joy, and it’s a standard, dark purple ink, the second we’ve gotten this calendar. Interestingly, the other was called Harmony, which is another concept that I have trouble associating with a colour. Of course, being the second of a type in a series invites increased scrutiny as it’s being compared to what came before. And what are we here for except to scrutinize inks?
Firstly, the colour. I didn’t expect Diamine to pull a fast one and reuse a colour, so my main interest was in what differences there were. And there were quite a few. In fact, being standard dark purple inks is where the similarities between Festive Joy and Harmony stop. This ink is richer and darker, with a bit more blue in it. It shades a little, but is a perfect writing ink for the colour. And despite not being a sheening ink, I actually got quite a bit of metallic, gold sheen. This occurred where I used a lot of ink and in places that were quite dark and was especially visible under light. This occurred on my Midori and Leuchturm tests, but not in my Rhodia notebook, which I expected since my Webnotebook is where sheen goes to die. I had a very high opinion of Harmony, and I think I like Festive Joy’s colour better. It’s more interesting and more to my tastes.
The writing experience of Festive joy was as expected. There was some feedback off the page but I had no ink flow issues. the lines I got were consistent, crisp and loaded with colour. The dry time was pretty unremarkable, being about average, though I did smear some of my writing samples.
The ink is pretty saturated, which adds to its rich colour. However, cleaning my pens was a bit of a chore and I got a fair amount of ghosting and bleed-through. Perhaps a little more than average. The water tests for Festive Joy all came to the conclusion that one should not mix drinks with this ink. The letters smeared and washed out easily, though my sample on the Rhodia put up a decent fight.
I’ll admit that I wasn’t too keen to test this ink. It felt a bit plain and having something very similar to it earlier didn’t help its case. But Festive Joy surprised me. I like the colour and find it super interesting. There’s nothing to complain about within it’s properties or writing experience. I was very pleased by Harmony, but this ink has displaced it as the purple ink that I would buy from this calendar. Now, Festive Joy isn’t flashy and I imagine there will be people disappointed by it. I was certainly almost in that category. It’s like Thunderbolt, from a couple of days ago, in this regard. At it’s core, it’s a good, solid ink, but if you don’t really like the colour, there’s not much for you here. What turned me around was the unexpected sheening. Without that, Festive Joy gets the same sort of review. But, as it stands right now, it’s a winner.
The Pen Lover's Nook 
Not sure if you’ve had the pleasure, but I found this indistinguishable from Pure Pens’ “Flower of Scotland”… purportedly made for them by Diamine. Part of their Celtic collection. Same colour, same sheen.
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