Twinkle is all about the shimmer!
Birmingham Pen Co has fifteen Twinkle inks right now,
and if you love shimmer, these are the best!

These inks are Mitchell’s favorites.  He loves shimmery inks, and Tributary Twinkle
is probably his favorite.  It sits next to our bed where he plays and journals.
He has them in two pens currently, a Lamy stub nib and an inexpensive Jinhao,
and so far, no clogging.  Both inks dry quickly even when painted (see below).
Of course, when you are cleaning the shimmers never come out (true for all shimmer inks)
so these pens will forever be dedicated to shimmer.

Remember that others review these inks just for writing;
I am also interested in how they are used for ink-painting!

Properties of Birmingham Twinkle inks:

The Twinkle inks are surprisingly well behaved inks which dry quickly.  They feather slightly on Post-its (many inks do as it is cheap paper), but are fine in Mitchell’s inexpensive journal and on the love letters he writes me! It is beautiful on watercolor paper, above. When the edge is touched with water it moves easily, and after drying, when I scrubbed it, top, it showed quite a lot water resistance.  For my testing, I painted with them, below, and found them to dry quickly even with thick applications!

After painting with them, I now need to get a Twinkle for myself,
Midnight Twinkle, as I am all about the greys!

BRILLIANT PINK

CARMINE

INDANTHRONE

MAYAN VIOLET

PHTHALO BLUEGREEN

*Above, watercolors, from Daniel Smith, Holbein, and Sennelier.*

Looking at watercolor comparisons, I offer these colors, above.

MOST water soluble ink companies do not pay attention to lightfast qualities
and Birmingham is no different in this line of inks.
Most artists who use ink are making prints of their work —
But ink-painting is becoming more interesting so maybe it is time!

I drew the strawberry on my test page with a dip pen and Strawberry Twinkle — on cold press watercolor paper and touched the lines with water using a Pentel Aquash waterbrush.  It held it’s edge but also moved color.  The dots were created with masking fluid.

The river was painted using Tributary Twinkle with a watercolor brush; After I played with moving the colors into sky and mountains.  This ink has quite a lot of purples and blues, really beautiful!

 I like what Birmingham says on their website:
“We started Birmingham Pen Co. in 2012 in the Southside
of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  The region of Pittsburgh
where we began once  called “Little Birmingham” due
to the area’s prolific manufacturing industry in the early 1900’s.
The Birmingham moniker was derived from Birmingham, UK
– a manufacturing hub that specialized in, among other things, pen and nib manufacturing with thousands of craftspeople employed in the industry.  We chose the name Birmingham Pen Company to share this little known piece of history and continue in the traditions behind the name.”

Birmingham’s bottles are glass, and functional
even in the small sizes.  I like glass bottles;
they feel like they will last longer.

Birmingham also turns their own pens,
which I’ve noticed often sell out as fast as they make them!
*I LOVE my Model-A Demonstrator, Violet Beauregarde!*
I’ve been coveting the Ironsides!

This is a small family business run by four people: The brothers, Nick and Josh;  Dad is the chief pen machinist;  and Mom does one of the coolest things about Birmingham, which are their amazing historic names!

By direct from them at https://www.birminghampens.com/!

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