Swatch Wednesday: Teranishi Guitar Brilliant Mint

It’s gotten warm enough that I didn’t have to worry about ink freezing in the mail!

My first impression looking in the box was “oh no there’s something on the lid” because normally I put a label on top with the colour to make it easier to find the ink I want in my drawer.

Open box of Teranishi Guitar fountain pen ink, showing the nice box design where cardboard padding holds the top of the ink bottle safely padded for shipping. The lid of the bottle has a sticker on it that reads “guitar gold star” and has their music note logo with some other shape in the center.

As I was contemplating if I should stick my usual swatch sticker on the side, I realized they’d already provided me a solution for this problem in the form of a little label hanging around the neck of the bottle:

Teranishi Guitar Brilliant Mint Ink showcasing the swatch spot on the tag that is attached to the mouth of the bottle.

I don’t actually own that many full sized ink bottles so I probably wasn’t going to forget what this looked like anyhow, but it’s a nice detail that I appreciated.

Teranishi Brilliant Mint ink with a swatch showcasing the teal fountain pen ink. The box has a kind of retro design vibe and includes a typewriter. No idea why.

The idea was that this ink would replace my nearly-depleted vial of Diamine Marine, which seems to be a bit hard to find in Canada at the moment. It’s not exactly the same, since brillaitn mint is a little more green, but it’s a similar teal-ish vibe and I like it a lot. Maybe it’s because I’m used to mint the plant but this definitely isn’t the colour I picture when I think of mint. (I’d picture a light green.) But I’d seen swatches online before I decided to purchase the ink, so I was expecting what I got.

Two similar swatch cards: the top one is Diamine Marine, a light teal ink that leans a bit blue, and the bottom is Teranishi Guitar Brilliant Mint, a very similar ink that leans a bit more green (or mint).

Side by side you can tell the difference, but I think they’re close enough to satisfy me for now. If I manage to find a bottle of Diamine Marine that’s not gigantic and costs an arm and a leg to ship I might still pick one up, but I think this fills the bright teal niche in my collection nicely.

A writing sample in Teranishi Guitar Brilliant Mint. The ink name is drawn with a paintbrush and the text is written with a Sailor Dipton Fude.

For some reason my camera really wants to make this look as brilliant and glowy as the name, but here’s a writing sample that’s been colour corrected to look more the way my eyes see it. I wouldn’t say it’s dull, just not as nearly radiant as it looks in some of the other photos. The notebook has MD ivory coloured paper. Also I definitely missed an i in the company name there. (It’s in the swatch but not very well defined because penmanship isn’t my strongest skill.)

Teranishi Guitar Brilliant Mint Ink bottle, box and swatch. It's a medium teal fountain pen ink that leans a bit greenish (minty). — Teranishi Guitar Brilliant Mint Ink bottle, box and swatch. It’s a medium teal fountain pen ink that leans a bit greenish (minty).

I picked this ink one up from Toronto Pen Shoppe, another new-to-me store. They were the closest place I could find that had the Kokuyo Campus Free Monthly Diary that I absolutely *love* as my calendar for tracking life stuff and habits. It’s been the right size and allows me to start my year in September (to line up with my kid’s academic year and my own habit) plus it’s Monday-start which I wasn’t sure I’d like but now it’s my favourite. I probably could have waited on these but I like to have a plan ready to go before September so I don’t waste money buying stuff I won’t use when the “planner season” pre-orders start, and I wanted an ink to celebrate the fact that things won’t freeze in transit for a few months.

I had a mostly good experience with Toronto Pen Shoppe, although they did forget one of the notebooks I ordered and had to refund me. These things happen! I do wish they had swatches on their online listings but as it happened I’d seen this particular ink elsewhere on the internet when I was looking for potential alternatives to Diamine Marine, so it didn’t stop me from making a purchase this time.

Overall, the ink is what I was hoping it would be and I’m excited to load it up in a pen and find some constrasting colours to go with it next month!