Sailor Ink Studio 252: Ink Review

Sailor Ink Studio 252 is a beautiful fountain pen ink with purple and pink tones, and is part of Sailor's Ink Studio collection. This soft pink ink turns into a purple hue as you add more ink to a page, which can add a variety of colors to your writing. See our whole review here!

Ink Review 

Supplies Used:

• Kakimori Stainless Steel dip nib
• Rhodia No. 16 dot pad, 80g white paper
• Tomoé River 52 gsm white paper
• Leuchtturm1917 80g notebook

Smear Test (Dry Time):

• 5-10 seconds – We used the Kakimori dip nib, which gives you various line widths depending on the angle you use the nib. For the dry test on this ink, we angled the nib to produce a very thin line, similar to an extra-fine nib, that took between five and ten minutes to dry.

Drip Test (Water Resistance):

• Low – No water resistance at all, but that's ok! It's still a beautiful fountain pen ink to adorn your journal with, or write some note cards for friends. 

Saturation:

• Medium – While not nearly as light as some Sailor inks, 252 still shows more saturation with continued application. As you can see from swab 1 to 3 the more ink you have, the more of a purple hue you get. 

Ease of Cleaning:

• Easy – A quick flush and you're ready for your next ink. This one was straightforward to clean from the pen. 

Shading:

• High – 252 has lovely shading that can appear as a very subtle color change throughout a word or line of text. The larger nib you use, the more shading you will see.

Flow:

• Medium – This ink isn't too wet or dry and pours smoothly on paper. It does lean a bit toward the dry side when writing, but most high-shading lighter colors do, so it's not entirely unexpected.

 Packaging and Aesthetics:

• The Ink Studio bottles from Sailor feature a relatively plain label but you receive a few goodies inside! Stickers are in the box to allow the marking of a converter or pen so you know what ink is in the converter. It's a very innovative and helpful way to keep track of your ink. The opening is large enough to fill a pen from, so no worries there either. 

If you're interested in similar colors, check out our Swab Shop where you can compare shades side by side.

Summary:

Sailor Ink Studio 252 is a lovely soft ink. The delicate balance between purple and pink is hard to achieve, but Sailor has done a great job. It has some fun shading and saturation with more ink on the page but is well-behaved enough that daily use isn't out of the question. The darker purple shade is a color you don't see often, so it has surprises too. All in all, this color is one we recommend you try out.

This color is available in 20ml bottle as well as our 2ml sample.