I chose Jelly Bean Blue for this month’s Ink Of The Month after seeing some Forget Me Not flowers growing in the garden. Forget Me Nots have a wide colour palette ranging from deep blue to a blue that is so pale it almost looks like white; ones I saw were a lovely mid blue and that inspired me to choose a blue for this month.
Ferris Wheel Press are a Canadian company that produces a wonderful range of pens, inks and stationery and a while back I reviewed Tanzanite Sky and now it is the turn of Jelly Bean Blue.
JBB, for short, arrives in a round work of art container and inside this is a colour matched velvet drawstring pouch and inside this is the spherical 85ml bottle of ink. The bottle is beautifully produced and printed, in gold, with the company name and rather than the usual cap it has a hexagonal brass cap.
The cap looks like something you would open with a wrench, you could do this, but it does undo quite easily by hand. Whilst the cap is aesthetically pleasing it does have a hidden advantage; for anyone who has arthritis or similar grip problems having a large brass hexagon for a cap should make it easier to open than a conventional round cap.
When I tested the ink it was well behaved, nicely saturated and flowed well with no skipping or hard starts and dried to a very nice mid blue. It is definitely a low sheen ink, but I was able to coax some reddish sheen out of it by building up a few layers, but the Q-Tip test gives the clearest indication of the final colour.
At £31.99GBP/$36.00USD this is not the cheapest of inks and you could easily by 3-5 bottles of more modestly priced inks but if you did you would be missing out on a real treat.
Not only are Ferris Wheel Press inks really good inks they are also wonderfully presented, they are packaged with the same thinking as expensive chocolates and perfumes so if you want to treat yourself and/or someone special then choose a colour you like and place your order.
Disclaimer: The ink was purchased with my own funds at retail price. The opinions expressed in this review are my own; and I am not connected with either the retailers or manufacturers in any way.
The Indian Marmalade Company 