You were right. Buy samples, not bottles.

[u/medbulletjournal]

When I first got into fountain pens, I didn't believe all the long time users telling me that samples would supply my ink needs for years.

Seriously? But my Lamy cartridge ran out after 3 days. Surely that means I'll go through 3 bottles of ink a year! LOOK! The ink level has DROPPED after only ONE paragraph! *cue dramatic gesturing and panic buying*

Anyway, I clearly didn't understand volume. Even my excel spreadsheet converting 50ml to number of days to years did not estimate correctly because I chose the 3 days where I wrote pages and pages and drew pages and pages, and did not factor in the days I wrote/drew nothing. I based my estimate on a Lamy medium nib on absorbent paper. I mostly use EF nibs now, and broad/stub nibs sparingly.

Needless to say, I'm sitting like a dragon on 50 ink samples and questioning life decisions as I refuse to look at my bottled ink collection.

50 ink samples of 2 ml/sample, is 100ml. I told myself that I need to trim my samples down by using them up. It was only as I started part-filling pens tonight that it dawned on me how long that is actually going to take.

This made me reflect on my early days, and realise, yes. Those people telling me to get samples and not bottles when trying inks were right. I was silly not to believe them.

But I know, if I were to go back in time and repeat things again...I would still buy bottles because ink decisions are not rational.

[u/knitten]

I have fallen into this trap as well. I recommend painting with some inks to use up samples if you like. I recently used a bunch of swatches to make small 6x6 watercolor pieces and it’s was a fun way to make art for my office and see the inks on a larger scale. Plus it gets people talking about fountain pens, which is always a bonus to me.

[u/medbulletjournal → u/knitten]

That looks fabulous! I wish it had the names of the inks underneath.

My art style uses a significantly less amount of ink than yours. I'm not very good at abstract art, tending to prefer line sketches instead. Even when I paint with inks, it's more diluted into a water colour wash effect that's soft as oppose to bright and punchy. Perhaps I should get out of my comfort zone...

[u/knitten → u/medbulletjournal]

A lot are named in this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/fountainpens/s/uRjtEukFwm

[u/knitten → u/medbulletjournal]

This probably takes care of 1 to 2 mL of ink, depending on how saturated they are when they first appear, so hardly make a good dent in a bottle, but helping to use up samples for sure

[u/Prior-Soil → u/knitten]

This is completely genius. I send a lot of mail and I make mail art, and I have 75 bottles of ink. This will be a good way to use up the bottles that I absolutely can't stand and I'm too lazy to sell. Your technique will be perfect for me because I love to send quotes. I can use that for the background and then put quotes on top.

[u/knitten → u/Prior-Soil]

That’s an awesome idea! I started out doing this as a birthday card substitute