![ink samples](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4027/4467446237_073d079d39.jpg)
Those of my readers who are not fountain pen users may want to sit tight for a while, because I do believe my next few posts will be about ink. Fountain pen ink, that is.
Behold the fantastic ink sampler from Pear Tree Pens. It is a rather brilliant business idea they have - offer teeny tiny samples of bottled ink for a low price. It's a great way for folks to try out a new ink color without buying a whole bottle of the stuff... and if you've played around with fountain pen inks at all, you have discovered that the way it looks on a computer screen is not necessarily the way it's going to look in real life. (In fact, it's gonna look different flowing out of different pens, on different papers! Ah, variety...)
![vacuum packed and leak-safe](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4034/4467446395_c93c013838.jpg)
So here you see my latest purchase - two samplers, which means 8 tiny bottles of ink. They are safely vacuum-packed, which is a good thing, because one of the bottles leaked, and this kept things from being too messy, as you can see from the contained leakage in the photos.
![Leaky Lou](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4067/4468221186_bc879b0986.jpg)
In fact, the bottled that had leaked was completely gone and unusable, and Pear Tree Pens showed their typical stellar customer service - they sent me a replacement bottle at no charge, and even threw in three extra samples for free. So I essentially got almost three samplers for the price of two. Thanks, guys!
![ink samples, leaked](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2697/4467445709_22cc09f5ce.jpg)
You can probably also see that you don't get much ink in these samples, so don't expect to fill a big pen that's a piston filler... but I often use a syringe (also from Pear Tree Pens, a la their fabulous Write Fill Cartridge/Converter Fill Kit) and so I can easily test out the ink that way... and I can generally fill a converter or two from the sample bottles also.
I was searching for that perfect shade of burgundy/maroon ink, which I did not find in this sampler or anything else they sent as a follow-up (I am so irked by pinkish burgundies, they are just not for me); I have since discovered that I can achieve a very pleasing burgundy by mixing inks I already have (hooray!), but in this sampler I also learned that I simply MUST have a bottle of Diamine Violet soon.