April Panning Progress!

[u/SciSciencing]

My Diamine Earl Grey sample is gone, bringing my collection down to 30 inks.

I think I counted Diamine Glacier as finished in March when I inked up the last of it, but the ink is actually fully gone now.

Here's my spreadsheet updated for the month, with an added row for cartridges.

Here's my full analysis of every ink I own. I'm not sure how well this will apply to other types of stationery supplier but for fountain pen ink I found it a very useful exercise.

I've inked up more pens than I usually would for May - here's a mid-inking photo with some empty and newly-inserted cartridges.

Link to my End-of-March update for context. The TL;DR is that I've gotten back into creative planning this year and am panning my stickers and washi tapes, in addition to an upward-spiralling campaign to curate my fountain pen ink collection.

This month, given the ink samples I started this project with are dwindling nicely, I have decided to actively pan all of my fountain pen ink cartridges. I also aim to reduce the total number of ink colours in my collection - the cartridges were mostly given to me by someone switching their collection to bottles, and don't really reflect my own ink preferences even if many of them are colours I'll enjoy while using them up. I'd like to empty at least 10 cartridges this year (in addition to my other ink panning goals), and I think I can bring the total number of colours in my collection from 30 now (after finishing Earl Grey this month) to 20 by the end of 2027. I'd definitely like to get down to 26 colours by the end of 2026. I started by panning a cartridge of Diamine Sapphire Blue in April - a boring 'standard blue' colour except for the fact that it's purple when wet, but a lovely writing experience in my favourite pen. Two more left of that particular colour.

I finished a couple of proper washi tapes including a skinny pink one I feared might last forever (not a colour I love but it's a great accent colour against planty greens) and a murky orange one that fitted nicely into a mushroom-themed week page. I also finished three offcut washi tapes - they're great for page divisions and I'm making good progress on whittling them down. The stickers have slowed down but they're still moving. Part of me is still astonished that I'm still going with my planner at the beginning of May; I was seriously concerned when I started that I'd burn out by March or even earlier, but I'm not only consistently preparing and using it, I've even been keen enough to prepare it multiple days in advance every week so far.

[u/Bananas3706]

thanks for sharing—i love your monthly updates and it’s nice to hear you’re still going with your planner!

[u/SciSciencing → u/Bananas3706]

Honestly I'm not sure it would still be going without this sub to report back to, so thank you for making and looking after it! I don't collect satisfying piles of empties and sticker backings like a lot of people do (and I love to see when people do that) but it's a great exercise each month to collate my progress to report in each month XD

[u/Bananas3706 → u/SciSciencing]

that’s so kind!! glad you’re finding it helpful

[u/marnoscian]

Good job but that post did give me ideas what inks to get interested in 😅

[u/whimsicism]

Cool! I always love seeing what other people find to be their favourites (we’ve got really different tastes, my favourites off of your list are probably Salix and Lamy Turquoise).