Our Diamine Let It Snow ink review puts a surprisingly bold winter blue through its paces this week. Originally introduced in the 2025 Diamine Inkvent Teal Edition, Diamine Let It Snow fountain pen ink combines a bright turquoise-blue base with color-shifting chameleon fountain pen ink with shimmer designed to move between blue and pink-violet.
At least, that’s the theory.
In our actual writing test, the effect was subtler. We saw plenty of blue and silver-toned shimmer with occasional flashes of pink, while the bright turquoise base remained the dominant personality.
And there was another surprise: despite its icy name, Let It Snow writes wet.
Really wet.
We tested it on Rhodia lined paper with a J. Herbin glass dip pen that writes approximately like a medium fountain pen nib. Here’s how this snowstorm behaved once it hit the page.
Meet the Ink Maker
Diamine has been producing ink in England since 1864, making it one of the longest-established names in modern fountain pen ink.
The family-run company traces its history to Liverpool and continues to emphasize traditional ink-making methods alongside a willingness to experiment with increasingly unusual fountain pen properties.
That second part has become especially evident through Diamine’s Inkvent releases, where traditional fountain pen colors sit beside shimmer, sheen, scented, chameleon, and pigment formulations.
In other words, the company responsible for more than a century and a half of traditional ink making is also perfectly happy to put color-shifting sparkle in your fountain pen.
We support this development.
Diamine Let It Snow Ink Review: Get to Know the Teal Edition
Let It Snow first appeared in the 2025 Diamine Inkvent Calendar: Teal Edition.
The Inkvent concept turns December into a fountain pen enthusiast’s version of an Advent calendar, with a different new ink hiding behind each door. The 2025 Teal Edition included 24 smaller 12ml bottles plus a larger 30ml bottle for the final day.
Diamine described the Teal Edition as its most innovative Inkvent calendar yet, with Standard, Sheen, Extreme Sheen, Scented, Shimmer, Shimmer & Sheen, Chameleon, Pigment, Pigment Shimmer, and Pigment Chameleon formulations represented among the 25 Diamine Inkvent inks.
Let It Snow was Day 23 and falls into the Chameleon category rather than the permanent Pigment Chameleon group. Independent Inkvent documentation consistently identifies it as a turquoise or cyan-blue ink with blue-to-violet chameleon shimmer.
Those original Inkvent colors have since graduated from tiny Advent bottles into full-size 50ml bottles in the Diamine Teal Edition fountain pen inks collection, giving fans a chance to replenish favorites without hunting down another calendar.
Diamine Let It Snow Ink Review: This Week’s Featured Ink
Let It Snow is a bright blue-turquoise chameleon ink that makes a much stronger appearance on paper than the icy theme might lead you to expect.
Our swab was surprisingly dark and saturated. Even in regular writing, the color was easy to see throughout the sample.
The base reads as bright turquoise or cyan blue rather than a pale winter blue.
The base color reads as bright turquoise-cyan, with deeper teal-blue appearing where more ink collects.
The shimmer is designed to shift from blue toward pink or violet depending on light and viewing angle. During our test, however, our naked-eye impression was predominantly blue to silvery shimmer, with only occasional pink flashes.
That doesn’t mean the chameleon effect is absent. It simply means you shouldn’t expect every line to flip dramatically from blue to purple like someone hit a switch.
Other reviewers have made similar observations, with some finding the light-blue side substantially easier to see than the purple shift.
Perfect Pairings: Pens Made for Let It Snow
Our Perfect Pen + Ink Pairings for Diamine Let It Snow: Kaweco Lunar Sport Light Blue, Conklin Duragraph Primary Manipulation 3.5, Monteverde Innova Cloud Dancer, and Keyno No. 001 Serenity.
Let It Snow gives us plenty to work with when choosing a pen. Its vivid turquoise-cyan base deepens toward teal-blue in heavier applications, while the chameleon shimmer appears predominantly cool blue to silvery/icy blue with occasional pink-violet flashes under the right light. For our Perfect Pairings, we chose four pens that bring out a different side of this surprisingly saturated winter ink.
| Pen Pick | Why It Works with Let It Snow | Pairing Style |
|---|---|---|
| Kaweco Lunar Sport Light Blue | The Lunar Sport Light Blue brings a cool, pearly blue finish with an iridescent personality that feels right at home beside Let It Snow. Its pale icy coloring complements the vivid turquoise-cyan base while playing into the ink’s cooler blue, silver, and occasional violet chameleon effects. | Iridescent Match |
| Conklin Duragraph Primary Manipulation 3.5 | Primary Manipulation 3.5 brings together turquoise-blue, purple, magenta, red, and shifting pockets of color in one dramatic resin. Rather than matching a single shade, it echoes the entire chameleon idea behind Let It Snow and highlights the less-obvious violet and pink flashes hiding in the shimmer. | Chameleon Match |
| Monteverde Innova Cloud Dancer | Sometimes the best pairing isn’t about matching color at all. Cloud Dancer’s crisp white finish and cool metallic details create a snowy backdrop for Let It Snow’s saturated turquoise color, while its wintry personality beautifully reinforces the ink’s name and icy blue-silver shimmer. | Snow Match |
| Keyno No. 001 Serenity | Serenity’s teal-blue, milky white, and warm resin accents make it a particularly interesting tonal partner. The turquoise areas pick up Let It Snow’s vivid base color while the cloudy white portions provide contrast reminiscent of frost and snow, keeping the pairing coordinated without feeling overly matched. | Turquoise Match |
Diamine Let It Snow Ink Review: Ink Test Results
For our Let It Snow test, we used:
- Dip pen: J. Herbin glass dip pen, similar to a medium nib
- Paper: Rhodia lined paper
- 1-Dip Test: Three complete lines with ink remaining
- Dry time: Approximately 10 seconds in our timed test
- Flow: Noticeably wet
- Bleed through: None
- Feathering: None
- Water resistance: Poor
- Special properties: Blue-to-violet/pink chameleon shimmer
Full Diamine Let It Snow test results including dry time, 1-Dip Test, water test, base color, and writing samples.
One important note about the dry-time result: although our formal timed section reached approximately 10 seconds, Let It Snow felt distinctly wet during writing and heavier applications remained wet longer. A wetter fountain pen or broader nib could extend drying substantially.
Ink Bottle and Packaging
The full-size Teal Edition packaging keeps the visual identity of the original Inkvent release alive.
Diamine Let It Snow is available in the substantial 50ml Teal Edition glass bottle.
The outer box is teal to coordinate with the Diamine 2025 Teal Edition and includes the calendar-style design language associated with Inkvent.
Inside is an impressively sturdy 50ml glass bottle.
The bottle has a squat, heavy-bottomed design that feels stable and high quality on the desk. That stability matters more than you might think when you’re working with shimmer ink and periodically agitating the bottle to redistribute particles.
The cap was easy to remove, and the bottle opening gave us convenient access to the ink.
Overall, the packaging feels like a substantial upgrade from the small Inkvent discovery bottle—appropriate for an ink you liked enough to commit to another 50ml.
Other Products Used During the Review
Our test materials included:
- J. Herbin glass dip pen
- Rhodia lined paper
The dip pen’s approximately medium-width line offered enough ink delivery for the shimmer to remain visible without turning the entire writing sample into a swatch.
Diamine Let It Snow Ink Review: 1-Dip Test
Let It Snow performed very well in the 1-Dip Test.
A single dip allowed us to write all three test lines, and there was still plenty of ink remaining on the glass pen afterward.
That performance makes sense given another obvious characteristic we noticed during testing: this is a wet-writing ink.
Again, a glass dip pen does not mimic a fountain pen feed exactly, so this test should be treated as a relative comparison rather than a promise that every fountain pen will behave identically.
Still, Let It Snow certainly wasn’t shy about getting onto the page.
Dry Time: How Fast Did Let It Snow Dry?
Our timed dry test landed at approximately 10 seconds on Rhodia paper.
However, there’s an important wrinkle.
Throughout the broader test, Let It Snow presented as a noticeably wet ink, particularly in heavier areas. So while our standard dry-time mark was about 10 seconds, larger ink deposits and wetter writing took longer to settle.
Our standard test put Let It Snow at approximately a 10-second dry time, although heavier applications remained noticeably wet.
That’s worth keeping in mind if you use a Broad, Stub, flex, or otherwise generous nib specifically to maximize the chameleon shimmer.
More shimmer visibility may come with more waiting.
Fountain pens: keeping impatience in check since approximately forever.
Diamine Let It Snow Ink Review: Water Test
Here, Let It Snow’s performance changes dramatically.
After water was applied, we saw significant running across the entire test area.
The original lines faded considerably and became distorted as the turquoise ink smeared and moved across the paper.
At the bottom of the test, some of the strongest original lines remained partially visible, but overall readability suffered significantly.
There was one positive result: we still saw no bleed through to the reverse side of the Rhodia paper.
Even so, this is not an ink we would select when water resistance matters.
If your notes need to survive rain, spills, archival handling, or an aggressively placed coffee cup, Let It Snow should not be your first line of defense.
Special Properties: Does the Chameleon Shimmer Really Shift?
Yes—but our test suggests you should expect nuance rather than constant fireworks.
Let It Snow is classified as a Chameleon ink, and descriptions of the shimmer generally put its movement in the blue-to-violet family.
A close look at Let It Snow reveals cool blue-silver shimmer across its vivid turquoise and deeper teal-blue base.
In our test, the dominant shimmer appearance was:
Blue → silver/light blue → occasional pink-violet flashes
Those pink-violet moments were there, but they weren’t nearly as prevalent as the blue and silvery reflections.
That actually creates a convincing wintry effect.
Instead of looking rainbow-like, the shimmer often resembles icy reflections moving across the turquoise base. The occasional pink or violet flash then feels like an extra little surprise when the light catches correctly.
Our swab also revealed a darker-than-expected base color, so Let It Snow maintains good visibility even when the chameleon effect isn’t obvious.
Feathering or Bleeding
Despite its wet flow, Let It Snow behaved nicely on Rhodia paper.
We observed:
- No feathering
- No bleed through
That combination matters because a very wet ink can sometimes turn messy on the page even before water is intentionally introduced.
Let It Snow stayed clean during normal writing.
The chaos began only when we invited actual water to the party.
Diamine Let It Snow Ink Review: Final Thoughts
Let It Snow was a slightly different ink than we expected.
Yes, it’s bright.
Yes, it shimmers.
Yes, it has a color-shifting chameleon effect.
But none of those qualities resulted in an ink that was difficult to read.
The bright turquoise-blue base showed up extremely well on Rhodia paper, and the heavier swab was surprisingly dark and saturated.
We also liked the shimmer more once we stopped expecting a dramatic blue-to-pink transformation on every line.
Most of the time, we saw blue and silver-toned shimmer. Every so often, a pink-violet flash appeared. The result is subtler than the full chameleon description may suggest—but visually, it works.
Let It Snow shows a vivid turquoise-cyan base with deeper teal areas and cool chameleon shimmer.
Performance was more mixed.
The ink is distinctly wet, despite landing around 10 seconds in our standard dry test. It produced three full lines from a single dip with plenty of ink remaining. We saw no feathering or bleed through.
Water resistance, however, is not its strength. Water caused extensive running, fading, smearing, and line distortion.
So what is Let It Snow best at?
Being fun.
It’s bright without becoming illegible, sparkly without losing its base color, and unusual enough to make a page feel special. Broad and Stub nib users should have even more opportunity to chase the chameleon effect.
Just keep it away from the snow after it melts.
