As I may have mentioned before, I’m a little enamored with fountain pens right now. Some time in 2020, I realized I could purchase ink samples instead of full bottles. I’ve… accumulated a few vials of ink.

As the collection of vials grew, they tumbled all over each other in the little wooden box I stored them in. They wouldn’t stand up or stay organized. This was super annoying. Also, I couldn’t tell what the ink would look like on paper just by holding the vial up to the light; the color of ink in liquid form does not translate to the color of ink on paper.

I researched options for storing these ink vials, and I saw several tutorials for making racks. I knew I would not do this. I’m not going to measure and drill and be precise. I want to write with ink, not learn how to woodwork. The place I buy my inks from recommends test tube racks. These would work, but I wasn’t thrilled about the way they looked. Nor did I want to order and wait for them.

Last week, I explored to see what kind of storage doo-dads might be available. Surely there was something out there. And there was! There is! I found the perfect solution: cosmetic organizers. Specifically, lipstick racks.

I also bought white circle stickers for the cap of each vial and a box of cotton swabs. Today, on this rain-sleet-snow-y day that I took off from work, I organized my inks. Using the Q-tips, I swabbed each vial’s ink on an adhesive white dot for the cap. I also swabbed each ink in a pocket sized Leuchtturm1917 notebook, since that is my new favorite paper.

Now I know exactly what each ink will look like when I load a pen to write in any one of my many journals — book log, garden log, well-being log, regular old daily life log. I guess I have a lot of journals.

Once I organized the inks and cleaned out my pens, I reloaded them to match the colors I see outside this time of year, including the brilliant coral of clouds at sunrise, which I saw this morning.

Now I can play in my new garden log :).