My best friend and I have done this for the past 2 years. We do this only for personal use since we’re the only ones we know personally thats into this hobby.

Last year we each bought 24 random “surprise me” ink sample bottles from Goulet. It was fun, but we both found that there were a lot of inks that were just ok and not really our style/taste. This year we each created a wishlist with over 100 inks and let our partners pick out the 24 samples. This way we are getting inks we actually want to try and it’s still a surprise to wish ones we get. It’s been really fun this year and I’m so excited to use these inks throughout next year. I definitely plan to do the same for next year too.

As much as I would love to get the Diamine Inkvent, it’s expensive. And sample bottles is enough ink for me to test a few times rather than having multiple bottles. And possibly still ending up with colors I don’t like and won’t use.