Dip pen tests among other things

I get excited over art supplies. No surprise, no?

Check out the stuff I bought over the weekend:

Speedball sketching set

WOOT. The coolest and the most recent thing I've gotten: a dip pen set. Comes with six nibs and two pen holders. Now all I need is some gold ink and I'm all set for what I had been planning to do all this time.

Did some trial runs with them on a piece of index card. I used some green ink I had which was supposed to be used for refilling Tria markers. Only used the three big pen nibs, though, because they looked a little easier to clean.

Dip pen tests

Serious ink blotting, much? I partly blame that towards my inexperience, and to the fact that I couldn't really dip the nib into the ink as it only had a spout used to refill empty markers with.
I love how the tip of the nib always catches onto the paper when I draw with it, too.

Always good to practice good care taking, too. Thus, I got an excessively big bottle of pen cleaner.

Pen cleaner - 150 mL - imagine that it's flipped counterclockwise for you

I was about to buy a slightly smaller container of it I found on the sale rack because it was used and was dripping the stuff everywhere. However, my dad had a problem with the dripping.
Sucks that I got such a huge bottle of that when I bought a puny tub (if I can even call it that) of brush cleaner:

Old Master's Brush Cleaner - 1/4 onz

And I just started to get into watercolours, too!
I love the smell. Reminds me of lemon dish soap, except less strong.

Oh, and I bought a Moleskine notebook.

Dark blue Moleskine

 Nope, still don't see why people love them so much. Maybe it's because I bought a notebook instead of a sketchbook. Because I really wouldn't be able to do any paintings in mine's when I can't even write in pen without it showing on the other side.

I think you guys all say my Artist's Loft watercolour set, too. I don't know, though there's more colours, I kind of prefer the Talens one over it. Just *something* about the paint that bugs me.