Ink Swatch - Tramol - Turritopsis Nutricula

Tramol Turritopsis Nutricula is a fluorescent “invisible” ink that glows bright cyan under UV light. You might see a little bit of it under sunlight, maybe a hint of it at the right angle of visible light on certain papers, maybe impressions in the paper if the nib was pressed down while writing. Even so, it’s effectively invisible without UV light present.

Scans

Oh no, I forgot to swatch the ink‽ Or maybe look closer…

Swatch Card Scans. Click to enlarge.

Impressions on the paper from the pen nibs are visible on Iroful and MD, but not on Col-o-ring.

Spooky Videos

This ink is nothing short of magical!

Writing a timely message with Turritopsis Nutricula

With the right paper and UV lighting, it looks like you’re writing with light!

Writing a timely pangram with Turritopsis Nutricula

While it’s not really for anything top secret, it’s fun to leave hidden messages!

Revealing a hidden message

UV Photos

This grid contains photos of the swatch cards under visible light, a mix of visible and UV light, and UV light alone. Of these three, it comes out the best on MD paper.

Swatch Card Photos under visible and UV light. Click to enlarge.

A major factor here is the paper. Col-o-ring glows brightly on its own so it can somewhat drown out the ink. Iroful isn’t too bad, but still glows a bit. MD doesn’t react much at all.

I have a much longer post covering UV-friendly paper – MD and Tomoe River are the best to use!

Photos

Ignoring the visible light entirely for now, here is a closer look at the swatches and writing on each of these papers:

Swatch Card Photos. Click to enlarge.

The ink can be hard to read on Col-o-ring, Iroful is OK, but MD looks great!

Microscope

Under the microscope, the story is similar with readability.

Ink under Magnification. Click to enlarge.

MD has by far the best contrast again.

Now a couple pictures with a mix of UV and visible light:

Microscope Photos under visible and UV light. Click to enlarge.

MD wins, as usual.

Chromatography

Chromatography strip scan

It’s no surprise that the chromatography shows nothing on the scanner!

Chromatography strip photo under UV light

Under UV it glows brightly as expected, but it has a couple gradients, and also oddly spread down into the space before the initial line. Plus a halo waaaay on the other side.

Verdict

It’s no secret I’m a huge fan of this ink! I have been praising it since I first received and testing the ink. I posted about it several times before, and though I use it occasionally year-round, I especially like using it to kick off spooky season.

With the right paper and UV lights the effect is quite remarkable! I highly recommend finding a UV flashlight with a ZWB2 filter which blocks most visible light and cuts out the purple cast you see with typical UV lights.

For specific papers and lights that work well, see my UV Reactive Paper post and my UV Reactive Ink post.