Login
A little over a month ago Kansas City welcomed a new stationery store, May Day Paper and Post! While we do have a pen store and the ubiquitous Paper Source, this is an indie stationery store, one that I’m delighted to support. May Day bills itself as a place for all things snail mail.
This past Friday while Ana was at the St. Louis Pen Show, I drove up to check it out! The store is super cute, set in midtown Kansas City. It has a fun, curated collection of greeting cards, notebooks and notecards, journals, stickers, mugs, wrapping paper and other giftables. To be clear, this isn’t a pen store. They did have a fun selection of Gelly Roll pens and a few roller balls and ball points, but it’s primarily about the paper. It’s whimsical, and the owner definitely has a sense of humor.
I was restrained but found a few cute cards on the long wall. My selections were from Black and White and Red All Over and A Zillion Dollars. Both cards are printed nicely, and use recycled content for both the cards and envelopes.
I saw many of the familiar notebooks (Maruman, Kleid, Leuchtturm, and more), plus some from companies I hadn’t heard from. I did pick up one notebook – I’ll share my thoughts on it next week!
Overall it’s a cute shop, and if you’re in the Kansas City area, you won’t be disappointed if you stop by! And if you’re looking for a fun new shop to support, you can also shop online!
P.S. If you stop by, make sure you give shop dog Lucy lots of pets!
The post A new stationery store: May Day Paper & Post appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.
Another pen show find is the Nakabayashi Logical Prime notebooks. These are softcover notebooks are stitch bound with a bookbinding tape over the stitches to reinforce.
There are a variety of interior paper options (Point, Graph, 7mm Lined and 6mm Lined) and the notebooks can be found around the internet in a variety of sizes. Yoseka Stationery stocks the Logical Prime notebooks in A5 size ($6 each).
The more unusual B5 size (6.9″ x 9.8″ or 176 x 250mm) was picked up from a vendor at a pen show. Which show? Maybe the California Pen Show. Which vendor? Taccia but they don’t list these notebooks on their web site.
According to the Nakabayashi Global web site, the Logical Prime notebooks are only available in A5 and B5 sizes though in the US market, you are more likely to find an A5 notebook than the larger B5.
All the internal rulings are in a fine dark green line. At the top or each page is a space for writing a title or description and date.
What’s really interesting about these notebooks is the unusual ruling options (I didn’t get one of the standard grid notebooks because after seeing the Point and Lined, the graph was just ho-hum). The Ruled options, both 6mm and 7mm actually feature two additional light dotted lines between each solid rule creating guides for much smaller increments. There are also dotted vertical lines at the same interval as the ruling so the paper can be used as graph if you want or need it to do so. The multiple horizontal lines would be great if you want to practice your handwriting or calligraphy.
At the top and bottom of the page are dots and tick marks indicating the center of the page, 1/3, 1/4 and so on. If you were wanting to grid something out on a page, these marks will help you maintain consistency from page to page. If you were to use these notebooks for bullet journaling, this would help to divide the page for week-on-two-pages, making a monthly overview calendar, etc.
The paper is a soft cream ivory color, not bright white.
There is not a huge difference, obviously, between the 6mm and 7mm lined paper but I know folks have clear preferences. When I was testing the paper, I thought I preferred the 7mm lined because I had a little more space but I was really jumping between the margins in a weird way so I think the 6mm is a bit better for my tiny handwriting.
Then there was the Point style which has dots spaced really far apart. On the back cover it says “12x15pt” which I think is 12mm dot grid (approx 9/16″) or thereabouts. That’s some pretty big grid!
I feel like a grid of this scale is a good compromise for someone who might want blank but needs a little guidance.
Did I mention that this paper shows sheen? Probably should have mentioned that sooner. So, good quality paper, unusual ruling options, and its affordable? You should probably stock up now. I don’t think you’ll regret it.
The post Notebook Review: Nakabayashi Logical Prime B5 Notebooks appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.
While at the California Pen Show, I was able to score a few samples from the Traveler’s/Plotter table. Not that I needed any Traveler’s Notebook samples. I’ve been a loyal fan of Traveler’s for …. hmmmm… over a decade now! But it was a delight to revisit some of the classic refills. Because Traveler’s is part of the Midori product family, much of the paper included in the refills is Midori but I often forget that. This particular sample, a “Refill for a Short Trip” in Passport Size. This insert only include 32 pages compared to the regular Passport inserts that feature 64 pages but features the same high quality Midori MD paper in the cream color.
The Midori MD Cream paper has a slight tooth to it making it good for all around use and it stands up to pretty much any pen you can throw at it. I had no issues with feathering, even with my Pilot Custom 912 with the FA nib.
It’s a thinner paper so there is some show through but no bleed through at all. I have a soft spot for the Midori MD Cotton and Midori MD Light, so much so that I had forgotten how good the standard Midori MD paper was. Honestly, I don’t think there’s much more I can say about Midori MD paper that hasn’t been said already but its nice to take another look at the classics. They are classics for a reason. Thanks for the sample, Traveler’s Company, and for reminding me that I love this paper!
DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by Traveler’s Company USA for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.
The post Notebook Review: Traveler’s Short Trip Passport Size appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.
In 1831, at the age of 22, Charles Darwin learned to keep notebooks by emulating Captain Robert FitzRoy of the HMS Beagle.
From Annie Murphy Paul’s The Extended Mind:
Darwin had never kept a journal before coming aboard the Beagle, for example, but he began to do so under the influence of FitzRoy, whose naval training had taught him to keep a precise record of every happening aboard the ship and every detail of its oceangoing environment. Each day, Darwin and FitzRoy ate lunch together; following the meal, FitzRoy settled down to writing, bringing both the formal ship’s log and his personal journal up to date. Darwin followed suit, keeping current his own set of papers: his field notebooks, in which he recorded his immediate observations, often in the form of drawings and sketches; his scientific journal, which combined observations from his field notebooks with more integrative and theoretical musings; and his personal diary. Even when Darwin disembarked from the ship for a time, traveling by land through South America, he endeavored to maintain the nautical custom of noting down every incident, every striking sight he encountered.
As I understand it, Darwin would take a pencil and a notebook off the ship, and then when he was back on board, he would use pen and ink. (He also switched in between notebooks a lot.)
He wrote, “Let the collector’s motto be, ‘Trust nothing to the memory;’ for the memory becomes a fickle guardian when one interesting object is succeeded by another still more interesting.”
And:
[A naturalist] ought to acquire the habit of writing very copious notes, not all for publication, but as a guide for himself. He ought to remember Bacon’s aphorism, that Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man; and no follower of science has greater need of taking precautions to attain accuracy; for the imagination is apt to run riot when dealing with masses of vast dimensions and with time during almost infinity.
I’m reminded that another great journalizer, Henry David Thoreau, started keeping his journal at the age of 20, in 1837, because an older man, Ralph Waldo Emerson, asked him whether he kept a journal.
And I’m also thinking about what the relationship of journaling is to pirates and farmers. A captain’s log is kept to keep track of where you’ve been in space and what happened over time. Thoreau’s log is a record of where he’d been in (mostly) the same place and the changes and what happened there over time…
My three notebooks. On the left: my logbook. On the right: my diary. And in the middle, my commonplace diary. (You can take a peek at it in the latest newsletter.)
The BUKE A5 Size Hardcover Sketchbook Journal (currently selling for $13.34) is kind of an amazing little sketchbook. First, the price! I think when I ordered it, it was about $15.50 which is still incredibly inexpensive.
The sketchbook came in a matte, white box with an iridescent foil feather on the box. Inside, the sketchbook was wrapped in a waxed paper and included a bookmark and some stickers. This is a very deluxe package for a sketchbook that sells for less than $20.
The sketchbook includes 160 bright white pages between two matte PU covers with an iridescent foil feather quill on the cover. The sketchbook includes lots of the popular attribute like three ribbon bookmarks, a gusseted pocket in the back cover for loose ephemera and a vertical elastic to keep the book closed.
The paper is 180gsm “Ultra Bamboo Paper” — THIS is the main reason I ordered it in the first place. Bamboo is the key ingredient in Tomoe River Paper but its very thin. So the idea of THICK bamboo paper was very appealing.
Just for reference, the Col-o-ring Ink Testing Book is only 160gsm paper so the paper in the Bamboo Sketchbook really is THICK. If you like mixed media, craft, collage and using a wide array of creative materials, this is a great sketchbook option.
I started my pen testing with brush pens, markers, colored pencils and other art supplies. I drizzled fountain pen ink and even tried some watercolors. The paper is very smooth and reminds me of Bristol Board from art school in terms of weight and smoothness, but its all bound into a handy A5 notebook.
When I flipped the pages over to see if there was any show through or bleed through.
The only time there were issues with bleed through was with the alcohol-based Copic markers and a couple places with drizzled fountain pen ink on the page.
All fountain pens in writing tests performed beautifully. The ink did not spread at all in the tests — so a fine nib stays fine and so forth. Some papers can causes ink to spread and appear wider but this 180gsm bamboo paper kept all nibs true to size.
The fountain pen inks I tried included several sheening inks and all the sheen showed beautifully.
The only downside I discovered with this notebook is that the matte covers pick up dust and fingerprints very easily.
This is probably one of the best value sketchbooks currently on the market. If you are looking for a sketchbook or notebook that can handle a wide range of writing tools and materials, then this will be a book you’ll love.
Get creative and play with this great little value-priced bamboo sketchbook!
DISCLAIMER: The item in this review include affiliate links. The Well-Appointed Desk is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon. Please see the About page for more details.
The post Sketchbook Review: BUKE A5 Size Hardcover Sketchbook Journal – 180Gsm Ultra Bamboo Paper appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.
It is pretty much exactly one year ago that I had introduced the then new stationery brand Ateliers Phileas with a review of their first product, the A5 leather notebook cover called Yokohama.
I have used that A5 cover, and A5 notebooks, for work for quite a while. At some point, finding the A5 size somewhat bulky, I was really curious to see if an A6 size would work for me – as well as how the Yokohama, which had just been released in an A6 size, would hold up.
I got one, loaded it with an A6 MD paper notebook, and gave it a spin for the last 10 months or so in daily use. Below comes the verdict.
Before we hop into the review, I would like to take the opportunity to thank Ateliers Phileas for supporting the review of this notebook cover. You can also buy the Yokohama notebook covers in their webshop (no affiliate – just a friendly pointer).
The video is, as always, preceded by some quick facts. Again, I hope the review is helpful and that you enjoy watching it!
Click on the photos to enlarge.
The post Video-Review: Ateliers Phileas “Yokohama” (A6 Leather Notebook Cover) appeared first on Scrively - note taking & writing.
(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)
Last week I reviewed the Midori MD 70th Anniversary set of seven notebooks and I had a lot of fun thinking about all the ways I could put them to good use. I knew I didn't want to split up the set--the rainbow stitching is everything! Normally I'd use them for school, but I'm in my last two classes now--there are no future semesters to save them for! But the thing I'm most excited about being done with school is returning to full-time writing.
Being an author really means running a small business and there can be a lot to keep track of. I have, in the past, used one notebook to track all my writerly business, but they fill up fast when you're keeping busy. Enter a big set of seven lovely notebooks...
Also enter the fabulous Lochby Field Journal, which is robust enough to contain this ambitious plan.
I assigned each of the notebooks to a different aspect of writerly business: Deadline and submission tracking, listing and outlining ideas, jotting down bits of story drafts, making notes about critiques and edits, listing publication and contract details, notes about the craft of writing, and keeping track of the classes I teach or readings/signings, etc.
Keeping track of deadlines is important for obvious reasons, but it will be helpful to keep them listed in one place, alongside due dates for other open calls for submissions that look interesting. That way I can glance at that list and make a more informed decision about how busy I am when I'm approached for a project. Since many deadlines can be six months to a year out, tracking them on a calendar isn't a good way to get an overview. This way I'll have a list I can reference to confirm that I should definitely not take on any more work in the month of April! I can also keep track of where I send work and when. Some publishers don't send rejections--you're meant to assume you were rejected after not hearing back after a certain amount of time passes, so it's important to know when that time is. Most publishers also don't allow you to submit the same work more than once, so it's crucial to keep track of where you've sent each piece.
Keeping track of ideas is also important. Ideas are everywhere, and some are more demanding than others. Sometimes a good idea tries to butt in when I'm working on something else that has a due date and I don't have time to set it aside to focus on the shiny new idea. I've always kept an idea notebook, so this isn't a new one for me, but hopefully this will help me keep them in better order. They do tend to show up on the backs of receipts or scribbled in the margins of school notes. Sometimes I need a place to just jot down a single-sentence concept, and sometimes I need to write the whole outline. This book will hold both/either.
If whole sections of a story jump into my head, but they aren't ready to be fully written yet, I need a place to write down that bit until I'm ready for it. That will go in the next notebook, Draft Bits. Stories often come to me out of order, so this is a place where I can write scenes down when I need to come back to them.
I am part of a monthly critique group, as well as a more sporadic workshop, so I need a place to write down the feedback I receive on my work, as well as any ideas I have for edits to a piece. The Critique and Edit Notes notebook will be the home for that info.
Publication information goes in the next one. This is where I'll keep track of contract terms (Do I retain audio rights to this story or does the publisher? When does the exclusive printing period end? Is it a flat rate payment or are their royalties to track?). This way I won't have to go combing through contract files every time I want to reprint a piece.
In the next notebook, I'll record bits of wisdom about the craft of writing. When I attend panels or author talks, I like to write down anything educational or interesting, or notes about what particular editors are looking for in work submitted to them.
In the last notebook, I'll keep track of my own gigs--when I lead workshops or teach classes, do readings, speak on panels, do interviews, or appear on podcasts. I haven't always been good at tracking that, and then a friend mentioned how important that info is for a potential CV if I ever want to get a teaching job or archive my work. This will give me a good way to plan for and track all those appearances.
To cram all this content into one notebook cover, I used skills gleaned from Traveler's Notebook journalers. I used sewing thread (because that's what I had--I'll get elastics eventually) to tie notebooks 1 and 3 together, with the back cover of 1 and the front cover of 3 facing each other. Then I slid notebook 1 through the first elastic on the Lochby so that the elastic fit between the two notebooks, holding them by the threads. Then I slid notebook 2 through that same elastic at its halfway point. I repeated that process by tying notebooks 4 and 6 together, sliding them though another elastic, and then putting notebook five on that same elastic between them. Notebook 7 is on its own elastic at the end. They all fit quite well! There's enough movement that each notebook is still easy to write in, and there's even still room for me to stuff a bunch of writing note scraps in the pockets of the notebook cover. The thick spine and adjustable clasp on the Lochby are my friend, here.
I'm eagerly anticipating the shift from writing research papers to writing more stories and novels. I've still written a handful, but not nearly as much as I want. For the past two years, the notebook that's been filling up fastest is the one where I list all the ideas I don't have time to write. I'm excited to start filling up all these notebooks, replacing the inserts, and filling those up, too. 93 more days. (In fact, my last ever day of class is the first day of the Chicago Pen Show.) I'm so ready.
Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.
Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!
Article tags
FreshRSS