Good Inkpressions is a notebook company in Spain that is focusing on a wide array of fountain pen friendly notebooks that features well-known papers like Tomoe River and Clairefontaine but also a “new to me” paper called Splendorgel.
I was excited to see that Good Inkpressions was stocking Tomoe River and Clairefontaine but I was curious to see what Splendorgel paper was so I ordered an A5 blank notebook ($16.24 USD). There are multiple cover colors available as well as an assortment of ruling options. Each book includes 120 pages and the editions with rulings are printed with soy based inks.
The covers are blind debossed using a Vandercook letterpress which is subtle and pleasantly minimal.
The double-fold cardstock cover opens flat and the heavy duty staple binding is visible along the spine. All four corners of the notebook are rounded which is unusual but with the lighter weight soft paper covers rounding the corners eliminates the likelihood of corner dings.
Once opened, the pages lay flat with little effort.
The Splendorgel paper stock is listed as 85gsm on the website and is a soft white. Above, are samples of the Good Inkpressions Splendorgel paper on the far right and then regular Leuchtturm 1917 paper next to it which is the closest in color. Next is Profolio Oasis which is more cream/ivory colored and the Good Inkpression 68gsm Tomoe River (the lighter White) and finally on the far left, bright white Col-o-ring paper for comparison.
The Good Inkpressions Splendorgel is not so yellowy to affect ink colors unless its a very light shading ink. It’s “easy on the eyes” soft white.
I decided to cut to the chase in testing the paper and pulled out a Pilot Parallel pen to lay down a massive amount of ink and see if there was any bleeding or feathering issues. Nope. The Pilot Parallel ink was Diamine A Leap of Faith (link to Mountain of Ink’s review of the ink). There was not a ton of sheening evidence but I really don’t use a ton of sheening inks so its not a make-or-break for me. Less sheening also means shorter dry time.
The view of the reverse of stock shows a little bit of show through but no bleeding.
Once assured this paper was fountain pen friendly, I tested an array of other writing tools and was successful with all of them.
The only evidence of any bleed through was the rollerball pen and there was just minor bleed through. Again, the darker or heavier inks had a little show through but not so much as to limit the use of both sides of the paper.
Since I didn’t purchase any with ruling I am not sure how dark the printing is on the pages but looking at the samples on the site for the planner inserts, it looks like a middle grey is used.
In the time since I initially placed my order with Good Inkpressions, they have added a lot of new products including planners and inserts for a variety of different tastes. They offer Filofax inserts as well as Traveler-sized notebooks in all the varieties of papers they stock with an array of ruling as well. These are options that I’ve not seen offered by any other notebook company thus far.
The prices for the notebooks are quite reasonable, the quality of the notebooks is very good and I received my order within a couple weeks which is not bad for international orders. If you are looking for a new FP-friendly paper or a maker who offers familiar papers in formats not often available, then Good Inkpressions is worth a try.
DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were purchased by me and I was not compensated to write this review. Please see the About page for more details.
