The Well-Appointed Desk

I was enticed into ordering the Mon Carnet des Poche notebook thanks to my pal Carolee of Good Mail Day‘s sly tweet. I found that Kate’s Paperie in NY carried the notebook and I placed my order the same day. Knowing nothing of the book other than a TwitPic, it was a treat when it arrived.

It’s a B5 (approx 7″x10″) notebook that has simple cardstock covers with book cloth along the spine. The covers are not thick so the book is a little floppy, especially since it boast over 250 pages. Inside, the paper is three different styles: 112 pages of lined, 64 pages in brown kraft grid and the112 pages of blank sheets with perforations along the spine and in the middle of the sheet to create B6 (approx 5″x7″) note sheets.

The name of the book is stamped on the bookcloth spine in gold foil.

There is a little discrepancy in the trimming along the edges. You can also see the distribution of paper. There isn’t nearly as much of the kraft paper as the lined and the blank sheets.

The grid lines are printed in black and are very tiny.

The lines are spaced like wide-ruled (approx 7mm) and printed in a light grey.

The back section of the book is micro-perfed. In order to tear out a sheet, fold on the perf to crease is a couple times and then it should easily tear out.

In writing tests, the lined and blank paper is identical. Its a light ivory color and has a pleasing weight and tooth to it. The paper performed admirably. I had a little show-through but all the fountain pens I tried did not bleed or feather, nor did the paper resist the inks. Pencil and fine gel pens also wrote lovely on the stock. Because of the slight paper color and the grey lines, some tools were a touch to light for good, clean readability but overall I’m quite pleased with the lined/blank papers.

The kraft paper posed a bit of a challenge. Its a dark kraft color with black grid marks… whatever could I do with this? I decided that it was best suited to more artistic pursuits like opaque gel pens, oil pastels, watercolor, colored pencil and watercolor crayons. These pages are a little heavier weight so they would also be excellent places to glue, tape or staple ephemera or other collage projects. The watercolor warped the paper a little bit but not too severely.

I like that, for travel, I could carry just this one notebook and be able to journal my trip (lined paper), collage ticket stubs and other ephemera (kraft paper) and have scratch paper to jot notes or write letters (perforated, blank stock).

The large B5 size is available from Kate’s Paperie for $17. A smaller edition (5.2″5×7.5″) is also available for $10.

For several months now, I’ve seen the epic stacks of Paperthinks recycled leather covered notebooks on various sites. There are about two dozen different colors to choose from with this notebook and they are available in blank or lined, a variety of sizes and in a slim and wide version, page count seems to vary depending on overall book size. Its quite an array of products but all the attention seemed to be focused on the array of colors for the covers and the recycled leather they use for the covers and very little is mentioned about the paper, which, in the end, is what I really care about. So, finally, I decided to take one for the collective paper geek team and buy one. I chose the slim notebook (256 pages, 4.7″x6.7″) with lined paper in the lemongrass color (surprise!).

The only branding on the exterior of the book is a screen print logo done in tone-on-tone ink at the bottom edge of the spine. On the back cover, at the bottom is embossed the words “Recycled Leather”. There are a slip of paper inside the book describing the process for creating recycled leather. They compare the process to how wood-pulp paper is made, shredding scraps of leather into a fine pulp and then mixing it with water and binding agents to reform it into sheets. Then texture and color are added. It certainly smells and feels like real leather.

The book has a thin, color-coordinated ribbon bookmark as well as a gusseted pocket in the back of the book for loose papers and ephemera. The book cloth gusset on my book was a lighter shade of lemongrass green and looked particularly well-constructed.

The Paperthinks notebooks feature a Smythe sewn binding so the book lays flat pretty easily. The recycled leather covers are pliable with just a paper endpaper lining attaching them to the book. It gives the book a pleasing feel, stiff enough to write on your lap but not rigid.

The paper is a soft ivory color, a little bit lighter than the Rhodia/Quo Vadis ivory. The lines are a fine light grey and spaced at 6mm.

So far, the notebook is checking all my boxes. Nice lines, great leather covers, pocket in the back, good price value ($12.95 from Kate’s Paperie) so all that was left was to determine how good the paper was. Color me impressed. There was a little bit of tooth to the paper but none of my fountain pens splined or bled. I tried EF, F and M nibs and all worked fine.  Gel/hybrid pens took to the toothy surface quite well as did the felt tips like my beloved Marvy Le Pens. Pencils skated along and only the lightest leads (F-C Castell 9000 HB) seemed a little too light on the paper since the graphite color was almost the same as the lines.

On the reverse side of the paper, there was a little show-through from the fountain pens but with all the gel, hybrid and felt tips, there would be no issues using both sides of the paper.

Overall for the quality, price and options, these are really good notebooks. I’d certainly recommend these as an upgrade to anyone who normally uses a Moleskine. Paperthinks are now offering a version with an elastic as well, so its even more competitive to a Moleskine in terms of features. If you are a diehard fountain pen user though, I’d say stick to the Rhodia/Quo Vadis line, especially if you use broad nibs since the bleed-though would probably be even more noticeable.