I never know where I’m going to find some little bit of office-y inspiration. Today, it came – from all places – the children’s home decor shop, Land of Nod in the form of metal paper-clip-shaped hooks. What a perfect place to hang up your laptop tote or your Mr. Roger’s cardigan — doesn’t everyone have one of those?
(Available in red, pink, silver and yellow for $8.95 each from Land of Nod)
Over the years, I’ve seen some unique workspaces but this is one of the best yet. The well-known blogger The Dainty Squid shares her home office/workspace with her closet. You read that correctly. Not to say that she works in a closet but that her office is also her wardrobe. If I had a rainbow of dresses, shoes and handbags, I might want to stare at them while working as well.
(via The Dainty Squid)
By now, I’m sure you realize I have a thing for green. And the fact that this year’s Color of the Year according to Pantone is emerald green is a very happy thing for me. So when I spied the Uni-Ball Signo DX in Emerald, I had to give it a try.
The emerald Uni-Ball Signo DX 0.38 is available from JetPens for $2.50 along with over a dozen other colors and in 0.28mm and 0.5mm as well.
What do you think? Is this THE pen of the year? I certainly think it should be in the running!
As promised on Friday, I am reviewing the new-to-me Pilot Juice 0.5 gel pens. The pens look like a lot of the Japanese gel pens on the market but I thought I’d give them a try. What I didn’t realize until I started writing this, is that the inks in the Juice are water-resistant and fade-resistant. Well, that’s a notable difference!
The bodies of the pens are clear plastic with a silicone grip area that coordinates with the ink color and matches the retractable clicker. The clip on the pens are spring loaded so that they can easily be clipped to a thick notebook cover or binder.
I purchased a blue-black 0.5 and a leaf green 0.5 (I couldn’t help myself!).
The tips look like a standard rollerball mechanism. This close-up reveals the very subtle dot pattern on the silicone grips.
In writing tests, the pens wrote well. Smooth, with no clumping or skipping.The blue-black is more of a navy blue to me but a good color anyway. Just a brighter more vivid blue than the other blue-black gel ink I’ve used. I included a sample of the Uni-Ball Style Fit Blue-Black for comparison which is more of a grayed-out blue.
The leaf green ink was much lighter than I thought it would be and it photographed even lighter. It is somewhat legible on the paper but not at all legible in the photo. It was the darker of the two yellow-green colors available in the Juice line but its still not the perfect green.
After I photographed everything I did test the pens for water-resistance and they do resist water which makes them suitable for signing documents and addressing envelopes.
Each color is available for $1.65 each and are currently only available in the 0.5 size. The pens can be unscrewed and a new refill put in but currently only red, blue and black refils are available.
(This pen was tested on the Miquelrius medium flexible 300 grid paper book purchased from B+N.)
Ever been curious what Adam Savage of Mythbusters carries with him everyday? Watch this video to see his favorite tools. Enlightening… I like him even better now!
I recently discovered a whole end-cap at the Hallmark Gold Crown Store of blank journals. There were lots of fun patterns and designs. Some were hardcover or soft cover, some with elastics and others with ribbon bookmarks. I couldn’t limit myself to just one. So I bought three. All three journals (a fancy term for blank notebooks) were approx. 6″x8″ and contain 160 pages. The paper feels weighty — thicker than the paper in the Piccadilly I reviewed last week.
Inside, each book had different printed lines and designs — some were simpler than others. The three I purchased were each different.
The purple floral book has an embossed, hard paperboard cover with an ecru colored paper lined with light purple dashed lines.There is a matching blue-violet elastic running vertically on the back to hold the book closed.
The Indian print design is a flexible cardstock embossed with glossy patterns. Inside, the pages are varied with 4 different designs over two page spreads in lime, blue, orange and pink with Indian patterns along the edges with coordinating dashed lines. It has a bright pink elastic to hold it closed.
My favorite inside designs were in the yellow-and-black zig zag cover of the Peanuts “Schulz” journal. The pages are off-white and have gray dotted lines which are flanked by Charlie Brown and Snoopy yelling across from the lower left hand page to the lower right hand page.
The back pocket on the Peanuts journal has tone-on-tone red dots and the Charlie Brown and Snoopy doing the happy dance on the pocket on the back cover. Along the spine is the Schulz signature.
The Indian print notebook has a yellow print pocket that matches the inside covers.
The purple floral book has a coordinating pattern on the inside covers and the gusseted pocket on the back cover carries the pattern as well.
Now, the big test is how well does the paper take ink? I tested the Indian print journal first and was surprised how well it took ink.
From the back of the page, the only show through was the alcohol-based marker pen. All the fountain pen ink did not bleed or feather or show-through. I suspect a very wide nib, dark black ink might show through on the back of the page but I was quite pleased with the paper overall. The patterns are fun and make it enjoyable to flip the page and see the new color.
The next book I tested was the purple floral journal and expected it to perform very similarly to the Indian print journal but the paper seemed to have some sort of coating on the paper that caused the ink to bead and dry very slowly. It did not work well with any of my fountain pens but the gel pens behaved just fine.
Again, on the reverse, I had very little show-through except the alcohol-based marker (i.e. a Sharpie marker) but the water-resistance of the paper makes me sad about this journal.
With trepidation, I put pen to paper on the Peanuts journal and was delighted to discover that it behaved like the Indian print notebook. Fountain pen ink was acceptable easily and there was no feathering or much show-through.
In retrospect, when touching the paper only, the Peanuts notebook and the Indian print notebook have a soft powdery feel while the purple floral notebook paper feels very smooth. So, if you decide to peruse the selection at your nearest Hallmark Gold Crown store and fountain pen use is something you want in a notebook, rub the paper between your fingers to see how it feels.
There were lots of other designs to choose from — an array of patterns, cover materials and lines inside– at the Hallmark Gold Crown Store. All the books sold for $11.95.
Once again, I am woefully behind on posting the Goulet Pens Ink Drop reveals. At least, I’m not spoiling the surprise for anyone who is waiting for their colors to arrive in the post this way.
This month was the darkest of the darks, called Fade to Black, to go along with everyone’s murky feeling about the gray, slushy March we faced. Hopefully, as it is now April, we can all look at these dark colors as sharp and crispy and not sad and depressing.
I’m always so surprised how different each shade of black can be. This month included three blacks: Pilot Namiki, Monteverde and Lamy, each with its own subtle color difference. The Pilot Namiki black seems to be the most neutral black of the three with the Monteverde having a purplish cast and the Lamy black being more of a dark gray. There are dozens upon dozens of other black inks on the market so it could take a lifetime to find the one that is “just right” but these are definitely a nice range. The Pilot Namiki black was the most water-resistant of the three if that’s a factor for you.
The other inks included were the De Atramentis Silver Grey which is a cool neutral gray and the Diamine Graphite which is a greenish gray in the Q-tip smudge but looks like a green-black in the writing sample.
If you are looking for a smart, professional ink for your fountain pen, any one of these would be appropriate.
