These two boxes of Monarch brand staples look several years apart in the design styles. The top box feels like late-50s or early-60s with the Alexander Girard-style lion and the box on the bottom is older and could have been the design used from the 40s to the 50s. Both boxes still had standard-sized staples in it. Thrift score!
What are these darling little metal pieces?
They are pencil sharpeners, of course! These were discovered while home visiting for the holidays. Each one is sturdy cast metal. The gold projectorfilm reels spin freely and the handles on the lantern and boom box can be moved. Pretty cool!
Awhile back I expounded on my love for an old plastic letter opener but bemoaned how hard it had been to found any new ones. Well, lookie what I found! It is from a company called Sparco and the cost for this little beauty was a mere $1.50 at the beloved Pieritz in Oak Park. It works like a champ. It has no markings on it at all and its is a lovely translucent blue plastic.
If you’ve never used one of these, you just slip the pointy bit under the gap on the envelope flap and slide it along to use the small razor to cleanly slice open the top of the envelope. I love them because it does not damage a decorated envelope from a mail artist and it makes quick work of bills and junk mail.
I looked all over the internet for an online retailer who sells these. I found a shop called Wayfair Supply that sold the Sparco letter opener for $1.08 each in three assorted colors.
The Clairefontaine Crok Book is a small, composition-sized notebook that is as plain as plain can be — and I mean that it in the best possible way. It has white cardstock covers with the Crok Book logo embossed on the cover and contains 48 pages of 90 gsm of smooth, bright-white paper. It is staple bound along the spine and is officially sized at 6.75″ x 8.75″.
It seemed appropriate to keep the writing tools used in a sample in black (or at least look black or silver on the outside) with this clean white book.
The paper is thick and willing to accept any writing tool with ease. Yes, a Sharpie permanent marker would show through on the reverse of the stock but pretty much anything else you throw at this notebook would be accepted happily. I had no issues with drying time and even my Lamy Studio with the stub 1.1mm nib dried quickly and did not feather or smear. I could even use both sides of the paper without any distracting show through.
I think these notebooks are great for anyone who likes to keep projects in their own notebooks and likes the freedom of unlined paper. It would make a great travel diary with its diminutive page count and at about $4 per book, its more than affordable. Its targeted to anyone who might want to sketch or employ mulitple media with the thick paper and generous sizes. There are two other sizes available of the Crok Book, a landscape format 6.75″ x 4.25″ and 8″ x 12″ and a gigantic 12″ x 17″, and other colors available for the covers if white is too austere for you.
I purchased my copy at Pieritz in Oak Park, IL but if you can’t make the trek to their shop, Notemaker and Writer’s Bloc both carry this notebook.
(PS: The coffee mug shown above is from the Kansas City coffeehouse, The Filling Station.)
After the household break-in, I had to start a jewelry collection from scratch and the first thing I stumbled across was this working scissors necklace. I’ve wanted to post about it sooner, as one office supply lover to another, but I purchased the necklace locally, and I wanted to wait until I could find a source available to all. So here it is. Modcloth sells this sweet little costume necklace for a whoppin’ $11.99. So, in the next meeting of boring rhetoric, you can reach for your scissors and tell those windbags to “Cut it out!”
There are more mini pens to love than just the Kaweco and the TWSBI Mini fountain pens.
(via Jet Pens Blog)
Stationery Love Print by Bubi Au Yeung. I would love to buy a print of this for my office.
