The Well-Appointed Desk

Notebook Review: Moleskine Year of the Rabbit (Minju Kim)

Review by Tina Koyama

Although I haven’t been buying many Moleskine notebooks in recent years, every now and then a design will capture my heart, and I can’t resist. This year it was the Year of the Rabbit design by Minju Kim (I purchased mine at the Seattle Asian Art Museum’s gift shop; available on Amazon for $22.75).

The 3 ½-by-5 ½-inch hardcover notebook has 176 ruled pages. (It’s also available in the 5-by-8 ½-inch size.) The distinctive cover material is not Moleskine’s usual faux leather; it’s a linen-like fabric befitting fashion designer Kim. The red elastic band is an especially nice accent against the dark green and cream design. Even the Moleskine logo on the back cover, a fabric label, is a nice touch. The lovely, understated motif for Lunar New Year 2023 tickles this bunny lover.

According to Moleskine, award-winning Korean fashion designer Kim “is known for her unique imaginative style that combines bold silhouettes, feminine characteristics and an overarching sense of joy.” The Year of the Rabbit notebook is part of Moleskine’s Asian Collection 2023, which also features art by Japan’s Kosuke Tsumura and China’s Angel Chen. “Created to empower creative energy and celebrate the diversity of Asian traditions, each distinctive notebook design enriches the Moleskine mission to support creativity and inspire the ideas of the future.”

In addition to the usual attached ribbon bookmark and back cover pocket, the notebook comes with two sheets of themed stickers. According to the product description, a “lucky envelope” is also included but seems to be missing from mine. (Perhaps it comes with the large-size notebook only.)

Although I didn’t have high expectations, since Moleskine does change its paper occasionally, I scribbled with the usual test materials, just in case it was different. It performed the same as it has in a while: My juicy Sailor Naginata Fude de Mannen fountain pen with Platinum Carbon Black ink bled through, as did the Kuretake brush pen – no surprises there. All other pens and pencils did fine.

It’s a delightful little notebook that I will enjoy jotting notes in throughout the Year of the Rabbit. (Shown below is another rabbit that was purchased at the same museum gift shop. At last – rabbits are everywhere! Happy Lunar New Year from Weather Bunny!)

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.

Tina Koyama is an urban sketcher in Seattle. Her blog is Fueled by Clouds & Coffee, and you can follow her on Instagram as Miatagrrl.

In Paper Review

DesignWorks Vegan Suede Folio in Blush Pink

AnaJanuary 20, 2023January 13, 2023

The DesignWorks Vegan Suede Folio in Blush Pink ($25, also available in black) is a soft, suede-like notebook cover like the Traveler’s Notebook. It ships with a lined notebook refill with 48 pages and a gold-tone ballpoint pen. From the online description and photos, this looked like an awesome alternative for someone looking for a different TN-style notebook.

The elastic on the notebook cover is the same color as the cover.

The cover fabric is soft and flexible but there is some stabilizing material between the cover material and the lining to help give the cover more stability. It feels a little sturdier than a softcover notebook cover.

The branding tag is a translucent paper wrap around the back cover. It’s easy to remove and reveal the subtle gold foil logo on the back cover.

The gold tone pen that’s included is a standard 1.0mm ballpoint pen and the refill is similar to the Cross threaded refill. It’s a little shorter than the Cross style refill in the Ferris Wheel Press Scribe. As for the gold pen, I don’t know how easy it would be to swap out the refill but as an extra for this notebook cover, its charming.

Oh, the interior fabric!!! This is really what sold me on this cover. The interior includes a secretary pocket and a gorgeous burgundy fabric printed with stylized leopards. The back cover has a long slash-style pocket as well to help collect bit of ephemera.

Inside there are two possible elastics for enclosing notebooks, similarly to the Traveler’s Notebook. The bonus is a matching elastic loop to hold a pen along the edge of the notebook.

Testing the Notebook:

The notebook cover is an ivory, parchment cardstock cover with gold foil lettering, the paper inside is a soft white with gold lines. It has sewn binding. The line spacing is about 7mm.

While I purchased the cover specifically to use with my vast collection of A5-slim sized notebooks that I already own, I thought I’d go ahead and test the notebook that shipped with the cover.

Most standard style pens work fine on the paper included in the notebook cahier but wider fountain pen nibs did bleed and show through to the back side of the paper. Some of the liquid inks did show through a little bit but pencil, ballpoint and gel pens seem to be good on this paper. That said, I didn’t buy this cover for the notebook insert.

Compared to Traveler’s Notebook:

Standard Traveler’s Notebook on the left, Designworks notebook cover on the right.

When I completed the testing, I pulled out one of the many Traveler’s Notebook covers that I have to compare to the Designworks cover. I noticed that the Designworks cover was ever-so-slightly smaller than the standard TN. Oh no!

The notebook insert that shipped with the cover is sandwiched in the middle with standard A5-slim above and below it to show the size difference. You can also see that the standard A5-slim insert are flush with the edges of the cover.

The insert that shipped with the cover is on the left, a standard A5-slim insert is on the right.

So, I immediately tried to put a standard A5-Slim insert into the Designworks cover. The cover is the EXACT same size as the notebook refills. Unlike the notebook included with the Designworks cover. It is about a half an inch shorter and 1/4″ smaller in width. So, the actual A5-slim notebook inserts come right to the edge of the cover.

Depending on how many inserts that are added to the cover, how close the inserts are to the edge might not bother you. I wouldn’t try to put more that four inserts into the cover as they will start to hang over the edge.

I really wish Designworks would have made this cover large enough to accommodate A5-slim notebook inserts but I love the color and the lining and the cover is very reasonably priced. So, I would definitely buy this cover again, even knowing its a bit smaller than an average “regular” Traveler’s Notebook.

On the topic of the Scribe, it matches the pink cover almost exactly if you want to coordinate your stationery.

DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by Vanness Pens Inc. for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

In Pen Review

Pen Review: Aechy Double-Headed Porous Pen & Curve Marker

AnaJanuary 19, 2023January 19, 20234 Comments

You know how sometimes Amazon just has your number? I logged in a couple weeks ago and this funky little pen set was on my recommendations page. The set doesn’t have the sexiest name– Aechy Double-Headed Porous Pen & Curve Marker ($13.99 at the time of this review)– but when noticed that one end was a rolling stamp and the other was a felt-tip pen, I couldn’t resist trying them out. Since I plan using a modified version of a bullet journal, every now and again, I like to embellish my pages with a little something extra and I thought this 8-pen set might be just the thing.

The larger capped end is the rolling stamp and the smaller cap covers the felt tip pen. The tip size on the felt tip pen is pretty comparably to a Marvy LePen, just in a slightly wider pen barrel. Just the felt tip alone, for the price, is a decent value.

Of the eight different color markers, there are only five different rolling stamp designs: flowers, hearts, wavy lines, dot/dash and dotted line.

Because of the hard plastic used for the rolling stamp, the line can veer off suddenly. I would recommend rolling a bit slowly and maybe try following the line, grid of graph marks in your notebook.

Of the set, the yellow was really too light to use in even the brightest settings, especially on the sightly creamy colored MD Cotton paper I used for testing. I did try these out on toothier paper and the results were not as good. I think the stamp pens will work best on smoother paper stocks (i.e. Rhodia, Leuchtturm 1917, etc.). on the Midori MD Cotton, I didn’t have any issues with show through but YMMV.

The heart shape stamp pen, labelled “Love Line” on the pen barrel, was the hardest to get to roll evenly to show the whole design. Regardless of whether I rolled slowly or quickly, the hearts would skip or the centers would fill in. The dotted line and curved, wavy line worked the best. Since the dot/dash design is only on the super light-colored yellow marker, I won’t ever really get much use out of it. I wish the yellow marker had been one of the designs duplicated in another color — like the blue or purple.

Overall, for an essentially no-name product found randomly on Amazon, this pen set is fun. I certainly would prefer a set like this from one of the manufacturers I know like Pilot, Zebra, or Uni. I feel like then the quality and variety would be top-notch. But until that time that one of the Japanese pen behemoths decide to make a tool like this, we will have to settle for these markers. I will certainly be using the dotted line and curve line pens to add a bit of flourish to my daily pages.

In Link Love

Link Love: 恭喜发财 (Not a Typo!)

AnaJanuary 18, 2023January 18, 2023

In my jobby-job, I work with people in Hong Kong on a daily basis so the ebb and flow of Chinese New Year (CNY) is a regular part of our yearly planning. In China and Hong Kong, almost everyone takes some time off in the weeks around CNY. Factories, offices and businesses of all sorts close for a week or more. So, this week, as CNY looms closer, our Asia partners are out of the office, enjoying time with family and friends and getting some much-needed time off. Stateside, I like to celebrate by making dim sum and saying “Gong hei fat choy” to everyone which is the Cantonese for “happiness and prosperity”. If you want to learn to say a traditional CNY greeting in Mandarin, try “Xīnnián hǎo” (shin-yen-hao) (新年好). There are great pronunciation samples available here!

If you stalled out on your goals or resolutions for the new calendar year, use CNY as a chance to reboot your plans on Lunar New Year (which is officially this Sunday, January 22 but is celebrated until about Feb. 2).

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In Art Supplies, Pen Review

Pen Review: Archer & Olive Acrylograph Cool Fall Colors

Laura CameronJanuary 17, 20236 Comments

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Ana ordered 2 sets of Archer and Olive Acrylograph Pens. She reviewed the Warm Fall Color palette here. Today I get to review the Cool Fall Palette.

I should start by saying that my speciality is needle arts, so I know next to nothing about paint pens. This is a set of 10 water based acrylic markers – 8 colors (Cool Fall), plus a white pen and a “blending pen.” While I’m a bit of a dunce at figuring out how to blend (and it looks like Ana didn’t have a lot of success) I did have fun seeing what the colors are.

They don’t come named, but I think they correspond to all the colors of fall leaves – red and orange, green and brown. And there are a few cool blues thrown in there for good measure. In fact, the collection reminds me quite a bit of a crocheted blanket I made last year in an autumn palette.

While these markers worked just fine on my Maruman Mnemosyne paper, I also tried them on black and kraft paper in my Night Sky journal (also from Archer & Olive) with mixed success. Some colors showed up super brightly, while others were paler. Maybe I didn’t press hard enough on the tip to get enough ink flow?

I would say these pens were a middling success, but they were fun to try out!

DISCLAIMER: Some items included in this review were provided free of charge by JetPens for the purpose of review. The Acrylograph pens were purchased with Ana’s own funds, and Laura purchased the Night Sky Journal with her own funds. Please see the About page for more details.

In Paper Review

Paper Review: Midori Flash Cards Ducks

AnaJanuary 16, 2023January 13, 20232 Comments

As part of the delightful Cult Pens Japanese Stationery Advent Calendar, I received this rubber ducky-shaped set of flash cards made by Midori (If I was better at planning, this review should have gone up on Friday — National Rubber Duck Day!). They look like something else — maybe a Col-o-ring? So, I thought, what the heck, maybe Midori is about to put me out of business. So, let’s test these cards and find out if I need a “going out of business” sign.

I started testing some of the Diamine Inkvent inks (circa 2021). The funny little shape was a little unusual to use and I probably would need some time to figure out the best way to utilize the space. But then I noticed that the writing looked like it was feathering.

So, I decided maybe I needed to compare these Midori cards to. those, pardon my bias, the gold standard of ink testing cards. Since the Diamine Inkvent inks have specific details on the bottle about the ink qualities, I knew I might be missing some of the nuances of the inks. Garland was listed on the bottle as “shimmer and sheen” and Seize the Night was listed as “standard”.

On the ducky cards, I see the shimmer but the potential sheen does not show at all. On Col-o-ring paper, the poppy pink/red sheen is very visible. Also, the dip pen writing didn’t bleed on the Col-o-ring paper.

The Seize the Night color shows some yellow/greenish sheen on Col-o-ring but just looks like a deep plummy purple on the Midori Ducky paper.

While I had fun trying the ducky cards, I feel safe that people will still prefer Col-o-ring cards, especially if Diamine continues to release the Inkvent calendars that we all wait all year to swatch!

Phew! I was afraid I was going to need to find a new job!

In Planners & Organizers

Planner Hack: Monthly Calendar

AnaJanuary 13, 2023January 13, 20234 Comments

I’m not sure if this tip is a true”hack” or if it’s just a really clever way to jump start your new year’s planner, but here goes…

This tip actually came from an unusual source, a book called The Scent of Lemon & Rosemary by Raechel Henderson, about caring for your home using earth magic. While most of the book isn’t applicable to my lovely readers, Chapter 11 deals with creating your own “Wheel of the Year”.

In this practice, instead of relying entirely on the bog-standard national holiday calendar for your country, or just your work holidays, Ms. Henderson recommends that you fill your planner with holidays and events that are important to you. First, what holidays do you and your family celebrate? Maybe you have specific heritage holidays or religious holidays that are overlooked on regular calendars. Go through an input them on the right days if you’re using a daily planner or add them to the monthly calendar pages. Then add in birthdays and anniversaries for family and friends. Maybe you like to know when the full moons are, those Mercury retrogrades occur, or if any asteroid or stars are particularly visible in the night sky? Google these astrological events and add them on the correct day.

Then, and this is the real jewel of the hack, go find one of those There’s a Day For That calendars and scroll through the months. There’s are hundreds of special observance days for everything from social causes to favorite foods and everything in between.

Are you a lover of donuts? If so, be sure to add National Donut Day to the appropriate page in your planner. It’s on June 2, which is also Leave The Office Early Day, coincidentally. I found all the cat appreciation days (there’s a lot of them!), International Gin & Tonic Day (Oct. 19) and Left Hander’s Day (Aug. 13 — of course its on the 13th! So unlucky!)

As a stationery aficionado, you may want to find National Pencil Day (March 30), Rubber Eraser Day (April 15), Global Handwriting day (Oct. 15) and, of course, Fountain Pen Day (Nov 3 this year).

This is a great way to add dates to your calendar that will remind you that everyday can be special and to help alleviate some of the endless blank pages.

As today is National Rubber Ducky Day, I hope you get a chance to float a rubber duck and bring a little joy into your life. Happy Ducky Day!

What special dates are you going to add to your planner or calendar?

DISCLAIMER: Some items in this post 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.

Testing the Notebook:

Compared to Traveler’s Notebook:

Pens:

Ink:

Notebooks & Paper:

Art & Creativity:

Other Interesting Things: