I was contacted several months ago by Jacob Deatherage, the owner of Ex Libris Anonymous, a small company based in Portland, Oregon who make journals by hand using old recycled books. When I agreed to accept a couple of samples for review, I had no idea I’d get this large batch! First of all, I [...]
JetPens is renowned as a fabulous source of, well, pens… but they also stock a lot of great notebooks too. Brad at Jet Pens was kind enough to send me some samples for review– let’s take a look! These 3 notebooks are give a first impression of sleekness, somehow. The covers are smooth, and they [...]
I spotted Wild & Wolf’s Qwerty line of products in a local store and just loved the idea: notebooks and other products with old style typewriter motifs! I contacted the company and they were kind enough to send me not only a sample Qwerty journal, but another funky notebook as well. Let’s take a look: [...]
Quite a while back, I posted a link to a snazzy looking diary by Typotheque. Little did I know that almost two years later, I’d be sent a sample to review! Seeing this year’s version in person did not disappoint. Here it is: I love the nice clean design, with all its sharp lines and [...]
Pocket Dept is a relatively new brand of notebooks. Here’s the description from their website: Pocket Dept is a line of handy notebooks inspired by vintage stationary and designed to suit every pocket. Each Pocket Dept book is made from the finest writing papers and perfect bound for strength and durability. Designed and manufactured with [...]
Sometimes, a notebook is only as good as what you write in it with. A notebook can have the best paper in the world, but it still won’t be enjoyable to use with a crappy pen. Over the years, I’ve tried many different pens, but I’ve finally narrowed my choices down to a few favorites, [...]
For a few years now, I’ve come across online mentions of these very cool Penguin notebooks, but had never figured out where to buy one in the US. But a few months ago, when I was attending BookExpo America for my day job, I happened to wander through the Penguin booth and stopped when I [...]
A few months ago, I met Karen from Exaclair at her BookExpo booth and got a sneak peek at some new items from Rhodia and Clairefontaine. A few weeks later, some lovely samples showed up in my mailbox! Let’s take a look. First off, here’s the new large Webnotebook with dot-grid paper. I love dot-grid [...]
The Pentalic Illustrator’s Sketchbook is a nice little notebook I found at Lee’s Art Supply in New York several months ago. It’s very basic, and in some ways hard to distinguish from other Moleskine clones, but it does have a few interesting points of differentiation. The paper wrapper is a translucent vellum. The cover material is [...]
There are so many different kinds of paper artists can use, and so many materials that demand different surfaces. When you’re in an art supply shop, there are multiple options for loose sheets and large spiral-bound sketchpads, but when it comes to smaller hardcover sketchbooks, each brand only seems to offer one option… why? You’d [...]
