I’ve reviewed and mentioned the Pen & Ink brand sketchbooks several times on this site (see here, here, here, and here.) They are the closest substitute for a Moleskine sketchbook with the heavy-weight card stock paper, and they’re affordable and well-made. But I’ve never reviewed their other notebooks with standard weight paper. Squared notebooks are … Continue reading Review: Pen & Ink Squared Notebook→
I bought this notebook from Soundless Solilquy’s shop on Etsy over a year ago. It just looked like a nice simple notebook with some attractive colors available, so I decided to give one a try. It’s a very cute and handy size that manages to be very pocketable, more substantial than a Moleskine Cahier or … Continue reading Review: Soundless Soliloquy Notebook→
Rendr Sketchbooks are a new product from Crescent Artists. Their main claim to fame is that the pages are 100% bleed-proof. Now that is a pretty audacious claim. The only sketchbook I’ve ever found to be almost completely show-through-proof and bleed-proof was the Stillman and Birn 270 GSM Zeta series, which has a very thick … Continue reading Review and Giveaway: Rendr Sketchbooks→
Can you judge a notebook by its cover? Perhaps! I was very excited to get these samples from Halaby Aero. The first time I saw these notebooks at Paper Presentation in NYC, I immediately thought they were cool. I have no day to day use for any of the airplane-related info on the covers, but … Continue reading Review and Giveaway: Halaby Aero Flightbook Notebooks→
I reviewed a beautiful Paper Republic notebook over a year ago– that one was a small hardcover notebook with an elegant cover pattern. Now Paper Republic has branched off into something quite different, but also rather elegant: the Grand Voyageur travel notebook. The style of this notebook is hardly unique– like the Midori Traveler’s Notebook … Continue reading Review: Paper Republic Grand Voyageur→
Miro has been around for a few years now, but their product lines have evolved since I last reviewed some Miro samples in late 2012. Let’s take a look at another generous assortment of more recent samples sent to me by the company: Miro’s hardcover journals at first glance seem very similar to many others … Continue reading Review and Giveaway: Miro Notebooks→
I can’t believe it’s taken me over 2 years to review these notebooks. I first heard of Design-Y in early 2012, when they were receiving quite a bit of buzz on fountain pen blogs. If you’re not familiar with this brand, here’s the background: they are handmade in Japan by a Mr. Yoshino. He uses … Continue reading Review: Design.Y Notebooks→
A reader asked for more details about the notebooks in my “What I’m Using Now” photo. I haven’t been updating that photo as often as I should, though for the most part, it’s still accurate most of the time. The red and blue notebooks are HandBook Artist Journals that I have been slowly filling with … Continue reading What I’m Using Now (and Recently)→
Castelli is an Italian company offering customizable journals, notebooks and diaries. They not only sent me samples, they personalized them with the name of this site! The samples I received are of a variety of sizes and colors and formats, and from the catalogs they also sent, even these are just a fraction of their … Continue reading Review and Giveaway: Castelli Notebooks→
I’ve reviewed and mentioned Leuchtturm notebooks many times– over the last few years, they’ve been popping up in more and more stores and are probably Moleskine‘s closest competitor. I’m sure that is in part due to marketing efforts on the part of their distributor, Kikkerland, who were kind enough to send me the samples you’ll … Continue reading Review and Giveaway: Leuchtturm Notebooks… and Sketchbook!→
Notebooks, journals, sketchbooks, diaries: in search of the perfect page…