Sketchbook Favorites

I feel like I’ve fallen off the face of the Earth recently.  I promise you, I’m still here, dreaming about being able to blog (and quilt) at leisure again.  Just a few more weeks.  The deadline is near and I’m excited to be almost there.  Since I don’t have sewing to share with you, I thought I can at least share some of my other “crafting”.  I recently found some great papers to use when drawing with inks.  I’ve really been wanting to get back into using ink and nibs again, for calligraphy and drawing, and found some paper that holds up well to it without bleed through.  I wish I had known such papers existed years ago.  It’s nice to be able to keep a notebook, and draw with pen or pencil (or ink) and not worry about having to skip a few pages to account for ink bleed-through. 

Which brings me to today’s post.  This little graph book is awesome!  I primarily loved it for it’s size and because it’s pink, but once I took some ink to it, I was really in love.  It holds up well to all of my very inky pens.  The paper is so smooth to write on.  I love that it’s graph paper, too, which makes it ideal for sketching out quilt block ideas (which I thought you might all be interested in).  It’s a good size for me to stash in my purse for on the go notes (which I need).

I used various pens to test out the paper, and everyone worked great.  When you flip the page you can still see that you wrote on the other side, but there is no bleed through and that was my primary concern.  Along the margins of the notebook are small boxes so that you can color code  your notes.  The front flap has a little “index” for identifying those colored boxes, too.  The picture above shows where I put a little pink highlighter in the top corner to identify that as “just for fun doodles”. 

Kokuyo Buncobon Pink Dot Cover Notebook – A6 5mm Graph

Like my last post on favorite pens, I’ll break down what I have shown here:

Pentel Tradio Stylo Fountain Pen – This pen is SUPER inky and SUPER black. I find it’s great for thick lines and fill in, but you can really vary the width of your line from thin to thick.  It’s really nice to write with, as it’s such a smooth flow.

Tachikawa Comic Nib Fountain Pen School Model Nib Extra Fine – Currently my favorite pen to write and draw with.  It’s SUPER fine and can do the smallest most intricate details for me in my drawing, but it’s fantastic to just take notes and write with.  It’s very reasonably priced and so are the refills. 

Lamy Safari Fountain Pen Extra Fine Nib – A great fountain pen for my doodling and writing.  It puts out a nice amount of ink and I was able to buy a converter for it and fill it with my own ink.  I filled it with Rohrer & Klingner Calligraphy and Drawing Ink in Turquoise Blue.

Rapidograph Koh-I-Noor 0.25 Technical Pen – These are great pens for doing small sketching and I love that I can fill it with my own inks.  It also has the R&K Turquoise ink in it and is working fantastic.  I also have a Rapidosketch pen by the same company, but it’s a larger nib and I’m still trying it out to see how I feel about it.  So I’ll most likely talk more about that one later. 

Sheaffer Calligraphy Pen – This is a pen I bought in a set years and years and years ago when I took calligraphy in high school.  I think this is the first time I’ve actually used it.  It comes with different nibs and is a fun way to do calligraphy on the go with out the worry of a big mess.  They work great, but I still prefer the “old fashion” way of doing calligraphy, with nib and ink bottle.  I used the converter that came with this and, again, filled it with my favorite R&K Turquoise ink.

As you can tell, I have a massive obsession with pens.  You can never have too many pens.