Giveaway Time! Morning Glory Notebooks

Finally, time for me to share my Chicago, H Mart finds.  Inside of H Mart is a store called Fancy Pencil Land.  There are no links to the little store, but there are some reviews on Yelp.  I picked up these six Morning Glory brand notebooks.  They all ranged in price from 3.99 to 5.99. 

The main difference between all the notebooks were the covers.  The green one below is hardback, one had a poly cover and a couple were regular notebook weight covers.  Some the pages had some margins and some didn't.  All were color coded, except for the one that is like a sketchbook (see below).

I did a quick pen test, just to illustrate paper quality.  I picked a ton of pens, so hopefully there is an example for everyone.  Overall, the paper does very well.  Some minor show through with the more bold felt tip pens, but no real bleed-through. (By the way, nearly every pen on this test was purchased from JetPens so if you see something you like, visit them!

This notebook is somewhat unique because it is unlined and more of a newsprint paper.  I think it is meant to be a sketchbook. 

 Now for the best part, a giveaway!  I think this notebook is meant for lefties, now I am not 100% sure of that--but it makes sense based on the spiral being removed from the side.  I am not a left handed and although this notebook is cool, I feel like I should give it a good home somewhere else.  Now that being said, you do not have to be a lefty to win.  All you have to do is leave a comment on the blog.  The contest will be open until 11:59pm on Sunday, September 29, 2013.  After that I will do a random number generator to pick a winner.  I'll ship it to you anywhere, so no need to be in the US to win. 

I'll announce the winner on Monday, September 30, 2013.  Then you have until Sunday, October 6th to email me at schoolsupplydance AT gmail, to give me your email address.  So be sure to check back if you comment. 

Pens From Europe!

Stockholm, Sweden

In July, my husband and I went on a cruise that left from Stockholm and traveled to several European countries. We had an extra day on either end of the trip in Stockholm so I had a chance to do quite a bit of browsing for both office supplies and everything else.I took this opportunity to purchase a lot of pens and paper in Stockholm and Visby, Sweden.  I have always loved the idea of buying the supplies that "the locals" use so this was my chance!   

We saw a lot of amazing things on the trip, but Stockholm was one of my favorite places. To quote my husband, "Three truths I have learned about Stockholm: 1) Stockholm is an IKEA the size of a city. 2) Every store is apparently a TARDIS, from the street they look like a small storefront, but hold more stuff than a Wal-Mart. 3) There are only about twenty different stores in Stockholm, they just repeat every few blocks.

One store that I only came across once in my travels, was a department store called Ahlens. This is where picked up the Muji markers above and the unknown short makers in the photo.  The pen test is for the white markers.  I think the real winners in the maker set are the  purples, there are a lot of very subtle shade differences that make each color unique.  If there was a tag with these markers, it was long gone by the time I took the pictures, so I am not sure what brand they are.  There is a tiny tag inside the zippered pouch they came in, but it says made in China, so that isn't much of a clue. (The Muji pens below also came from Ahlens.)

In Visby, I stopped into a bookstore and they had a large stationery section.  I picked up several of the pens in the following pictures from there.  I think my favorite one has to be the retro looking, retractable, teal BIC pen.  I also like the orange BIC pens because they are fine point and they aren't sold much, if at all, in my area. 

 

The pen above the Faber-Castell pens is a "b.n.t/office pen." I do not know much about this pen, and a quick google search didn't shed any light on it for me either, so I am not sure if it is sold in the US or not.  But it seems to be very similar to a Pilot G2 pen, only in ballpoint.  Surprisingly, I do not have a G2, otherwise I would compare them side by side to be certain that they are as similar as I think they are.

I know I have a few more pens hanging around that got adsorbed into my pen drawer at work so they weren't available for review.  I also have around 10 notebooks that I picked up in Sweden, but I'll save all that paper for a following post!

If there is anything you want to see a better of picture of or would like more details about, just leave a comment and I'd be happy too oblige!

Dialogue Journal and Rolling Writer

It is coming up on my favorite time of year, school supply season! I have already started browsing the displays cropping up at the mass market stores, but I also love college bookstores. I decided to beat the rush of students and visited a nearby college bookstore yesterday. I came came across this Dialogue Notebook by PaperLuxe and the Pentel Rolling Writer pen. This book has a soft flexible purple cover with attached elastic band. I couldn't get the book to open flat, but I think it will be more likely once it broken in. The pages are lined on the front and blank on the back. This was actually the selling point for me and I how I use journals. I like to make collages in them and a blank page would be great for that. Or I could use this book as a DIY planner and a mix of lined and blank pages would be perfect.

My main complaint is the layout of the lined pages, that the spacing on the lines is wide like a Rhodia, I prefer a ruling similar to a Moleskine. There is also a lot of wasted space at the top and bottom of the page and there is a logo, which I typically do not like. (You may need to click on the picture to see the lines they are kind of faint.)

The paper performs as expected. I did a quick test with several pens.



All showed through on the back but they didn't bleed through to the next page. I would recommend this book as more of an art journal rather than a writing journal, but you would have to be aware of the medium being used to avoid bleed through.

I also want to talk about the Pentel Rolling Writer (the first example in my pen test above). The package lists this pen as a .8 however, it is liquid ink pen that is very bold. I have come across this pen a few times, usually in offices where I have worked and immediately appropriated them as my own. I rarely see these in stores and when I do, I buy one.

I even have several dried up ones in my pen box. I love the pen but if I could nitpick one thing, it is that the width of the line varies greatly as you can see from the pen test above. The package says it is because of the writing pressure that is applied. I feel like it more about the angle of how the pen is held. That being said, I still enjoy this pen and like to use it for journaling.

Does anyone else use this pen? I rarely see them in circulation so I am not sure how popular they are.