I have lately received an interesting product from Straits Pen, and the product is from a company I have never heard of before. It is the Backpocket Ink Tester. I love new products from new brands, so I was pretty excited to review this notebook! The Backpocket Ink Tester is a pocket-sized notebook which reminds me much of Field Notes, the super-popular pocket-sized brand of notebooks that everyone seems to love. It is made by Curnow Bookbinding & Leatherwork, from Dixon, California. These are handmade journals, which makes it even more appealing to me! When you flip to the middle of the book, you will be able to see the binding, which seems to be some sort of wire or twine. It’s an interesting way of binding (while Field Notes are bound by classic staples). Within the book, there are 46 pages of forms for you to fill out your ink records, so you can record 46 different kinds of inks in one single book. The fields allow you to record the ink brand, ink name, the pen and nib you used for the record, and the date. Following those, you can give star ratings for ink characteristics like shading, saturation, […]
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I’ve been rather busy and still ill, so I’m going to just put up a short post! The Singapore Fountain Pen Lovers have just had a pen meet on Saturday, May 30, 2015. The turnout had been excellent, and there has been a lucky draw as well! Everyone was eyeing the prizes as they are Montblanc products sponsored by Fook Hing Trading Co. The meet was held at the Tea Party Cafe again, which seems to be our usual haunt for official pen meets. It’s a spacious cafe with a nice concept, and serves good food! Despite the abundance of space in the cafe, it was almost literally overflowing with fountain pen enthusiasts. There was an ink testing station set up at a corner of the cafe, where we could go and have a look at the 8 Montblanc fountain pen inks in beautiful slipper glass bottles. As admin, I helped to prepare ink swab samples for ease of colour referencing. I also brought two glass pens for the members to dip into the bottles of inks to test out the colours. It was so crowded that, being the introvert that I am, I didn’t know really who to talk […]
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I am a music-lover, and used to be a student of music. All that time spent drawing crotchets and quavers, treble clefs and bar lines, has been memorable indeed. It is not until my interest in fountain pens started that I learnt about the existence of music nibs. Did the composers in the past really use nibs like that to write their music? Here is a picture of a handwritten musical manuscript: The style is characterized by very thin strokes for stems and lines, big saturated blobs for the notes, and thick fat lines for joining notes together. You can also see line variation in the handwriting. I’ve decided to investigate whether music nibs are able to produce a similar effect. Thanks to Parkablogs, I have managed to try out a Sailor music nib for myself. Previously, I have reviewed the Platinum music nib and liked it pretty much. I had spent quite a bit of time deciding between the Pilot, Platinum, and Sailor music nibs, and finally decided on the Platinum because of the writing feel on paper. Sailor’s music nib does not have 3 tines like the Platinum, and I had felt that it didn’t look as special, […]
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Did you know that it is World Stationery Day today, and that this week (27 April – 3 May) is National Stationery Week? That means it’s time to get out and celebrate with some stationery. I have started a series of “Get Started On” posts consisting of only one post so far, so I thought it is the best time to write another one to get people started on things. Being a fountain pen blogger and a stationery fanatic, I would like to get you started on fountain pens, if you haven’t done so yet! 3 Reasons Why You Should Start Using Fountain Pens I will keep it simple and to the point, but I would like to share with you some of my thoughts on why you should get started on fountain pens. Note that this list definitely isn’t exhaustive, but I hope you can identify with at least one of the pointers listed below. “Green” Going green is a big thing as one may probably wish to do a little on our part to reduce waste and protect the environment. Using a fountain pen itself may not be fully environmentally-friendly, but if you compare it with using cheap […]
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I recently bought a Franklin Christoph Penvelope 6. I have been eyeing it since I saw the pouch that my SFPL friend, Jeffrey, own. He has a Saddleboot Brown version with a dusty red inner lining. I got mine from Fook Hing Trading Co. at a reasonable price. They only had the maroon version which I found was wonderful, and it has black lining inside. So, of course I simply had to get one! The price of a Penvelope 6 is much more reasonable compared to the Penvelope 2. I had contemplated for a long time between the 6 and the 2, and finally decided that 6 is a great number of pens to carry. I have done a review of the Penvelope 6 in a video below. It’s my first video review where I actually show my face and speak, so I’m quite nervous. But I hope you like the video! Here’s a photo of Jeffrey’s Penvelope in Saddleboot Brown, with the weathered, aged look: Amazon affiliate links of the pens I used in the video, in case you’re interested to get one for yourself: Pilot Kakuno and here is my review of it Sailor Lecoule Lamy Joy and here is […]
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Caran d’Ache produces quite some nice colours of inks, and while I have done a couple of ink samples late last year, I haven’t gotten down to reviewing them on this site yet. The brand has had a range called the Caran d’Ache Colors of the Earth inks, which has been discontinued and replaced with their Chromatic range. I was lucky enough to have snatched up 3 of the old inks before they were all out of the market. Before I start my ink review, I’ll have to disclaim that the colour of the ink that I scanned for this review may not be the same as the actual colour perceived. I have tried my best to adjust the hues to be as similar as possible to the real thing, based on what I see on my Macbook laptop screen. Your computer may output a slightly different hue, depending on the settings of your screen colours. Just search on Google Images for any of the ink names, and you will see how vastly different the colours look like for each type of ink! Caran d’Ache Colors of the Earth: Saffron I have a great weakness for certain colours for inks. One […]
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Being a blogger is being lucky sometimes, especially when you meet people who willingly lend you their pens to blog about! SH Wong has kindly lent me his TWSBI Vac 700 to play with, and I’ve decided to write a #pendelight article on it. The TWSBI Vac 700 is a large and long pen. TWSBI has been making faceted pens since their Diamond range which I have reviewed here before. The Vac 700 has a cylindrical barrel, though. The cap has diamond-shaped facets running the length of it, and the plunger knob at the back has triangular shaped facets in a decagon. As the name of the pen suggests, it is a vacuum filler which makes use of air suction to draw ink up into the pen. There is a knob at the end of the pen that you can unscrew to pull up the plunger inside. The plunger slides up smoothly, but when closing it, the cylindrical internal part opens up into a wider chamber, so the plunger snaps through it as you push the knob. While the TWSBI Vac 700 generally has glossy metallic trims around the pen, the clip stands out in that the metal is […]
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Finally, I’ve got a chance to review a Delta pen, thanks to Sunny from Straits Pen for loaning it to me (and I have been holding on to it for the longest time imaginable, sorry!). Delta is an Italian brand and it produces many beautiful, striking marbled designs of fountain pens. The pen that I am going to review today is from The Journal Collection, variant being the blue Tech & Web fountain pen. Unboxing The pen comes in a beautiful box – looking modern and with typefaces in large print around the box. Along with the words “The Journal”, it looks to me like the packaging of a beautiful journal notebook inside… but it is actually a fountain pen! Unboxing is rather fun as there are many “layers” of packaging before reaching the product itself. After sliding out the outer covering, there is a cardboard box inside with the brand name “Delta” printed on it. Inside this box is the pen box itself. And voilà, we finally get to the interior of the packaging. Inside, we see the Tech & Web fountain pen in dark blue resin body and dark grey trims lying beside a bottle of Delta ink. […]
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EDIT: Pilot Pen has contacted me to correct the error in my post – there is no Pilot Sumino, and the white Kakuno is still known as the Kakuno. So do note this as many sources online call it the Pilot Sumino, which is not correct! I have made the necessary changes in this post to correct the name of the pen. Thanks to Pilot Pen for pointing this out! As promised on my Fukubukuro sale post, I was going to do a comparison review of the two adorable little pens that have taken the world by storm: the Pilot Kakuno in white and in grey. Okay, okay, I exaggerate a little when I said “taken the world by storm”, but it does seem that many love these pens, and it appears that everyone I know in the fountain pen world has one of these. If you haven’t gotten one, shame on you! 😉 (Just kidding.) The Pilot Kakuno is an economically-priced fountain pen, perfect for beginners and for children (or adults like me who have a soft spot for cheap pens with smiley faces on the nibs). In fact, I have already done a review of the grey-barrelled one […]
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Thanks to Alt Haven lending me this pen, I got a chance to review the Muji Aluminium Compact Fountain Pen. It is a modern long-short pen, and rather obviously, it’s made of aluminium metal. A long-short pen is a pen that has a long cap and short barrel, quite unlike the usual fountain pen which usually has a shorter cap than the barrel. The picture above is a comparison of the two Muji Aluminium Pens that have been available so far. I have done a review before of the Muji Aluminium Round fountain pen, so you can do a comparison. I have a preference toward short pens, and so of course I like this pen, being so small and very easy to slip into a pocket. The thing I didn’t like about it probably is the fact that, while it has a small barrel, it’s a little too small to be very well functional. I tend to grasp a pen in my palm on the barrel side, and pull the cap off. This Muji Compact has such a small barrel that it’s quite difficult for me to remove the cap in this way. Because of this, I have to […]
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