Fountain Pen Review

Hi everyone!

Here's a very short review of the fountain pens in my collection. I don't own a lot and what I do have I do use all the time. 

I started using a fountain pen when I started to journal more consistently. It felt more luxurious and nostalgic than a regular ballpoint or gel pen, at least to me, and I enjoyed the experience so much more. 

I think my first one after a very long time was this pink Lamy Safari. I used to hate how these looked but they've grown on me and I have several now. They're relatively inexpensive and come in many different fun colors. I love the Vista too which is a Demonstrator. 

The Lamys are also particularly flexible because you can change out the nibs from pen to pen, and they have several sizes to choose from ranging from Extra Fine to a 1.9 mm Italic nib. 

My favorite for actual journal writing is this Pilot Prera. I love how it looks!  Its small and compact and fits well in the Midori TN pen loop which is what I use as a journal now. It also writes very, I mean very, smoothly, with no blobs and globs, even after a few days of not using it. And as you will see from the rest of this post, I love demonstrator pens where you can see the ink through the barrel. 

My other favorite fountain pen is the Pilot Plumix which I use mostly for art journaling. It makes my handwriting look so good! Lol. And it's also a smooth pen. At $8, you can't go wrong with the Plumix. 

The clear one is a Pilot Penmanship that writes extra extra fine, albeit a little scratchy. Also $8. 

The other ones I have I admittedly haven't been using much, namely, the Sailor and Pilot Crystal. They're not bad at all, I just prefer the others. I do love though that they're Demonstrators. 

And lastly, the Pilot Preppy. These could be a starter fountain pen for some. They are refillable with cartridges and come in many colors. Another reasonably-priced pen at $3. 

You may be able to tell I'm a fan of Pilot pens. 

I did a small nib writing test for you so you can have an idea of how each one writes. I'm no expert so forgive me if this is not the way ink tests are done. 

If there was anything I didn't cover, or if you have any questions please leave them in the comments and I'll try to get back to you as soon as possible. 

(Sidenote: I was finally able to find a Midori 5th Anniversary Edition and that's what you see in the photos above.)

Thanks for visiting!

Journalling

Hi everyone!

Today, I thought I'd show you how I journal.

For starters, there's not much to it -- I don't follow a prescribed  set of 'rules'. I simply write what I want, the way I want.   What it's all about is merely a little bit of discipline to write on a regular basis.

Early this year, I decided that I wanted to document my life.  I never really wrote in a diary as a teenager, and never kept a regular journal.  Later on in life, I was too busy with family, work, and life in general, to journal.  Now that I have some time on my hands, I figured I would try it and see if it made sense for me.

Months later, I'm still keeping it up.  I try to write something during the day, whenever the urge strikes.  It will usually be some trivial thing that happened, tasks/errands I do during the day, and even the occasional rant and rave.  It usually wouldn't be anything too personal (it seems I'm an introvert, even in my journaling, LOL).

(While on vacation, I only wrote a snippet of my day -- what I did, where I went -- since I was busier than usual.  But I tried to keep it up during that time.)

After deciding to do this, I first needed to find a book to write on.  I searched local bookstores/stationery shops.  I searched online. I even tried to use my Filofax to journal.

What I realized is that I needed a bound book to do this.  As much as I would have loved to use a Filo, it just didn't work for me.  I needed the pages to be lined and bound and feel like a real 'book'.  (Call me crazy.)

And I found these.

I stamped and laminated a tag to make it seem like a real Journal. 

There are 193 pages back-to-back. I know, I numbered the pages by hand!  (:   At the top is space for the date.  The pages are cream, lined, and fairly thick. I use a fountain pen, and as you can see from one of the photos, there is very little bleed-through. (I'm on page 83 now and I started the book in April so these will last me a while.)  And they're very inexpensive at less than US$2 each!

Space for the date comes in handy

I had to number each page by hand

Lined, cream paper.  Hardly any bleed-through, even with
a fountain pen .  I prefer an EF nib.

They come in many different colors.  I wanted them all to be in black, but the store only had one at the time so I picked up a yellow and a red as well.  I wish I could find them again in black later on.  I would love for them to be uniform.

As I mentioned, I use a fountain pen to bring back some nostalgia to my journalling.  As I was researching what fountain pen to get, I came across several, but none appealed to me in my price range.  (There were tons I wanted though in the hundreds of dollars, but I wasn't spending that kind of money on a fountain pen!)

I knew about the Lamy Safari, and didn't even consider it because I previously found the design to be clunky, chunky, and in one word, ugly.  I have completely changed my mind about them though, since as you can see, I now have three.  They write well, are very reasonably-priced, and come in great colors.  I won't review them here as there are already tons of better reviews online.

I also got some converters and inks, but find that cartridges are so much less fiddly and messy.  And I really only wanted to write in blue.  So, since I didn't use them anywhere else, one color was fine.  I did put black ink in the black pen though, just to match.

Pens and paraphernalia

J. Herbin inks.  Reasonably-priced with a wide array of colors.

I may try again with colored inks later, but for now, I'll just be using Lamy cartridges.

(I would love to hear from anyone who uses J. Herbin inks as they're easily accessible to me here, and I would love to make them work.  I'm sure it's just me because lots of people like this ink, but I can't seem to get the true colors to come out with my Lamys.  Would appreciate what you think.)

So, that's how I journal.  Not very interesting maybe.  But it's a whole new experience for me, and I'm loving it so far.

Thanks for visiting!