Writing Instruments – Writer's Bloc Blog

September 27, 2016September 25, 2016

5 Essential Rhodia Products to Help You Thrive at the Office

It’s a jungle out there! If you’ve ever worked in an office you know what I mean. Stock up on these Rhodia essentials and thrive during the daily workplace chaos.

Rhodia Meeting Book

When your day at the office or at client meetings includes taking detailed, specific notes that you need to refer back to in the future, the Rhodia Meeting Book comes to the rescue. Its paper is in the Cornell Notes format, which is an effective layout for taking notes during meetings and then adding cues to help you to find specific details later. If you’re not familiar with how this method can help you, take a look at our previous post “How to Use The Cornell Note Taking System Effectively for Business or Client Meetings.”

Rhodia Pencils

The triangular shaped Rhodia Pencil won’t roll off your desk and is comfortable in the hand. The orange body perfectly matches your orange Rhodia notepad and the black wood around the lead makes a bold statement.

Rhodia Ice Bloc 13 with a LAMY Al-Star Fountain Pen

Rhodia Bloc Notepads

Rhodia Bloc Notepads are the iconic product that Rhodia is famous for: top staple-bound paper notepads and bright white 80g paper with a 5 mm x 5 mm violet grid. Each page is microperforated at the top so it can cleanly and easily be removed. There are probably about a million different uses for these everyday notepads! These notebooks come in a wide range of sizes, colors, styles and paper types.

Rhodia Webnotebook - Medium, Orange, Dot Grid — Rhodia Webnotebook with Dot Grid Paper

The Rhodia Webnotebook or Rhodiarama Flexible Notebook

Pull out a classy Rhodia Webnotebook to impress clients and coworkers at business meetings and the premium paper inside pairs perfectly with your executive fountain pen. Rhodia Webnotebooks and Rhodiarama Flexible Notebooks are perfect for use as guest books, corporate gifts, etc. These durable notebooks are great for everyday notes and come in a variety of colors, sizes, formats and paper styles.

Rhodia Weekly Webplanner

Who doesn’t need a calendar to keep their busy office schedule organized? The Rhodia Weekly Webplanner has your weekly scheduling on the left page and a page of Rhodia’s famous grid paper for notes on the right. This leather-like hardbound planner has a stitched binding to keep pages from falling out. It’s available in pocket or desk size, with an orange or black cover.

What are your favorite essential Rhodia products for work?

August 2, 2016August 2, 2016

Back to School 2016 for Stationery Lovers

Back to school for students who love stationery is an exciting time that means backpacks full of shiny, fresh school supplies with that brand-new stationery smell! Here are some of our favorite supplies for your stationery fix in the new school year.

Clairefontaine Notebooks

Clairefontaine notebooks rock some of the best paper in the world for writing! This paper has a super smooth coating on it that reduces writing fatigue by allowing your pen to easily glide across the page. The quality of the paper minimizes any instances of ink bleeding through or showing through the paper which allows you to write on both sides of each page. Clairefontaine notebooks are especially awesome if you like to write with a fountain pen. There’s a huge variety of notebook styles and sizes from Clairefontaine, we’ll mention a few of our favorites here and you can check out the rest yourself.

Clairefontaine Wirebound Notebook – Large, Ruled w/Margin. 8.5″ x 11″ size and each page is 3-hole punched to fit American 3-ring binders if you decide to remove the paper from the notebook. 90 sheets per notebook.
Clairefontaine Classic Wirebound Notebook – A4 Large Size, Ruled. Includes a generous 96 sheets and you choose the cover color: Blue-Gray, Red, Blue, or Black.
Clairefontaine Classic Staple Bound Notebook – Large, Ruled w/Margin. Great paper for an economical price!

LAMY Safari Fountain Pens and Pelikano Fountain Pens

A fountain pen is the perfect companion to go along with your Clairefontaine notebooks. Fountain pens help with writing fatigue by reducing the friction required to write and Clairefontaine paper has a satin smooth surface to reduce the fatigue even more. If you’re going to spend a lot of time writing you may as well enjoy it! For school or college purposes we would recommend a pen that’s not too expensive that can be filled with washable blue ink cartridges (more info on that in a moment). When you’re on the go, ink cartridges are easier to use than bottled ink and both the LAMY Safari and Pelikan Pelikano have washable blue ink cartridges with a decent ink capacity: LAMY Blue ink cartridges or Pelikan Royal Blue giant ink cartridges.

Pelikan Super Pirat Ink Eradicator

The Super Pirat Ink Eradicator can erase mistakes made when writing with royal blue fountain pen inks and then you use the blue correction tip to correct the mistake. This correction pen is a fantastic addition to your fountain pen and Clairefontaine paper. If you’re wondering how it works take a look at this blog post: What is the Pelikan Super Pirat Ink Eradicator?

Quo Vadis Textagenda Academic Planner with a Red Chelsea Leather Cover

Quo Vadis Academic Planners for 2016-17

Academic planners are special because their dates correspond to the school year instead of the calendar year. They begin with the month of July or August and end with the month of July in the following year. Quo Vadis offers a variety of high quality planners and covers to keep even the busiest students organized.

Textagenda Daily Student Planner
Minister Weekly Student Planner – fountain pen friendly
University Pocket Size Student Planner
Scholar Weekly Student Planner – fountain pen friendly, open format
Monthly 4 18-month Monthly Planner

Clairefontaine Multiple Subject Notebook - Large — Clairefontaine Multiple Subject Notebook – Large

Clairefontaine Multiple Subject Notebooks

Clairefontaine Multiple Subject Notebooks get their own mention because they accomplish more than one purpose. In addition to tabbed, different colors of paper to keep your notes on different subjects organized, they also help save on space and weight to minimize the number of supplies you need to carry with you. These multiple subject notebooks have paper with a 5mm x 5mm grid so if you happen to have small handwriting you can get a lot of notes on one page. Clairefontaine Multiple Subject Notebooks are available in small, medium and large sizes.

Uni-ball Jetstream 3 Multicolor Pink Ballpoint Pen - 0.7mm — Uni-ball Jetstream 3 Multicolor Pink Ballpoint Pen – 0.7mm

Uni-ball Jetstream 3 Multicolor Ballpoint Pen

If you’re not into fountain pens, check out the space saving, smooth writing Uni-ball Jetstream 3 Multicolor Ballpoint Pen. It conveniently gives you 3 choices of ink color in one pen body. The pen comes with blue, black and red ink ink cartridges with a 0.7mm tip but can be refilled with any colors you wish. The pen is available with your choice of a pink, light blue, lime green, black or transparent body.

Clairefontaine Basics Blue Oval Leather Pencil Case

Aston Leather or Clairefontaine Leather Pen & Pencil Cases

Carry your writing instruments in style with a leather zippered pen and pencil pouch from Aston Leather or Clairefontaine. Both cases are reasonably priced and durable enough to last for years.

What are your favorite new school supplies to buy at the beginning of the school year?

April 26, 2016October 10, 2016

7 Money Saving Fountain Pen Tips

In my world, I find that fountain pens are like potato chips – you can’t have just one! And I love all of the different flavors. After I bought just one fountain pen, a short time later I had a collection of fountain pens and it keeps growing to this day. To help you make the most of your fountain pen budget so you can add to your own personal collection, here are a few money saving tips:

Refill your used ink cartridges. Bottled ink is cheaper per volume than ink in plastic cartridges. All you need is a blunt-tip needle bottle (or something similar) to rinse out your empty ink cartridges and to refill that empty cartridge with ink. It’s easy! Here are some instructions from our blog: Refill Fountain Pen Ink Cartridges with a Blunt Tip Needle Bottle.
Use a blunt tip needle bottle to refill an ink cartridge
Use one fountain pen and change the nib size. Some brands sell individual nibs of different sizes for certain fountain pens. The LAMY Safari and Al-Star are a couple of popular pens that have this option. Their steel nibs can be purchased separately in the following sizes: extra fine, fine, medium, broad, left-handed, 1.1mm, 1.5mm and 1.9mm. Here’s an example: If you usually write with a fine nib LAMY Safari, but every once in a while want to do some calligraphy, you can remove the fine nib and replace it with one of LAMY’s calligraphy nibs. This way you don’t have to buy a whole separate pen to do your calligraphy. Changing the steel nib on a LAMY fountain pen is easy. Here are instructions for a couple of different methods to do a nib swap: How to Replace the Nib on a LAMY Fountain Pen and How to Change the Nib on a LAMY Fountain Pen – Part 2.
Voila! The nib has been removed from the pen
Put clear tape around the cap of inexpensive plastic fountain pens. I’ve had several plastic pen caps crack over time, and even one plastic grip cracked. Wrapping clear tape a couple times around the bottom of the open end of the cap as soon as you buy the pen can extend its life span. This also works for rollerball pens, gel pens and other writing instruments with plastic caps.
Buy your fountain pen before the end of the year. Many brands increase prices at the beginning of each year so buy your classic fountain pen before then and save some money. This isn’t foolproof though – every once in awhile there will be a price decrease on certain models.
Pilot Vanishing Point Fountain Pen – Gun Metal Gray, Black Matte Accents
Write with a steel nib instead of a gold nib. The price of gold keeps increasing over time, and this price is definitely reflected in the cost of a fountain pen with a gold nib. Pens with steel nibs are generally more economical.
Platinum Cool Fountain Pens
Use a fountain pen as a highligher pen. Get a bottle of highlighting ink for fountain pens or a bottle of light colored ink and a fountain pen with a broad or calligraphy nib and you’ll have a highlighter pen that will last for years!
LAMY Safari Neon Yellow Fountain Pen with a Calligraphy Nib
If you’ve got some extra bottles of fountain pen ink in bright colors sitting around the house, you can use this ink to recharge your highlighter pens or felt-tip markers. Check out these simple instructions: D.I.Y. Highlighter Recharging.
DIY Highlighter Recharge

What money saving tips for writers would you like to share?

December 22, 2015December 23, 2015

Staedtler Triplus Fineliners Review

Staedtler Triplus Fineliners are definitely on my list of favorite writing tools! I enjoy using these vibrantly colored fine tip pens for everyday handwriting, doodling, marking up my paper planner or relaxing with my Clairefontaine coloring book for grownups.

Triplus Fineliners are porous point pens with a superfine tip that’s metal clad to help the tip maintain its shape. The 0.3mm tip is finer than your average felt-tip pen which makes them ideal for small handwriting, detailed and precise drawing or for coloring in small spaces.

These pens have what is called a Dry Safe feature: they can be left uncapped for days without drying up (Test ISO 554 – except neon colors). We did our own test of this ability and you can read about the results here: Staedtler Pens Dry Safe Feature Test. Of course, for best results, we do recommend putting the cap back on your pens after you’re finished if you can remember to do it.

The long slender barrel of Triplus Fineliner pens has a triangular shape for a comfortable and ergonomic writing experience. The grey colored barrel is made of durable poly propylene and since it’s triangular it won’t roll off your desk. It has a plastic snap-on cap that matches the color of the ink inside the pen. The cap can easily post on the top of the pen and since the cap is light-weight it won’t throw off the balance of the pen while you’re writing. The cap does have a clip that’s about 1 1/2″ in length. Fineliners are about 6 3/8″ long when capped, 6″ long when uncapped and 7″ long when the cap is posted on the end.

Staedtler Triplus Fineliners have water-based ink that can be washed out of many types of fabric which means they are not waterproof or water-resistant. The pens are not refillable. They are airplane safe: automatic pressure equalization prevents the pens from leaking on board aircraft. From my own experience, the ink does not feather or bleed through most kinds of paper. The ink dries quickly so even though I’m a lefty I don’t smear it much.

If you buy them in a set of four, six, ten or twenty, Triplus Fineliners come in a plastic storage case that can stand up when it’s open so that you conveniently have your pens both organized and within easy reach.

As of writing this blog post, there are around 30 of these pens that are available as single colors: yellow (1), red (2), magenta (20), light carmine (21), bordeaux (23), tuscan red (260), carmine (29), blue (3), light blue (30), aqua blue (34), cyan (37), orange (4), peach (43), green (5), willow green (51), lime green (53), french green (54), green earth (55), olive green (57), violet (6), dark mauve (61), lavender (62), delft blue (63), mauve (69), brown (7), van dyke brown (76), warm sepia (77), grey (8), silver grey (82) and black (9).

Do you write or draw with Staedtler Triplus Fineliners? What do you like to use them for?

August 4, 2015August 4, 2015

Top 5 School Supplies For 2015

A new school year is right around the corner! My favorite memory of going back to school was getting all of the fresh, new stationery supplies needed to prepare for the upcoming year. I was particularly fond of any new art supplies such as pencils with a variety of graphite, paints and sketchbooks. Whether or not you feel it’s old-fashioned, using paper and pen to take handwritten notes has proven to help students learn more than if they type their notes on laptops so be sure to stock up on writing supplies for top school performance! Here are our top 5 stationery choices for back to school 2015:

Clairefontaine Twinbook Two Subject Notebook

1) Clairefontaine Notebooks. Whatever your paper notebook needs are, Clairefontaine pretty much has you covered with their huge variety and high quality super-smooth paper. One of our favorites is the Clairefontaine Twinbook. The first 48 pages have a tab cut into them that divides the Twinbook into two sections for two subjects. Another favorite is the 3-hole punched Clairefontaine Wirebound Notebook, ruled with margin. This notebook has paper that is sized to fit 3-ring binders in the USA and includes a generous 90 sheets of paper (available soon).

Quo Vadis Minister Planner - Red Club Cover — Quo Vadis Minister Planner with a Red Club Cover

2) Quo Vadis Academic Planners. Back to school means a busy schedule and lots of exams and assignments to keep track of. Keep yourself or your student organized with a Quo Vadis Academic Planner that starts and ends with the months of the school year. For a super jam-packed schedule try the Quo Vadis Academic Minister or for something pocket-sized the Quo Vadis University Appointment Book.

3) Palomino Blackwing Pencils. Whether you’re in art class or geometry class a quality pencil is an essential tool. Palomino has got your needs covered with their retro variety of premium graphite wooden pencils.

4) Zebra Optex Highlighters. These Zebra Highlighters have a tip on each end: The thick end is perfect for highlighting words on a page while the thin end is great for underlining. Save space (and weight!) in your backpack with these dual purpose writing tools.

5) Aston Leather Pencil Pouch. Keep your writing instruments from getting lost in the black hole of your backpack with a rugged Aston Leather Pencil Pouch. Aston selects their leather from the best environmentally friendly American and European tanneries, and their leathers are scratch resistant, supple, and sturdy.

What would you like to add to our list of top 5 school supplies for 2015?