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Who would have thought that a few bits of paper sandwiched between a couple of thicker bits of paper could become something of a cult item? Not all of them, obviously: your bargain-bucket reporter-style notebook where the sheets curl up after just a few lines of ballpoint and the wires go wobbly after a bit of page-pulling will probably not go down in the annals of history, but there are plenty more that will - or indeed already have.

Moleskine is one of them. There's a substantial number of people who really like them, and wouldn't use anything else, but why? We sent our fearless reporter (that would be me) on a mission to find out…

Founded in 1997 by Maria Sebregondi the company is based in Milan, Italy, and produces a range of notebooks that are… well… notebooks. They don't have fancy covers or unusual bindings; they're not so cheap that you get suspicious, or so expensive that your eyes water; but they do the job. And that's because the design is based on notebooks handmade by Parisian bookbinders around the turn of the 20th century, the sort of thing (but not actually the thing) used by the likes of Van Gogh and Picasso, Ernest Hemingway and Bruce Chatwin. The result is pretty much a 'book for every occasion', which is just the ticket when you need a pocket-friendly notebook as well as something more substantial you can take to a meeting, or a trusty journal to accompany you on your travels. Whatever it is that you need, Moleskine have probably got it.

Each notebook - whether it's for sliding into your briefcase, lugging around in your backpack or having handy in your workshop or studio - has an elastic closure to keep everything together, an expandable pocket inside the back cover to contain any loose bits and pieces, and rounded corners that are less likely to get knocked about or accidentally poked into an unsuspecting eye. The range caters for writers, scribblers and list-makers; journalers and journalists; artists, designers and engineers. Pretty much everybody, in other words. These are tough, no-nonsense notebooks with plain covers in a modest range of colours and a useful range of page rulings.

The Classic collection has what you'd hope: plain, lined, squared and the newly-popular dotgrid; while the Two Go range contains a sensible mix of plain and ruled - perfect for an illustrated story or documenting your holiday. If you're a captain of industry you need look no further than the Professional range. Nothing to do with either Bodie or Doyle, but a selection of notebooks designed to get you through the working day: scribble down ideas onto the A4 pad balanced on your knees on the six-fifteen to Paddington and then whip out your extra large notebook in quietly confident Aster Grey for that deal-making business meeting in the city.

Perhaps you're more of a creative type? No problem. The Art Plus range caters for every artistic soul, from watercolourists and illustrators, through to cartoonists, budding film-makers, musicians and song-writers. Different media need different page weights, so while the Sketchbook carries coloured pencil and pastel-friendly 165gsm paper, the Sketch Album contains a lighter 120gsm which makes it a little less hefty to carry around but is still more than up to quick graphite sketches and notes on the go. The Watercolour Album is filled with cotton-blend 200gsm paper, well able for the wetter creations. They've even got a notebook for all you musos out there: the Music Notebook features plain paper on the left and staves on the right.

Cursed (some would say blessed) with itchy feet? Never mind - venture to another corner of the globe equipped with the Traveller's Collection, 'the guidebook you write yourself'. The notebooks provide enough information on cities such as Rome and London for you to decide where you want to go and what you'd like to see, but give you the practical means to record your own experiences, rather than read about other people's.

Hmm… what else? Oh yes - the Cahier collection. Not a French notebook (although its name might reflect Moleskine's Parisian origins) but a set of three Italian ones, so for those of you who like things to be just so you can have all your thoughts and dreams wrapped up in a matching set. The Volant collection is another French-sounding range (I thought this was an Italian company?) and is a bit more adventurous in that the sets of two contain notebooks which are two shades of the same colour. So they should still satisfy those of you who are more, shall we say - exacting - while still encouraging you to step just a little way out of your comfort zone.

Moleskine notebooks won't appeal to everybody - the standard notebook paper isn't designed for fountain pens - but then isn't that the definition of a cult following? If everybody was a Smiths fan they wouldn't have a cult following. If everybody thought the Blues Brothers was the greatest film ever, it wouldn't have a cult following. If everybody liked shopping at Cult Pens they wouldn't have… ah. Actually, I'll just stop there.

30 July 2018

Our very talented friend Helen Colebrook from Journal with Purpose let us know why she enjoys rock painting. Be sure to follow her on Instagram to see all her latest work @journalwithpurpose.

Painting pebbles is something of an obsession for me. There feels so much less pressure than turning to a blank page in a sketch book, where it seems there might be an expectation to create something resembling a masterpiece.

I’ve been painting rocks for as long as I can remember. Of course, living in Devon surrounded by beaches may have something to do with that!

By their very nature, every rock is unique - so many colours and textures give you a range of different surfaces to work on. The shape of a rock - be it oval or jagged or elongated - plus the presence of indentations and holes make you really think about how you'd like to decorate it.

Before I discovered the magic of POSCA paint pens I would use acrylic paint and a brush, which if I’m honest, was a bit of a struggle for me. My brush control when trying to create detailed lines or dots was lacking a certain finesse.

POSCA paint pens give you that same vibrant acrylic paint look, but with all the control of using a normal pen. With a huge range of colours and shimmery paints too, you just can’t go wrong. They definitely enabled me to 'up' my pebble painting game. Oh yes, it’s a thing! Just look on Instagram at #rockpainting and #pebblepainting to see the amazing creations being shared with the world.

Now, when heading to the beach with my family, I pop some POSCA pens into my beach bag, along with the usual towels, snacks and drinks. Collecting rocks inevitably involves a brave - some would say foolhardy - dip in the sea, resulting in the loss of all feeling in my toes, so any distraction from the numbness in the form of some peaceful pebble painting is most welcome.

It’s not all about the pebbles though. The POSCA pens work well on a huge array of surfaces including glass, wood, ceramic and - of course - paper. With the school holidays now upon us our family has extra time to put our POSCA pens to use. We will be decorating ceramic plates, creating our own house sign on a piece of wood and very likely jazzing up our terracotta plant pots with some geometric patterns.

What’s your next POSCA project? Why not start looking at everyday objects with an eye to transforming them into something less mundane? Let your imagination run wild!

This post is part of our celebrations for Mechanical Pencil Day, on 05/07 - the 5th of July, 2018.

Matthias is the author of the excellent Bleistift blog about stationery, with particular emphasis on mechancal pencils. Here, he tells us of his own journey of discovery with mechanical pencils - how he came to like them so much, and to start a blog about them.

Mechanical pencils are great. So great, in fact, that I sometimes wonder why the ballpoint pen became ubiquitous while the mechanical pencil seems to have lost some of its importance in recent years. Yes, the writing from a ballpoint pen is water-proof, but mechanical pencils are erasable, which can also be a very beneficial feature ..and they don't need to be sharpened, unlike wooden pencils. I hope the mechanical pencil won't become an endangered species but will become more popular again - not only in the pen geek world but also in the general population.

Personally, I prefer a mechanical pencil to a ballpoint pen any day of the year. As my tribute to the mechanical pencil on Mechanical Pencil Day, I want to write a few sentences about my personal relationship with pencils and specifically mechanical pencils.

Most people I know actually and actively like stationery. This doesn't come as a surprise. There's just something exciting about writing with a nice pen and I think many people (at least many I know) can appreciate this. If I go to a part of the world I haven't been to before I love looking at the kind of stationery being sold there. This was also the case when I moved to the UK. I was quite excited to see some different, new pens in British shops that I haven't seen in Germany before. Of course, I bought a few (actually more than a few ;^P ).

When I first got to know my wife, a while after moving to the UK, I was happy to find out that she liked stationery, too. She had a few pens I had never seen before, including shaker mechanical pencils.

With both of us liking stationery I couldn't resist and made her an Advent calendar that consisted of stationery items. One pen (or accessory) for every day. That was in 2001 and we both still like stationery very much. In case you wonder: we haven't really repeated the stationery Advent calendar - we just ended up with far too many pens that year...

Two different things happened that changed my focus from general stationery to pencils, including mechanical pencils:

The first was my discovery of the fantastic Lexikaliker blog and through it the other big pencil blogs of that time (...and I am very happy that the Pencil Talk and Dave's Mechanical Pencils blogs have been revived again after having been dormant for years).

The second was an interview I read in a Swiss newspaper. It was an interview with Anton-Wolfgang Graf von Faber-Castell. Your taste might be different, but in my opinion, Graf von Faber-Castell released some of the best-looking fountain pens as part of their Pen of the Year and Limited Edition series. Despite GvFC making some of the best fountain pens in the world, the count seemed more interest in pencils than in fountain pens (bonus fact: when the Minister President of Bavaria visited the Pope in 2007 he brought a Graf von Faber-Castell fountain pen as a gift). This lead me to revisit pencils. There must be something to them if you prefer them despite having access to the best fountain pens in the world (..and there really is!). Eventually, this all lead to me starting my own pencil blog in 2009. 2009 is also the year I ordered my first mechanical pencil from Cult Pens. I checked my emails and was surprised to see that all my orders before that year were for wooden pencils or fountain pens. Recently I have also been involved in the stationery.wiki, a wiki about stationery that has already more than 800 articles. It's basically a wiki for stationery information that isn't mainstream enough to make it into Wikipedia.

Before I finish I just want to mention my favourite mechanical pencils: sliding sleeve pencils (where the sleeve retracts while you write), preferably with a very small lead diameter. I like to write small to fit more onto a page so 0.2mm or 0.3mm work great for me. It's just nice to be able to write without having to click / forward the lead every few lines of text. Of course, I'm also partial to a beautiful pencil even if they are not sliding sleeve pencils.

If you haven't done so yet give sliding sleeve pencils a try for Mechanical Pencil Day, but please make sure you pick one where not much force is needed to slide the sleeve, or you won't have much fun. You can consult this list for more information.

Cult Pens Get Inktensely Messy!

We don't just sit around answering the phone or writing newsletters or wandering around the warehouse picking orders, you know. Oh no. Sometimes we spread the Tiverton Gazette over the meeting room table, dish out some Derwent and get arty (well - some of us did; the rest just made a mess).

It was Derwent's Inktense Blocks that inspired the burst of creativity. They're sticks of watercolour ink that are incredibly versatile and - as we found out - lots of fun! We needed a bit of training first, though, so we had a look at Derwent's very informative video: How to use Derwent Inktense Blocks.

Thus prepared, we rolled up our sleeves and got stuck in. The first thing we realised was that Inktense Blocks are Messy (with a capital M). But they have to be; after all, what self-respecting artist ever stayed clean? Did Monet possess a pristine smock? Did Picasso have perfectly clean fingernails? I think not.

The blocks can be used dry, like a thick pencil, but we concentrated on exploring their watercolour abilities. The Grate 'n' Shake is a 'grate' piece of equipment which looks a bit like a very small cheese grater. We used it to shave off bits of Inktense, then added a little water, swished it around and hey presto - ink. Then we poured the mix into a Spritzer spray bottle and used it to apply delicate colour effects, using Louise and Martin's templates to add interest. Well, that was the general idea anyway. The first attempts were, shall we say... wet. Yes, we overdid it a bit on the water front (hence Becky's green fingers (and we're not talking gardening here), Mark's bloodbath red effect and Beth's attempt to match her hands to her hair. It was unanimously agreed - after staring somewhat disappointedly at the soggy creations in front of us - that 'less is best' when mixing and 'distance is king' when spraying. And thicker is better when you're talking stencils and paper!

But we all have to start somewhere, and once we'd got the hang of proper grating, mixing and spraying, people's talent really began to shine through. Sort of. The spraying styles varied from the Hairspray Technique (using one's hand to shield part of the picture while spraying) to the I Don't Care Spray Technique (using somebody else's hand as a shield). And while there were a few casualties (the computer mouse is now covered in red speckles and one of Herbie's paws is blue), things were going so well we decided to have a competition to see who could create the best design.

At the end of an hour, the competition entries were in, and the tense nail-biting began. Simon (the boss) had sensibly stayed away from the shenanigans in the meeting room, so as he had no idea whose creation was whose, he was prevailed upon to make a blind 'Great British Bake Off' type decision. He pondered long and hard, assessing the effort, talent and skill of his staff. Finding no evidence whatsoever in any of them, he announced Mark as the winner, for no apparent reason other than that the reindeer looked like a reindeer, and it had a red nose. In his tearful acceptance speech over lunchtime pizza, Mark thanked his mother for having him, and his primary school teacher for encouraging his finger-painting.

We highly recommend Inktense Blocks. They're equally useful wet or dry; they're blendable, mixable and layerable (is that a word?); and there are so many colours to choose from. And above all they're fun to use!

The #3776 from Platinum is a longstanding classic among fountain pens, though still not as well known as it should be outside its native Japan. With its traditional and simple styling, comfortable shape to hold, and legendary nib quality, the #3776 has long been a favourite for many fountain pen aficionados. In recent times, though, it has become far more popular due to some simple, but hidden, changes, inspired by discussions between the current CEO of Platinum, Toshiya Nakata, and many dealers, owners and fans of the company's pens.

Many people told him they had received a Platinum pen, but after inking it, had set it aside for a while. When they returned to use it, the pen had dried up, with ink clogging the feed. Most then gave up on their pen, and were left with a bad impression of Platinum, and of fountain pens in general. Most pen makers thought there was nothing that could be done about this problem, but Toshiya Nakata was determined to find a way. The #3776 Century series appeared, with a special new feature. The inner cap that fits neatly over the nib, to seal it when capped, needed to fit more tightly, so it was made with a spring behind it that would keep it pressed down tightly around the nib, making sure it wouldn’t dry out, even if left for a year or more.

This gave the added advantage that pigment ink, like Platinum’s well-respected Carbon Ink, can be used safely, as the ‘Slip and Seal’ mechanism will prevent the pigment from drying inside the feed.

Along with the original black and gold finish, many new finishes and designs have been added to the #3776 range, including many special editions. The translucent deep red Bourgogne and Chartres Blue pens have been joined by the subtly translucent Black Diamond. The Nice and Nice Pur are inspired by the sea, sand and waves of Nice in the South of France; and the very popular Lakes series has been inspired by the lakes that surround Mount Fuji.

Other special versions of the #3776 have included traditional urushi lacquers, or traditional Japanese gold leaf craftsmanship.

Along with these, we have recently added several styles from their beautifully old-fashioned Celluloid range. Along with its best-known use for movie film, celluloid has also been used for many decades to make pens, as it both looks and feels beautiful, and can be made in a wonderful range of colours and patterns.

Some models have the option of soft nibs, to allow for some line variation with pressure. And if you like fine lines, you'll love the #3776 - Japanese nibs already tend to be quite a bit finer than Western nibs, and not only are Fine and Extra Fine nibs available, but some models even have a Japanese Ultra Extra Fine nib option - an incredibly fine nib! And if you like broad nibs? You're covered there, too, with Broad and Extra Broad (C) nibs, and the special 'Music Nib' pens with extra wide music nibs with two slits for extra ink flow.

• See the full #3776 range here