Category: paper

The Knock Knock No. 2 Composition Book is a fantastic notebook!

It promises little, and delivers a great experience. The first thing you’ll notice is the amazing colour of the covers. Each notebook is bound by a cardboard cover with the strength and thickness of a hardcover book. The front and back are each in different full colour.

The pages are perforated, with solid, quality white paper. The left four-fifths of the page has dark grey lines, while the right fifth has small “Date” and “Topic” sections, with larger “To Do” and “To Remember” sections.

Each page is perforated, and the upper right corner has a small tab perforation.

The notebook is both fun and usable. It’s a great alternative offering.

This is an inexpensive softcover notebook with 240 A5 pages of cream colour paper with a grey graph paper ruling. Despite the modest price, it is very well made, and the paper is definitely superior to that of many well-hyped notebooks.

The secret, if there is one, is that it’s a refill for a leather journal. Although the journal seemed ho-hum to me, the refill was a great find.

I saw a picture of this notebook at Notebookism, and decided to order one.

It’s great! It’s a heavy duty cardboard cover, with sewn pages from a variety of reused paper sources, heavy on the graph paper and accounting styles. It fastens with a rubber band.

I keep a Zebra mechanical pencil clipped to it, which makes the notebook very usable.

As a pocket notebook, it’s more portable than almost any alternative I’m aware of. It’s not for writing several paragraphs, but it’s great for jotting down an address, or a film or train schedule.

I love the way it pays homage to the paper working tools of the past – several types of composition, graph, and accounting paper.

Link: Remake Etsy shop

This is a notebook made from found and reused paper. It’s an absolute delight because of the whimsical paper choices – the pages have surprise bits of poems and illustrations.

There is a downside – it falls into the category of being so nice that you don’t want to use it. And since it’s one of a kind, it won’t be possible to replace it. I admit that I haven’t yet marked it.

Although I bought this at a local craft fair, Nightjar have an Etsy store where you can see some of their products.

Fabriano is possibly the world’s most distinguished paper mill, with roots dating to the 13th century. It created the paper that Michelangelo and many other greats used.

One of their many current products is the Fabriano Classic Artist’s Journal, a paper journal with various formats. All are 192 sheets of toothy, mould-made (Ingres) 90 g/m² paper.

I have the small version (12cmx16cm) with twelve alternating sleeves of white and cream paper. Alternately, there is a version with the twelve sleeves each a different colour! These journals are very nicely made. There is also a larger 16cmx21cm version.

They seem expensive, but they’re actually in the same range as the Moleskine, which tells me that one of these brands is overpriced. Guess which?

Felt tip pen, charcoal, pastel, and chalk all lay down very nicely. The tooth of the paper loves these media.

Overall, it’s a great product, and I’m looking forward to trying the other formats.