Notebook Review: Daycraft Signature Notebook

When I read about the Daycraft paper products that Gentian received from Hong Kong, I knew I had to get my hands (and pens) on these lovely things, so I wrote Daycraft and asked if they could send some samples to me, too. And they did. I'd like to thank Mr. Foreal Lee of Tai Shing Diary, because a week later, I got the samples, and look, I got a pink notebook! :)

Yes, I got a pink Daycraft Signature Notebook along with three Daycraft 2010 diaries, two of which have been lovingly adopted by fellow paper enthusiasts, the SO got the Vogue and my eldest niece got the orange Chromatic Days. I kept the Animaland diary, because it's got a blue elephant on the cover. :)

Daycraft Signature Notebook. It's PINK!

I really, really like love the soft pink faux leather (read: it's fine Italine PU, or polyurethane) cover of the Signature Notebook. The Daycraft Signature Notebook I received is sized A6, measures approximately 4 in x 6 in and has 128 pages of cream-colored 116g paper. I like that it is ruled, and the 6.5mm line spacing is just right even for my large handwriting.

Signature Notebook's ruled pages.

The Daycraft logo is embossed on the bottom left part of the back cover. Charming, eh? The pen beside it is my brand new pink Lamy Safari with a medium nib, brought here by the 'Friendship Express' all the way from Malaysia. :)

The Notebook's page edges are painted/printed black. (The Daycraft website says it is inkjet-printed.) Makes it unique, gives it character.

Another pic of the notebook's corner, showing the black edges.

The sad thing about the Daycraft Signature Notebook is that the pages just won't lay flat. I had to press hard on the pages to make them lay flat, but I was unsuccessful and I thought I might permanently damage the notebook's spine so I let it be. After that, I tested the notebook's paper, but that, too, was a bit daunting.

This ink test page has 15 pen and ink tests, 11 of which are fountain pen + fountain pen ink combinations. As with most of my notebooks, I used my medium-nibbed pens to test the 116g paper, which I expected to be feather and bleed resistant, but no. There is excessive feathering and bleed specially when I'm using italic and medium nibs. (Click on the photos for bigger versions.)

The picture may not show it, but there is a great amount of feathering here.

The Haolilai and Airmail/Wality pens' medium nibs just bled on this paper.

But the Sarasas are just perfect! No bleed, no feathering, not even show through! *Claps.*

And the backpage reveals how most of the fountain pen inks bled, except for the Sarasas and the fine-nibbed Esterbrook SJ. This is great! This means I could still use this notebook, but I would need to use just my fine-nibbed fountain pens, or gel pens, like the Sarasas. Hurray!

The pens and inks on the upper part of the page of the Daycraft Signature Notebook are: Franken-Lamy with De Atramentis Fuschia, Lamy Safari with the same ink, Lamy Vista with Camel Scarlet Red, and Lamy Joy with Caran d'Ache Saffron. Oh, how my Lamys bled.

Now look at the bottom part of the page. No bleed, right? Because that's the part where I wrote using the Sarasas! This means I could use most of my gel pens (or fine-nibbed fountain pens) when writing on the Daycraft Signature Notebook. :) This is great because I would love to use and keep this notebook. If only the paper is a little kinder and friendly to my fountain pens...

The Daycraft Signature Notebook is another great addition to the arena of thriving notebook brands out there. I like love it and I hope that Mr. Foreal Lee, Retail and Marketing Manager of Tai Shing Diary, makers of Daycraft noteboks, will soon offer their products here in the Philippines.

Daycraft products include a vast selection of diaries, notebooks, sketchbooks and corporate planners. Their products are designed in Hong Kong and manufactured in Dongguan, China by the Tai Shing Diary Ltd.

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Ink Review: Scarlet Red by Camel

This should have been a Valentine post, but I am uncomfortable with that idea, so I postponed it for the day after V Day. And so here is my red ink for this season: a very red Scarlet Red by Camel of India.*

Camel Scarlet Red fountain pen ink has been on my collection for almost a year now. A friend of a friend from India came to visit the country for business, and kindly brought us this bottle of ink, along with a Hero 329, Hero 360 and boxes of tea. :)

Scarlet Red and other Camel fountain pen inks are made by the same manufacturers of Camlin fountain pens in India. Production of the Camel fountain pen ink began as early as 1931 in Bombay, as an alternative to the Western ink brands available in India at that time. Camel fountain pen inks are dye-based inks and contains Camli-Sol 100, which Camel claims to clean the pen as the ink flows through it. Available in black, royal blue, green, violet and red, Camel fountain pen inks also claim to write consistently and to have good storage life, which is true because for a couple of months, my bottle of Scarlet Red was on my study table which was near a big window, but the heat and light coming through it did not alter the ink's consistency, color and brightness. The only downside to this product is the ink bottle's cap. It would have been better if the cap was made of plastic rather than metal, which is what's on it now.

Camel Scarlet Red reminds me so much of the cherry and strawberry-flavored red snow cones that we used to have in my grandmother's house during summer vacations. Back then, we called them 'snow-balls', and they were served on Lola's peanut butter and jelly glasses. :) My cousins and I would run to the big mirror in the grand room and look at each other's pouting red lips. :)

Camel Scarlet Red's color is also similar to Kool-Aid's cherry and strawberry flavors, and to the unforgettable red Kool-Aid man. Who could forget him and his red, happy face? On the non-food scale, Camel's Scarlet Red is very, very similar to Pilot G2's red gel ink (see my comparison of the two ink colors in the photos below).

This side of the box has the Hindi translation of the English text written on the other side.

In the previous photos, the color of the ink inside the bottle is hard to tell - it looks black! So I placed the bottle directly in front of a lamp and here it is looking every bit red. :) The bright light also revealed the words etched on the bottom of the bottle, which says, "60ml Camel".

Here is another exposure with the bottle tilted down to reveal the redness of the ink inside.

Oh, I feel so red. :) Here is the bottle of Camel Scarlet Red ink on top of my red Scribe notebook together with my fine-nibbed Pelikano Junior. I'm so red. :)

Camel Scarlet Red is an excellent ink from Camlin. It has great flow, and made the previously dry writing Pelikano Junior a wet writer. The color is also great, perhaps not the perfect red, but an excellent red that is perfect to use for highlighting and writing short notes. Shading is not very clear in these photos, but Camel Scarlet Red has minor shading especially when used on wide italic nibs.

Camel Scarlet Red stands out as a bright red on the white Rhodia paper. There is no feathering and bleed on this paper. (My apologies for the wrong spelling of the word 'quotation' in this photo and on the next one.)

On Scribe's ivory-colored paper, the red looked a little subdued and not as bright as how it appeared on white paper. There is also feathering and bleed on this notebook.

Here is the back page of Scribe paper showing minor bleed when I used the fine-nibbed Pelikano Junior.

Camel Scarlet Red is the first ink that got me thinking, if not worried, about its drying time. I wouldn't want to smear whatever I've written using red ink, and thankfully, it dries faster than most of my wet inks at less than 15 seconds.

Camel Scarlet Red ink is not yet available in the US, from what I have heard and read, but it's not available here in the Philippines, either. The Camlin website says the inks are available in 500ml and 60ml bottles, for 56INR and 12INR, respectively.

Now for the *: I looked hard enough for appropriate quotes to go with this ink review, but my efforts failed. *Sigh*. No red, Valentine, or even love quote seemed appropriate, so I am publishing this review without a quote.

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Ink Review: J. Herbin Orange Indien

"Her nakedness was not absolute, behind her ear she had a poisonous flower with orange petals."

– Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Yes, it's an orange ink this time. There are no naked people or poisonous flowers in this review though.

Orange Indien. An ink color I wanted to have for so long. An ink color that has been the topic of a lot of discussions about non-black and non-blue inks. This ink, together with the bottle of Larmes de Cassis was sent to me by Exaclair's VP Karen Doherty last year as another addition to the orange stuff in my Happy Halloween post. The box did not make it for the Halloween, and came much, much later. But it's here and so I'm writing a review.

This ink reminds me of yummy sapin-sapin*, fragrant Clementines (Mandarin orange), The Body Shop's Satsuma soap bars and warm summer sunsets...

I love the fact that the makers of J. Herbin inks truly pay attention to details in their product packaging and presentation. J. Herbin ink boxes are elegantly designed, with a separate icon for each ink color. Orange Indien has an elephant icon and I love it! :)

The Herbin ink bottles are also very unique - each bottle has an integrated pen rest, but it's too small to hold even medium-sized pens. Here, my copper Esterbrook SJ barely fits into the pen rest. Despite that, the boxes and bottles are always easy to store in a box or cabinet because they are compact.

Orange Indien is another excellent ink from J. Herbin. I am very eager to try it when I received it, and I wasn't disappointed. I wrote a full page journal entry using it and the color did not hurt my eyes. Yes, the color jumps off the page at first, because of its bright color, but it's not so intensely bright that it will be difficult to read. It has excellent flow, as all Herbin inks are, and significant shading is seen when used to write with broad or italic nibs. There is even minor shading in the lines I wrote using the Parker Jotter. It may not be very visible in the photos, though.

The ink looks darker in white (Rhodia) paper than in the off-white, ivory (Scribe) paper. It is even darker in the lines I wrote using the Parker Jotter pen than the Manuscript Calligraphy pen. Shading can be seen in the lines of text written with the Manuscript pen.

On the ivory-colored paper, Orange Indien looked a bit pale, and it showed traces of yellow in the orange. The lines written with the Parker Jotter are thicker, but not darker than the Manuscipt-written text. There is more uniformity in color here, between the Manuscript (broad and italic nib) and Parker (round, medium nib)written text, but I'm not sure if that can be attributed to the paper color, or the fact that Scribe paper absorbed more ink, which explains the feathering and extensive bleed in the Scribe paper.

Orange Indien on Scribe notebook...

...and on Rhodia pad.

Here is the back page of Scribe paper with significant bleed when I used the medium-nibbed Parker Jotter. There is no feathering and bleed on the Rhodia paper, though.

Since I got another orange ink on my stash I thought of doing a comparison. Orange Indien and Caran d'Ache Saffron are two brightly-colored inks that will never fail to lift the mood of any note, letter, or card written with them. The two inks differ in their brightness and tones, as Orange Indien has more yellow to show, compared to the CdA Saffron which has more red.

Lastly, to complete this review, I tested the Orange Indien's drying time, against two slow-drying inks on medium-nibbed Parkers. I have not done this test before but I felt like doing it, so here it is. In case the text tags I added is not legible, the orange lines belong to Orange Indien, which on Rhodia paper took more than 30 seconds to dry. Next to Orange Indien, the lines belong to Diamine Burnt Sienna, written using a Parker Rialto. This ink dried in less than 25 seconds. The third set of lines belong to Private Reserve Copper Burst on a Parker 25 pen. It took almost a minute for Copper Burst to dry.

The other test I should have done but didn't is the water soak test. Perhaps I'll do one in my future reviews, but I held on for now. I don't think I need to do that yet, as my notebooks, journals and such are not that vulnerable to water and anything wet. :) I think the premise here is that if it's my Journal, or my "Notes" notebook, or my Starbucks daily planner, I am sure to take very good care of them, especially what's written inside. In a country like the Philippines where it rains for more than half of the year, I have learned how to think of ways to protect my stuff (read: laptop, notebooks, pens) from water. :) But I'll do watersoak tests in my future ink reviews.

A 30ml bottle of J. Herbin Orange Indien sells for US$10 at The Goulet Pen Company and PhP475 at Scribe Writing Essentials. (I have no affiliation with both companies, though.)


* From Wikipedia: Sapin-sapin is a layered glutinous rice and coconut dessert in Filipino cuisine. It is made from rice flour, coconut milk, sugar, water, and coloring with coconut flakes sprinkled on top. Sapin-sapin means "layers" and the dessert is recognizable for its layers, each colored separately. It has been referred to as "a blancmange of several colored layers, sweetened and flavored with coconut milk".

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Ink Review: J. Herbin Larmes de Cassis

Over the holidays, I filled my Lamy Joy and Waterman Kultur pens with a new ink: J. Herbin Larmes de Cassis. I've had this lovely ink for sometime but because Larmes de Cassis is my first purple fountain pen ink, I was a bit apprehensive to use it. Then again, like my other Herbin inks, Larmes de Cassis did not fail to suprise and delight me. It easily became one of my favorite non-blue inks, and contrary to my fears about its color, Larmes de Cassis showed off a lot: it has vibrant color, beautiful shading, excellent flow, and fast drying time.

To have an excellent comparison between broad and fine nibs, I used a Lamy Joy with 1.5 italic nib, and a Waterman Kultur with a fine nib. To better see how the ink color changes when it dried, I used both white and ivory papers. The white pad is a Rhodia I won at one of our pen meets) and the notebook with ivory paper is a large ruled Scribe notebook. Here they are side by side.

In both papers, Larmes de Cassis did not feather or bleed, and that is just excellent! The ink flow is excellent. Shading is beautiful, especially in the letters I wrote using the Lamy Joy italic nib. The fine nib wrote as beautifully and I thought it looked like a darker version of J. Herbin Rouge Opera. Larmes de Cassis  reminds me so much of 'halayang ube', a traditional Christmas delicacy here in the Philippines, with purple yam as the main ingredient, mixed with sweet evaporated milk and pure coconut milk.

Larmes de Cassis on a Rhodia pad. It looked darker on white paper, and it's beautiful that way. Read the quote to see the beautiful shading and color.

Larmes de Cassis on a large ruled Scribe notebook. The ink looked a bit pale or lighter on the ivory-toned paper of Scribe. Again, read the quote to see the beautiful shading and color.

Larmes de Cassis will definitely stay in my rotation of non-blue and non-black inks. My nieces love it and wrote and drew on their small Rhodia Bloc No. 10s using the four pens that I filled with it. Special thanks go to Karen Doherty of Exaclair, Inc. for sending this ink, together with a bottle of Orange Indien and several Rhodia pads and notebooks for my little nieces. I have no affiliation with the company, though. :)

J. Herbin is known to be the oldest name in ink production in the world, and their inks 'l'Encre de la Tete Noire", "Perle des Encres," (The Jewel of Inks) and "l'Encre des Vaisseaux" (The Ink of Ships) were produced as early as 1700.

J. Herbin Larmes de Cassis sells for $9 per 30ml bottle at Jetpens.com.

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A Prelude of Good Things to Come

In preparation of my upcoming ink and notebook reviews, I started cleaning several of my pens last night. More pens were cleaned this morning and all six of them will be filled with fresh inks in the days to come.

Cleaned pens left overnight to dry.

Set on left is the disassembled Parker Rialto that used to be filled with Caran d'Ache Saffron, and soon to be inked with Diamine Burnt Sienna. I love this pen and its medium nib and the fact that its nib section can be taken apart: nib and feed can pulled out of the nib section and rinsed thoroughly with water. No long soaking time or flushing of stubborn ink stuck in the feed and underside of the nib.

The middle set has the parts of the Colibri pen, my first pen with a two-toned nib that writes like heaven. Very smooth, and used to be filled with Aurora Blue, and soon will get a transfusion of Diamine Turquoise. It didn't take long to flush out old ink from its nib section.

Last set on right belongs to Mary-Ann, the Retro 51 Scripmaster II Series pen that I just adore, love, and cherish. Who wouldn't? It was filled only with Waterman South Sea Blue since I got it in April, and now will be inked with J. Herbin Orange Indien.

Of course my ink reviews will include my dabbling into calligraphy, and there is something new that I shall use for that aside from my Schneider Creativ and Lamy Joy pens - an old set of Manuscript calligraphy pens that I got from a thrift store for PhP50 a year ago. The pen was in a blister pack with 2 nibs and a converter, but I only got to use the converter later on. I was disappointed at the nibs when I used them because they were scratchy and hard starting. But I wasn't into calligraphy then. I saw the pen in my office drawer today and tried to do some calligraphy strokes. I was so surprised at how the 2.3 nib wrote. Not smooth, in fact the nib tip is so sharp it can cut through my skin. But the letters I wrote with it were so beautifully impressive! Now I have three sets of calligraphy pens. :) But wait! I also have a Brause set with six nibs! Six! I'll get on them as soon as I finish my final exams on the 19th. After that, it's purely paper, ink, and pen bliss for me. :)

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Quo Vadis Habana Notebook: A Review

Here is the Quo Vadis Habana notebook from the kind people at Exaclair, Inc.

Those close to me know how much I love pens and notebooks. I always have a lot of both – in my backpack, on my office table, on my work table at home; even my closet has pens and notebooks inside! I think most of my backpack’s weight is not because of my laptop and its accessories but because it’s always full of pens and notebooks. And like most notebook enthusiasts, I currently have a number of notebooks in use – and four are in my bag. One of them is a black 6”×9” Quo Vadis Habana notebook.

The Quo Vadis Habana notebook.

Karen Doherty of Exaclair, Inc. has kindly sent me a large Quo Vadis Habana notebook in September. I kept my Quo Vadis Habana in its plastic wrap until I was ready to write the review because I was scared of any damage or dirt getting in the notebook. The first thing I did when I took out the plastic wrap was to smell the Habana's paper. Oh, yes I did that! I always do that to my notebooks, especially the newly opened ones. I do that because I love the smell of new paper, and partly because I also want to assess its quality. And yes, nothing beats the sweet smell of clean, new, non-acidic paper!

The Habana's bright white pages stay flat when the notebook is open.

The Quo Vadis Habana’s cover is made of black leatherette that gives it a subtle elegance. Wrapped in this leatherette is a thick but flexible board. I’m sure one can easily bend the covers, but I won’t risk doing that to my notebook. As I ran my fingers on the Habana’s front and back covers, it felt soft and smooth. The pressed QV logo on the front’s lower right corner and at the back signifies quality to me. My work background tells me these logos come from high quality leather pressing/embossing.

Elegant pressed QV logos on the Habana's front and back covers.

Inside the Quo Vadis Habana notebook are 80 sheets of acid- and chlorine-free, bright white, premium 90g Clairefontaine paper. Think of all that paper goodness! I am so amazed with the brilliant white pages and their smoothness. The lines are widely-spaced, and this is good news for me because of my fondness for wide strokes when writing. The notebook’s pages have round corners, and for me, this is a thoughtful gesture from QV for their notebooks’ users because sharp page corners not only tend to curl up, they can also cut into people’s palms.

Round page corners on the Habana's pages.

The Quo Vadis Habana notebook’s binding is another plus for this notebook, because it allows the pages to stay flat on their own while the notebook is open. This is shown in the photo above of the open notebook.

Notebook abuse? Nah. It was only a test that the Habana gracefully passed.

Finally, we come to the best part: the writing samples!

Because all the reviews raved on the Quo Vadis Habana’s ability to hold fountain pen inks, I tried all my wet nibs on it. I wrote with all my italic/calligraphy pens, some o f my medium nibs and two of my wet fines. The results? Amazing!

I started write-testing the Quo Vadis Habana notebook using my italic nibs. Then I used three Parkers inked with highly saturated inks: Private Reserve Copper Burst and Avacado. Lastly, I wrote with my other inked pens, starting with my Retro 51, which is a wet medium inked with a wet ink: Waterman South Sea Blue. I tested my other mediums, the Parker Rialto and all three Schneider Base pens, the first filled with CdA Saffron and the others with either J. Herbin Bleu Pervenche or Rouge Opera. I also tried the bold Pilot 78G and two plastic pens I got from Daiso, both with scratchy nibs but gives out very wet ink flow. All writing samples looked beautifully, all ink samples dried fast, and because of the Habana’s white paper, the colors all looked so bright! My momentary surprise was cut short when I remembered I had to check the Habana for two more things: feathering and bleed. There is absolutely no feathering on the Habana from all the pens and ink colors I used. Hurray! Bleed? It’s almost as if I held my breath as I turned the page over so I could check for bleed. And… voila! Absolutely, definitely, certainly no bleed at all! Hurray! This means I can forever use a fountain pen to write on my Habana notebook, right?

Pen and ink combinations

Schneider Creativ 1.5mm italic nib and PR Avacado; Lamy Joy 1.5mm nib and CdA Saffron.

Lamy Vista (1.9mm) with Bleu Pervenche, Lamy Safari (1.1mm) with Rouge Opera and Lamy Joy (1.5mm) with CdA Saffron.

3 Parkers: Parker 25 (M) and Parker Jotter (M) with PR Copper Burst, and Parker Vector (wet F) with PR Avacado.

The rest of all the pens and inks I tested on the Habana.

But, wait! I’m surely happy and excited to use the Quo Vadis Habana notebook for journaling, but there are two things I hope the people behind QV will consider: the elastic closure and the page marker ribbon.

The elastic closure for me seems too narrow for this notebook size. Some users may like thinner bands such as the one on the large Quo Vadis Habana notebook, but I would have liked mine to be a little wider. Perhaps this size is good for smaller notebooks, but for a 6”×9” leather-covered journal, it looks a bit awkward for me.

I feel the same for the Quo Vadis Habana notebook’s page marker ribbon: it is too narrow/thin, and too short for the 9” page size. The ribbon is a bit short for me that I cannot tie its end to prevent fraying or I will shorten it even more. But that’s just me, and that doesn’t mean I love the Habana less. :)

The Habana's page marker ribbon which I feel is too thin and narrow. Again, that's just me! :)

The Quo Vadis Habana is a great notebook, and probably the best I’ve ever tried. It’s already friends with my fountain pens, has excellent paper, looks great, what more could I ask for? (Just a wider elastic band and longer page marker ribbon. LOL!) Perhaps a notebook for each available color? Or one of each size? The Habana is available in four colors: black, which is the one being reviewed here; blue, red, and taupe; and in two sizes: large (6"×9", with 80 sheets of 90g paper), and pocket (4"×6", with 96 sheets of 64g paper). Hmmm... Lots of notebooks to choose from! More information about Quo Vadis Habana notebooks is available at the QV site.

Lastly, I’d like to give Mr. Pythagoras a bit of a show-off here.

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