Da Vinci Tomoe River paper inserts (aka I’m in love)

A while back, I mentioned that a friend had sent me some samples of Raymay Davinci paper (from JetPens) and I said that I was considering putting an order in to JetPens with him and we would split the postage costs. Well we did just that and I am finally getting around to reviewing some of it!

What did I order?

In personal size:

• A 100 sheet pack of 6.5mm lined paper
• 2x packs of the undated week to view inserts (30/pack, so I ordered enough to do a full year)
• My friend added a pack of plain paper to the order for me!

In pocket size:

• A 100 sheet pack of 5mm lined paper
• 2x packs of the undated week to view inserts (30/pack, so I ordered enough to do a full year)

(I know I am still utterly in love with the personal size de Villiers and indeed, wonder if I have reached planner peace with it, but just in case I get that yearning for the pocket size again, I thought I would avail myself of the gorgeous paper!!).

Over the weekend I went through the undated week to view pages and created my 2015 diary. The paper is just divine. I used my Parker italic nibbed pen with Diamine deep dark purple ink in it – a combination that Filofax paper would dissolve under – and there was NO feathering and NO bleed-through and the paper is ultra-thin. Filofax – if you made paper like this, I would buy it. But you don’t. Despite a zillion people asking for your diary paper to be at least as good as your white notepaper, you just ignore us. So instead, I have shipped this from the US! Yes, for those of us who want good paper, we will go to those lengths!

Here’s a double-spread to show you the layout. I know that some people might get bugged by there being Monday to Thursday on the left and Friday to Sunday on the right (most WO2P seem to split at Wednesday not Thursday) but you’ll see that Saturday and Sunday get the same size space and there is another box labelled memo. This little box is a godsend for me because (as you all know) I am pretty inept at turning a page, so this gives me space to alert me to things coming up early in the next week. If there isn’t anything all that exciting coming up, I can just use it for doodles or notes.

Davinci WO2P (in my navy Portland for storage)

The layout is beautifully simple. I never need those tiny-font, month calendar things at the top of the page, nor do I need a crash-course in 5 languages (that only teaches the days of the week). THIS is the kind of thing I need – a space to note the year, space for me to write the dates that the week spans, enough space for me to write the date next to the day, and unfussy fonts.

There is a bold green line across the top of the page and another at the bottom, then days of the week are printed in charcoal grey, except for Sunday which is in dark green. That bugs me a tiny bit, but not so much I’m having a hissy fit. The days are separated by a fine charcoal grey line.

Did I say the paper was ultra-thin?? I can’t emphasise enough HOW thin! I tried to take pictures of comparisons, but it was tricky. I counted out 52 sheets of cotton cream paper (assuming the Filofax cotton cream diary is printed on something the same thickness) and found a Filofax diary to try and compare the three sets. In this first photo, the Davinci paper is on the left and the Filofax diary is on the right. In the second picture, the cotton cream paper is on the left and the Davinci paper is on the right. Even with my terrible pictures, hopefully you can see the difference.

Full year in Davinci (l) and Filofax (r)

52 pages of cotton cream (l) and Davinci year (r)

The lined paper is going to be used for the weekly sheets that go at the front of my planner. I’ll only label them up when I’m using them. Incidentally, a nice (and very subtle) touch is that there are little marks on the top and bottom lines so that you can draw vertical lines easily on the page. They are definite enough to be useful but slight enough to be missed. Fabulous!

6.5 mm lined paper (in navy Portland for storage)

Teeny, tiny guide marks

Overall: five stars out of five!!!

Now, if only there was a UK supplier!! If anyone finds one, let me know??

Review of the Oxford International A5 Activebook

I had seen the Oxford International Notebook reviewed onPhilofaxy and thought it interesting that the paper came able to fit a variety of different ring spacings. I wasn’t able to get the notebooks, but I did get some of the Activebooks. I ordered them from Amazon (UK) and had to buy a pack of five, although that didn’t bother me as I knew I would use them. They may be available singly in stationery shops but I live in rural Scotland and have limited access to such a delight.

First Impressions

Generally good! The cover is a strong polypropylene cover – thick enough to be able to write whilst leaning on it when you’re out and about and good protection for the notes inside. It’s a bit orange for my taste and I would have liked it to have had an elastic fastening to keep the pages closed, but neither of these are deal-breakers for me.

Cover

As said, it has a tough polypropylene cover, front and back which is more than sturdy enough to lean on if there wasn’t a table etc. nearby.

The front has the tag line

for demanding and well organized business people and academics

(er, that would be me, huh?)

and grey and red blocks with white spots indicating holes. Don’t let those white spots fool you – that’s not what the holes look like when you get inside!

The cover is quite orange though.

front cover

Inside

Immediately inside, there is an information page in several languages. As well as repeating the tag line in 10 languages, it also has this information:

(click to enlarge)

Information - detail

Reverse of front cover to left; information page to right

On the reverse of the information page is a map of world time zones and a list of international dialling codes. Again, quite orange. There are indications of where to cut this page to file it in your binder/organiser, should you wish to.

Following this, there is a card page with a pocket on the reverse, again, hole-punched for putting in a binder/organiser, but oddly, there are no perforations or indications on where to cut this page in order to do so.

Card page with pocket on left; removable divider on right

There was then a removable divider made of plastic. I removed it and replaced it (replacing it was a bit of a fiddle) and I couldn’t say that it felt very secure after I had replaced it and it certainly came out much easier a second time. It’s designed to be moved around in the notebook, but you could also trim it and use it in a binder/organiser as it is punched.

Paper

The paper has a wonderful layout I think – not just lined, but with header boxes and a whole variety of features.

Close-up of paper layout

 The header box has three lines and two columns – for my OCD-like mind, I would have preferred that the column of the header box matched with the right-hand column of the main area, but it doesn’t.

The main writing area has rulings in feint grey, at 6mm spacing, with two margins (left and right), each of 1.5cm. Along the top and the bottom of each writing space there are small marks at 5mm spacing – presumably so that if you wanted to add more vertical lines, they would make life easy. These marks are also in both margins, as well as the main area.

The page tears off from the spiral binding without needing to be folded back on itself first, and tears cleanly. There are several holes punched, including one long oval one, allowing the paper to be filed in a variety of binders or organisers (more on that in a moment! See The Icing on the Cake, below).

Fountain Pen Testing

I prefer to write using a fountain pen, but many papers are not compatible with this, and the ink feathers, making the lines blurry rather than crisp and/or the ink bleeds through to the other side, making the reverse of the page unusable.

I tried a variety of pens on the paper.

Fountain pen test - front

Reverse of the page - not a mark!

The wettest ink is always the Watermans/Parker italic nib combination and I am pleased to see that the paper sails through this test with flying colours. Not only was there no feathering, but there was also no bleed through at all, with any of the inks, including the Watermans and the Parker Sonnet/black ink – both of which can have terrible feathering and bleed through.

In comparison, here are the same inks/pens with filofax cotton cream paper…

Fountain pen test on filofax cotton cream: some feathering...

and some bleed-though, but bearable

and with filofax day per page diary paper…

Fountain pen test on DPP filofax diary insert - horrendous feathering with some of the inks

Fountain pen test on DPP - reverse. Utterly unusable. Ugh.

The icing on the cake

For me, the absolute icing on the cake was not just that the paper did so well in the fountain pen test, but that the paper is punched so that it fits my A5 filofaxes perfectly AND it fits my A5 Mulberry planner perfectly, so even if I chop and change my work filofax/organiser around, I can still always file my notes.

Fits perfectly in an A5 filofax

Fits perfectly in an A5 Mulberry Planner

Hope that you have enjoyed reading my review and that you found it useful.

"Sharpening the saw"

The last few weeks have been ridiculously busy, throwing off my goal-achievement and generally wearing me out. I needed to do something different today.

A while ago, I went on a course which talked about the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen Covey), one of which is to “sharpen the saw” or (in layman’s terms) to look after yourself so that you are more effective. My recollection of much beyond this concept was a bit fuzzy, and I wasn’t entirely sure what I was supposed to do to sharpen the saw, so I read the summary on Stephen Covey’s site and also this blog.

Good job I did, because otherwise I would have assumed I was just resting today and that magically, all blunt saws would be sharpened! Resting would only be preserving/enhancing the physical side of me. I also needed to ‘sharpen’ the emotional, mental and spiritual.

What did I do?

Well, I went for a run this morning. I’m training for a half-marathon so that was on the books for today anyway, but unlike my DH (who thinks that running is something that has to be done in order to eat as much as he does and not get fat…), I enjoy running and find it relaxing and therapeutic. So although I was running (and potentially making myself more tired), I was also enhancing my health and in fact relaxing.

I had then intended to chill out with a book and a pot of tea, but after reading the summary, I thought I should at least try to work on the other areas.

For the social/emotional aspect, I wrote letters to friends and took time to relish the fountain pen and silky writing paper combo whist I did it. I love writing letters; almost as much as I love receiving a hand-written letter. I owed a few people a few missives, so I sat down (after evicting the cat from the desk chair) and wrote away.

For the mental aspect, I did some reading and some work on my new book. I’m at a stage I really enjoy, which is discovering the characters. I write long character dossiers and have pictures of ‘them’ cut from magazines (if I spot someone who looks right) and pictures of ‘their house’ cut from Ideal Home etc. They slowly come alive as I work on them. That’s one of the fun bits. Of course, once they’re ‘alive’ they also plague me until I finish writing which can be less fun at times!

For the spiritual aspect, I tried to meditate, but unless I’m also running, I find it almost impossible to get into a meditative state. I used my sand-timer (which always helps me to focus - at least on the falling sand - and to think less) but it was still a bit of a struggle. Maybe the running could cover both physical and spiritual??

Anyway, I’m feeling a little sharper and realised that (apart from the running) that’s largely due to paper, pens and ink featuring highly in my day!

Review of Habana Smooth

Working my way through reviewing all my notebooks from The Journal Shop, it’s the turn of the Habana smooth (2 pack). I had originally bought these because I thought they would be good for planning the new book in, but a) they were too thin and b) they didn’t lie flat enough (and I have enough to worry about when I’m writing not to have to fret about pinning down the corners of a notebook so that I can read it). I’ll be using an A5 filofax for the book planning instead.

The cover is very smooth but I don’t know what it’s made of – not leather but some form of plastic or vinyl? Anyway, it feels sturdy enough to be able to write in the book without having something other than your knee to lean on, but is still flexible. The cover had a label giving its description (ruled notebook) in six languages and the number and weight of the pages – 96 pages; 85g (presumably per m²). The book is 16 x 24 cm with rounded corners and a discreet logo at the bottom right of the cover.

corner logo and rounded corners

The first page is blank (and, as ever, stuck down the spine edge to the first lined page). There’s no ‘title page’ like there is in the Ciak.

As you can see from the first lined page, I am using this notebook as a running log/journal. I’m aiming to do a half marathon for charity in May 2012 and thought I would record the highs and lows of my running schedule. This seemed slim enough to not end up with oodles of blank pages at the end!

Although it doesn’t really lie flat, with some persuasion, it can be encouraged to lie almost flat!

first lined page - you can see the front sheet is stuck to it

The paper is thinner than in the Ciak but is very smooth to write on and copes well with fountain pen. My Parker Sonnet always lays down a lot of ink during writing and this did sit on the surface a bit – enough that I would need to use a blotter before turning the page, to be honest. But, there is minimal bleed-through to the other side with any of: Parker Sonnet, Parker italic nib or Osmiroid flat-tip nib (my three favourite pens!). You can see in the following picture how little the bleed-through is (and I know – I write really dull things about my running!).  The thing holding the pages open is my Garmin!

minimal bleed-through and nice to write in fountain pen in

It’s interesting (to me) to note that the same thing that happens when writing in a Moleskine seems to happen in this book too – the blue/black ink from the Osmiroid always gets lighter and more turquoise looking after a day or so. The top entry (from the 5^th Oct) looks paler and more greeny than the entry from today (8^th). Maybe it’s the cream pages?

The line-spacing is quite narrow (5.5 mm) so if you had large writing you might struggle to fit to the lines. My writing is reasonably small thankfully. For a running journal it’s fine – for book planning it would have been too narrow I think. My Moleskine was 6 mm line spacing and it felt too dense at times, especially in A4 en bloc. There is no ribbon marker in the book.

Overall, I would give it a 3 out of 5. It’s small and good quality, but the line-spacing is a tiny bit tight, it doesn’t lie flat easily and the lack of a ribbon marker is a shame. But, for the price, it’s a good, serviceable notebook.