Moleskine Sketchbook & Pilot Frixion

Finding good pens for particular journals is always bit of a journey, so when I do find one, I generally tend to stick to them. And for moleskine sketchbook, my choice of pen so far has been Pentel Energel 0.7. But in the middle of this journal, the last Pentel Energel I had ran out of ink. And so I searched through my pen pot for a suitable substitute, and found Pilot Frixion - which turned out to be fantastic. Pentel Energel is still my first choice - because Pilot Frixion is not as dark. It's meant to be erasable, so the softness of its ink is understandable. The flow is smooth, and the ink sits well on moleskine sketchbook's thick pages. Just for practical purposes, Frixion is very comfortable, easy to use pen, which is important for me, since my journaling style is predominantly writing. Lots and lots of writing.


What about you? What are your preferred pens for moleskine sketchbook?

NYC Moleskine

I managed to find perfect NYC stickers while I was in New York to decorate my moleskine. City Moleskines aren't my thing (too many wasted pages), but this certainly made me fall in love with pocket size, since I usually use large.

Review - City Moleskine - New York

When I first learned about City Moleskines. I wanted them immediately. They seemed like just perfect products. So finally, I bought one.

When I received the package, my first surprise was that it was pocket size. It was my fault of course, for not checking, but I just assumed that with all the maps and stuff, pocket would be too small. So my first reaction was disappointment. That's because I never buy pocket moleskine. Large moleskine is my definition of compact journal, so that's just about the right, portable size for me.

However, despite the disappointment, I knew that I would get over it. So after a couple of days, I looked at my NYC moleskine again, and slowly, I got fond of it. Now, I am really looking forward to using it for my upcoming trip.

BUT said that, I will be using this because it's cute. It's moleskine. And it's a novelty factor.

I will not be buying any more city moleskines. Half the pages taken up in maps, with legended pages etc. I just don't believe this journal is a good value for money. There is not enough room to write. It's far too expensive for what's there. I will also be sticking my normal, large moleskines.

But to end with a positive note....here are pictures of my NYC moleskine, which in about a month's time will be filled up :-))

Moleskine Pen Test - Results

About two months ago, I did a post on testing several pens for Plain Moleskine. Having used them now, here is my result. 

Uniball Signo 207, 0.7

It was okay on Moleskine, but it actually turned out to be absolutely perfect for my Travel Journal. So I stopped using it in Moleskine. 0.7 nib works better on thicker pages. 

Pilot G-Tec - C4

Definitely better suited to drawing. Too fine for continuous and speedy writing. It's not bad, but it just doesn't flow as smoothly as I would like. As most of what I do is write, I won't be buying any more of these.

Pilot G2-0.38

Good pen, but again, bit too fine for my purpose. This is the one I am currently using, and I am almost out of the ink. But even after the usage, it's not completely smooth flowing. 

Pilot G2-0.5

PERFECT. I love it. This is definitely THE PEN for Plain Moleskines. I believe it so much that I have bought packs of 12 refills for my Black and Blue pens. I know someone mentioned in the comments in the Test post that after some usage the ink will flow smooth (I had complained that it wasn't), and they were right. After I used it for a bit, it was perfect. Easy to hold, fast to write, flows on the page, and doesn't mess up handwriting. I can see now why everyone always associates this pen with moleskines.

Pilot G2-0.7

Okay, but same principle as Uniball Signo. 0.7 is slightly too thick for thin pages of Plain Moleskines. It's usable, but it's better suited to thicker pages of other journals. 

Moleskine Protective Bag

I promised Nofretiri ages ago that I will post a picture of my cute moleskine bag. Finally here it is. And since I delayed, for a bonus, I am also posting a picture of the bag (present from my sister) that I am using for my filofax.

Journaling Goals for 2011

It wouldn't do not to have some new goals for this year's journaling, so here it is: 

In 2011, my main goal is to Carry My Journal Everywhere. 

I have tried it in the past, but except for Travel Journals, never been consistent because I was always worried about ruining my journals, carrying them along with all the other crap that seems to accumulate in my handbags. But I found a solution. While on holiday in Tenerife, I found some pretty pouches, one of which is a perfect fit for my moleskine, so even in the oversized handbag with half my household inside, my journal will be protected. 

A part of me does wonder if there is any point in carrying it around, since most of my day is scheduled (i.e. at work), so I wouldn't actually get a chance to write, but then I think even if it happens only now and again, some odd moments of journaling, it's bound to add bit more depth and characters to my journals than simply doing it at home. 

What about  you? Do you carry your personal journal around with you? Do you have any particular Journal Keeping goals for 2011? 

Remembrance Sunday

Remembrance Sunday

Tribute to Remembrance Sunday with a Poppy and a Poem.

Dr. Who Moleskine

My new Plain Moleskine. It's the first one that I decided to decorate, and Dr. Who stickers seemed like the best way to start!

I absolutely love this moleskine, and this will be my 20th Journal, which I will be starting today, having finished my 19th Journal (236 pages), in one day less than 4 months. 

I am hooked on decorating covers now, so looking forward to buying more journals to spruce up.

Anyone know where I can buy Stargate stickers? ;)

Moleskine Pen Test

I bought some new pens to try with my moleskine. I have used several before, but not been satisfied with any. 

Here, I must point out - it depends on the moleskine too. For my Moleskine Sketchbook, I have a perfect pen. Pentel Energel 0.7. It works fabulously on thick sketchbook pages.

But my quest this time was for plain or ruled moleskine, which has thinner pages. After reading several reviews from other moleskine users, I bought five pens.

Uniball Signo 207, 0.7

Pilot G-Tec - C4

Pilot G2-0.38

Pilot G2-0.5

Pilot G2-0.7

Yes, four of them were Pilot, because it's a good, trusty brand, and I knew it was just a matter of finding the right fit. I tested all of them, and these are my results:

Pilot G-Tec-C4 and Pilot G2-0.38, while excellent are not for me. Their very fine point are more suited to sketching than writing. For writing, I find them bit rough on the page, and the writing is quite light. But I tried a few doodles, and it definitely works. Unfortunately, I am not much of a sketcher, so I will just find some other uses for them, or there is always doodling.

Pilot G2 - 0.5 - very good. This is the pen most frequently recommended by other moleskine users. I liked it. It's comfy, and it flows, but I did find it bit hesitant on the page.

Pilot G2 - 0.7 and Uniball Signo 207, 0.7 - my favourites, and perfect for me. I don't know if I like one of them better. I guess I will find out after more use. But the ink flows very smoothly. There is absolutely no roughness to it. Writing comes out properly black, dark, just as I like it, and 0.7 is definitely more suited to A LOT of writing. Between the two, I would buy either one of these or both for use with my moleskine, and probably other writing material too. 

Missing Moleskine

I love my current journal. I really do. But while I was flipping through my writing journal (moleskine), looking at its well-worn look, with salad stain on the front cover (when my husband knocked over the cheesy pasta salad tub), I sort of miss having it for my regular journal.

My current every-day journal is a fancy one. So I only use it at home. It won't handle mistreatment of commuting much, so I am careful with it. Sometimes I like that. But at other times, I want to be able to carry my journal around with me, just for random jottings or just to filp through it when I have a moment, and moleskine is the best thing I have found for that.

My Current Journals

Since I always go on about Journaling and how wonderful it is, I thought I would share my journals with you.

Yes, I use them all at the same time. So what are they for?


From left to right...


1. Tarot/Oracle Journal - I use it periodically, whenever I go through a phase of doing Tarot or Oracle readings. I use them either as prompts or as a psychological tools for exploring my jumbled thoughts. It's a quality spiral bound notebook, with nice thick pages, so fountain pens work especially well. 


2. Writing Journal - It's a large, ruled moleskine. I use this fairly regularly, but not based on any schedule. In this I write any new ideas, new things or ideas about current WIPS, new techniques or something that I might like to experiment with, any writing epiphany, character details - anything and everything that is related to writing.


3. Self-Improvement Journal - It's a large, moleskine sketchbook. I started this as an experiment to cure bad habits, and for a while wrote in it every day for stuff I was focusing on, including goals, tasks. Now, I don't use it every day (so bad habits won), but I still use it for ongoing things that I am working on.


4. Dream Journal - "Nightmare Before Christmas" spiral bound notebook. I wandered into Disney shop once, and this was on sale, and I thought it was perfect for a Dream Journal :-). I use this to write down any dreams I remember. Like Tarot this also goes through phases, because I have noticed that I remember dreams easily if I make the effort to remember them, and plan to write them down.


5. Personal Journal - handmade parchment style pages. This is my regular journal, which I use almost daily. I hate missing days. This one gets everything - personal stuff, writing stuff and any other stuff that comes up. This particular journal is getting a lot of attention because i started it on March 18, and now I am on Page 60. It will be finished in April. And then I have got other new gorgeous journals waiting :-))


So there you go - my journal obsession laid out - and I love them. 

Adieu Moleskine - Hello Parchment

Here is my poor moleskine, which has put up with me for 6 months, with my thoughts and moans and experimental pens which left smudges. And I even made it fat. And now our journey together is ended, though it shall forever be a treasure.

And this is Journal 17. A handmade journal with hand decorated paper. I bought this quite a while ago - at least a year, probably longer - but couldn't use myself to write on these lovely pages. Sometimes, I get that with journals. For some of them, I just need to wait until I am ready to use them. But I am ready now.

Compared to moleskine it's got a lot less pages, and also I am writing much more into journal now, so I don't expect this to last long, but looking forward to filling it.

On practical matters:


Because it is handmade, it would not take the battering as well as the moleskine, so I shall not be carrying it everywhere.

Pages are very good quality, and thick, so all those pens that bled through in plain moleskine work well here. After a little test (it comes with a square piece with a note about the journal, but the back is blank so a good place to try out different pens.

Pentel Gel Pen and Zebra liquid Ink Roller Ball, as well as Gel Pens will be my preferred choice for this journal. They write well, don't bleed through, and liquid ink doesn't smudge on the page.
Parker and Watermen Fountain pens don't work so well, because the ink doesn't come out dark enough on these pages.

It is a very light journal, so it would be easy to carry it around if I wanted to. While it is not as flexible as moleskine in terms of just leaving it open, it is comfortable enough to write in.

Naming my Moleskine

When I first started keeping a diary, I used to start with traditional "Dear Diary". Then as my diaries became journals, I stopped doing it. It just felt silly to start with a "Dear Diary" so I just start with a date.

I don't usually name objects (except Teddy bears obviously), but when I got my netbook, I knew *he* had to have a name. He is Finn, and that's how I refer to him, and I totally adore him.

Anne Frank calls her diary, Kitty. She has turned her diary into an actual person, and she writes as if confiding into one friend she can trust with her innermost thoughts. It made me wonder if I should give my journals name(s). I don't share all my thoughts with anyone. Never have, and I doubt I ever will. In journals, I try to be as honest as possible, but sometime there is automatic censorship. So I wondered, would it make a difference, if I felt I was writing to a friend?

My journals are extremely important to me, so I certainly don't see them as mere objects. But to name them would be to personalise them. Anne consistently called her diaries "Kitty" because she was actually writing letters to a friend. But I see each of my journal as individual entities, though connected. It would feel totally wrong to call them all by same names, and yet you can't get close to many different friends.

So as I was writing in my current moleskine that I use for private journaling yesterday, I wondered if *she* should have a name. I haven't decided yet. Perhaps it is easier to write to a journal than a person, even if fictional. I don't know.

How about you? Do you ever name your journals? Does it make the experience of sharing your soul any easier?

Single Moleskine Grievance

I love my moleskines. I truly do. But I have one grievance. None of my fabulous fountain pens work well on any of the moleskines. I have 2 regular Parker Fountain Pens 1 Parker Pen (expensive one, but can’t remember the exact model) 1 Waterman Fountain Pen On watercolour moleskine, the ink is absorbed in the texture of the pages. On that one, it’s understandable and I am not very bothered. On sketchbook, the pages are too smooth for the ink to stay properly. On regular – both plain and ruled moleskine, pages are too thin, so while the fountain pens work, you can see the impression on the back of the page, which sucks because I write on both sides of a page. Oh yeah, I also have a quill with an ink bottle, but haven’t tried that on moleskines. I really enjoy writing with fountain pens, especially in my journals or anything that I am likely to keep. It just looks better, and my hand-writing is nicer with fountain pens too, so I really miss not being able to use them a lot, especially since now I have officially converted to 100% moleskines for every type of journal I need. How about you? Have you been able to use fountain pens with your moleskines?

Moleskine Love

For years, I had seen moleskine notebooks in the shops without being the least bit tempted by them. They were ordinary, black bound notebooks. Nothing special. Definitely not worth the price. Especially when I could get much fancier journals for a better price. That was my first opinion of moleskines. The fact that Hemingway and Picasso used them had no influence over me. They weren't exactly living in the golden age of stationary shopping. So every time I went journal shopping, I ignored those inconspicuous moleskines, and carried on buying different journals. Then in June 2009, I was looking for a perfect travel journal. I considered buying one from Paperblank or Paperchase, which I have used before, but I wanted something different. While researching on the Internet, I came across moleskine websites, and then ended up on moleskine art pages on flickr, and I was lured in. What I found alluring was the fact that there were actually tons of people raving about moleskines, and that there were whole groups and communities about them. Not only that but there were international exhibitions for moleskine art. So there must be something special in those journals. So I ordered a large moleskine sketchbook to try it. Once I started using it, I was hooked. It is impossible to explain to normal people, but the stationary addicts amongst you will understand - writing in those pages is pure pleasure. I have since then used few different moleskines for various purposes, and each one is perfect. I have always enjoyed the act of physically writing, but moleskine takes it to the next level. I no longer look for fancy journals, and I know that once I use up what I have already got, the only new ones I buy will be more different moleskines. What do you think about moleskines?

Words are the Wings I Fly With

I did this art journal page in my watercolour moleskine, for Theme Thursday Challenge. The theme for this week is "wings." Since I am first and foremost a writer at heart, it is no surprise that a theme about words emerged automatically. Read the letters in the skirt from left to right, and they carry the heart of this page.

Twinchie - Circle of Words

Twinchie for Small World of Inchies & Twinchies Challenge. The theme was "Circles"

Autumn Inchies

I made these inchies for a challenge over at InchbyInch. The theme for this week is "leaf"

My Art Journal - First Page

Okay, so it's not a great piece of art, but it is my first try with art journaling so I thought I had better keep it simple. I used the "connect" theme, from Creative Everyday challenge. The theme worked for me. I was trying to figure out how to start the journal so that it would show its purpose. It's also inspiration for the future, especially when at some point in the future, inspiration might be lacking.

Art Journaling for the First Time

I have been trolling the Internet for days, looking at blogs and images about Art Journaling. The idea of it occured to me when I bought my first moleskine few months ago, and saw Moleskine art people have posted on flicker. Finally, I have decided to try it.

I debated whether to start art-journaling in my regular every-day journal, or start a different journal. I've decided to go with a different one for now, so I can focus on learning and experimenting, and see what works for me.

I've discovered plenty of weekly challenges. It's actually amazing to find just how many people do incredible work in their art journals. I have started working on my first page with one of the challenges in mind, but not quite sure yet what direction I am going in. I like the pages of this moleskine. Besides usual good quality of the moleskine, the watercolour pages are textured and thick, so using the glue on the pages doesn't wrinkle the back. I know art journaling is supposed to be all about self-expression without worrying about tidiness. But my self-expression happens to need a tidy look on the page, so I need to put bit more thought into it.

Hopefully, I will post my first page tomorrow.