I picked up a single 3.5×5.5 inch notebook at Staples for $3.99, which seems pretty pricey for 38 pages, but that’s not pages but sheets, so you can double that, to 76 pages. Still a little pricey. All of the pages are perforated.

The cover has a plastic-y surface that is embossed with a very simple fabric like texture. It’s subtle. Inside the same fabric like theme is carried to the end sheets, where a woven like print is done in 2 colors, in all the notebooks I looked at the colors coordinated with the cover. Since I purchased a black notebook mine has black and gray printing. The end sheet has a “This notebook Belongs to:” section. then the following page has a more detailed version of the same info. I think they should stick to one or the other, having both seems like overkill. After that are a couple of lists of holidays as far out as 2014. Seriously, in a 76 page notebook? Is anyone actually going to plan 2 years in advance in a 76 page pocket sized notebook? Maybe in some of the larger notebooks I’d buy that but not in the pocket sized notebook.

These remind me of the old Moleskine Volants but with a sturdier cover. I’ve used Volants for years as a GTD tool for my DayJob. I picked this up as a GTD tool for Put it on Paper.

Inside the pages are cream/ivory colored, ever slightly so and my black notebook has blue dotted lines. I rather like that the the lines are not solid, it makes them subtle. I tested the notebook with my TWSBI 540 with heart of darkness ink. Granted my TWSBI writes wet but it soaked through on every page no matter how fast I wrote. Testing with some finer pens eliminated the soaking through but not the show through. The paper is thin. it reminds me a lot of Moleskine paper, but it behaves with ink better. With my finer nibs I didn’t notice any feathering or spread. In fact finer nibs performed really well. The paper is nice and smooth, all my nibs felt pretty good on it. It’s not as smooth as Rhodia or Clairefontaine paper but reminds me of the paper in a Moleskine Cahier.

I did a test run on the paper with a gel pen and it, as expected, performed flawlessly. I really expect that these were designed to perform perfectly with gel pens or ball points. It might even work well with a liquid ink pen in a fine point, like a Pilot V5 or the like.


I wish these came unlined. I like the fact they come in singles so I can mix and match colors. The line has a range of nice colors and patterns that don’t really strike my fancy. I prefer the big bright colors of the Moleskine range versus the subdued colors of Martha. If these were unlined I could see myself picking them up one at a time as I ran out. Staples offers a lot of coupons so these could end up being less expensive than the $3.99.

There are 2 things here that are deal killers for this notebook for me. First is the perforated pages. I can’t have all the pages in my notebook perforated. When a notebook like this lives in my back pocket, my bag, my jacket pocket, and on my desk it gets beaten up and perforated pages fall out. I’ve got a few moleskine cahiers and Volants where I’ve taped pages in with some washi tape. While I enjoy the washi tape I don’t want to have to resort to using up a roll to hold in all my pages. The final deal killer is that they only come lined. I like blank pages.

One of the other things I noticed which is  not a beef with the notebook but with the display at Staples, I can see these notebooks getting REALLY beat up fast. I noticed several notebooks with curled covers and one with a cut on the back of it and a few with dog eared pages. I appreciate the ecologically minded packaging, but perhaps the band should go the WHOLE way around the notebook instead of just around the cover? Anyway, keep an eye on Staples clearance section  a few beaten up pieces are sure to land there.

It has a chrome cap with a standard brass colored clip. The clip is springy and feels quite sturdy. It clips to the pen loop of my journal securely. I have managed to dent the cap already by letting it bang around in my bag.  The cap is relatively lightweight and for once I don’t mind it being posted. I don’t normally posts my caps so you may feel differently. The cap screws on securely with 2 full rotations. I polished my cap with a very mild polish and rubbed the brass right off the clip. I actually prefer this as I feel the clip now matches the cap.

The plastic of the pen does not have a high gloss but has a satin finish. The piston knob blends quite smoothly with the body of the pen. The piston was quite stiff at first but I found quickly loosened up after moving it a few times. It holds 1 ml of ink. There are is a large ink window around the pen just above the section. Where the ink window attached to the body of the pen is a sharp step up. I may sand this down to make the pen more comfortable but I don’t find that it rests on my finger uncomfortably as of yet.

The nib of this pen is the smallest nib I’ve ever seen on a fountain pen. It reminds me of a crow quill pen that we used to use in high school art class. It’s mini. It  was scratchy at first but I looked at it under magnification (iPod touch w/ macro lens) and aligned the tined and then gave it a quick smooth on a nail buffing stick. Perfection. It writes with good flow and is nice and smooth. I was surprised that it was so smooth with so little work. The nib is what I would call a fine. It’s not what I would call a wet writer but it’s not dry either. I also have it inked with Noodler’s Black which tends to have great flow.

The pen is very slim, about BIC stick size, so for me it’s not the most comfortable pen to hold and use. But I have found myself reaching for it continually since it arrived.

I think it is a great pen for sketching or writing.

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