The Planter Giveaway, From Dudek Modern Goods

Mike Dudek makes great stuff. It's as simple as that, because he keeps it simple. My desk is covered with his products, from The Cube, to The Groove, to The Block, to The Daily. My pens, pencils, and paper are always within arms reach. And when they aren't in use, they look fantastic standing at attention in the beautiful solid walnut goods Mike manufactures in his Arizona workshop.

One of Mike's latest creations, dubbed The Planter adds a little green to your desktop with a spot for a stainless steel planting dish to go alongside 9 of your favorite writing tools. This would look great on anyone's desk, and Mike is making that happen by offering up one for giveaway. Here is how to enter:

  1. Leave one comment on this post anytime between now, and Thursday night at 11:59 PM Eastern Time. You are limited to one entry. This contest is open to US and international residents.

  2. For this contest, I will pick one winner at random from the comments section of this post. The comments will be numbered in the order they are received, i.e. the first comment is #1, the second #2, and so on. The Random Integer Generator at random.org will be used to pick the number of the winner.

  3. The contest winner will be posted on Friday, May 13th. The winner will have one week to email me via the Contact link at the top of the page.

Huge thanks to Mike Dudek and Dudek Modern Goods for offering this up to readers of The Pen Addict. Be sure to head over and check out what Mike has in store.

Posted on May 10, 2016 by Brad Dowdy and filed under Giveaways.

Midori Camel Spiral Ring Notebook Review

A few times a year I pick out a product from JetPens that I think is one thing and ends up as not at all what was in my head. I’m bad at reading descriptions apparently. Most of the time it works out just fine because I am a stationery junkie and like almost everything. Additionally, it forces me to go outside of my comfort zone, which is a great position to be in when it comes to reviews.

The Midori Camel Spiral Ring Notebook is a kraft cover stock spiral bound notebook, or so I thought. It is also a kraft paper on the inside notebook, which I didn’t consider when selecting based on the title of the product alone. Turns out, this kraft paper is pretty great.

When I think of craft paper my mind immediately jumps to a paper bag. The surface of paper bags aren’t smooth, and if you have ever experimented writing on one you know they are porous and soak up ink. The paper in this Midori is not that at all. It is smoother than you think (although not dead smooth like standard Rhoda paper for example), and the ink performs far better than I anticipated with little to no bleed or feathering.

It was a given in my mind that I would test this paper with the Uni-ball Signo UM-153 white gel ink pen. It is tailor made for an application like this. The 1.0 mm line is thick and looks awesome. And since it was a gel ink pen there is little to no chance it would feather or bleed through the page.

What I wasn’t so convinced of was using liquid inks like found in rollerballs, brush pens, and fountain pens. I thought the brush pens would go right through the page, but they didn’t come close to doing that. Both of the Kuretake brush pens I tested were great, and might be the ideal pen for this notebook. No feathering at all from either. The Schmidt P8126 roller came close to bleeding through the page. I could tell it was getting into the fibers, but the ink never made it through the back.

Fountain pen inks behaved well, with the Califolio Andrinople from a medium stub nib being the only one showing the slightest bit of feathering around the edges. And that only occurred as it dried. When I was writing I didn’t see it at all. The lone negative is that it wasn’t smooth enough for me to use my XXF fountain pen nibs comfortably, but that is an outlier. Otherwise, this kraft paper exceeded every expectation I had for it.

The only thing left for me to determine is how to use the Midori Camel. It feels like purely a sketchbook at this point. I wouldn’t choose it for notes or journaling, but for drawings and sketches it is ideal, especially with easy rotation into landscape mode.

The A5 Slim size in this review contains 80 sheets for $14, and the smaller A6 Slim has the same amount of sheets for $10.75, both from JetPens.com.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Ink samples page

Ink samples page (back)

Posted on May 9, 2016 by Brad Dowdy and filed under Midori, Notebook Reviews.