Zebra Justfit Mojini Line Highlighter

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter.)

A new semester is starting! It's time to pack away the holidays, dust off the textbooks, and re-stock the school supplies. Whether you've got a mountain of studies on the horizon, or just need to color-code your calendar or planner, highlighters are essential. The Zebra Justfit highlighters have impressed me in the past, so I was excited to give the Mojini Line Highlighters a try.

When you're in a study crunch, a highlighter is just a highlighter--but this one has a few features that might help make things go more smoothly.

The chisel tip has a very narrow profile and flexible felt, so it glides a little extra smoothly across the page. And the flex means you don't have to line the tip up with the text perfectly to get straight, even lines. It will bend itself into a neat 4mm line, even over curved pages.

The construction of the marker is really good. It feels solid and durable--almost too nice to be disposable, but, alas, it is not refillable. There is a fair amount of branding and text on the white plastic of the pen body. There is a color band on the body and on the cap roll-stopper to indicate the ink color. The cap closes and posts very well. I wish the roll-stopper was a clip. I tend to use my highlighters as bookmarks and clip them to the pages I'm studying--but most highlighters do have clips, so I suppose it's nice that there are some without, for those who prefer that.

The ink is the main feature of this particular highlighter. The colors are standard fare. This 3-pack has yellow, green, and pink. Blue and red are available separately or in the five-color pack. The ink isn't too bright, doesn't bleed, dries very quickly, and doesn't smudge. All great things, especially if you're highlighting on both sides of thin paper or on notes written with liquid inks.

While I didn't notice any significant smearing, there was some discoloration to the tip of the marker, so not all the ink stayed put. That discolored area did then leave a dingy line when I used it next. I've yet to find a felt-tip highlighter that entirely dodged that issue, though.

This 3-pack is priced at $4.95, and individual highlighters are $1.95. It's a fair price, I think, for the quality.

Now that we've had this little diversion, I think it's best we get back to our studies.

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

---

Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!

Kokuyo Tack Memo Sticky Notes Review

(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)

The category of sticky notes isn't an overly large one, even in the big box realm. Post-It notes are the name brand, and they have several sizes and colors to choose from. Every big box retailer has their own brand of similar products, but the paper quality of these items usually ranges from "meh" to "just okay." Since there aren't an abundance of options, the lackluster paper quality just has to suffice when you need a sticky note.

These days, there are a few more options available in the stationery world if you want sticky notes, and I've recently been trying out the Kokuyo Tack notes.

The notes I'm using are 75x100mm in size and they have yellow paper. They're a little wider than the "standard" Post-It note, but I think that's a good thing. There's plenty of room for jotting out quick notes and lists to stick on the wall or fridge.

The main perk of these sticky notes are the paper quality. They're much better than the paper most sticky notes use, which means you can use fountain pens in moderation. I say "in moderation" because this isn't Rhodia or Tomoe River paper. It's better than your standard Post-It note paper since it doesn't bleed and feather like crazy, but it's not supreme. In my experience, some fountain pen inks do great, but others smear easily due to the coating on the paper. If you do a little testing and determine which inks work well with the paper, you should be all set. Of course, given the coloring of the paper, your inks will look a little different than on a white paper, but that's normal.

Now, another important feature of any sticky note is the strength of the adhesive used on the back. Post-It notes are regarded as having the perfect amount of stickiness that also tends to hang around after several re-sticks of the note. With that baseline set, I'm happy to report that the Kokuyo Tack notes are adequate in this measure. They aren't Post-It note quality, but they're darn close. The adhesive is strong and pliable, giving you plenty of chances to move the note around without worrying about it falling off after a few hours. Even with the breeze of a fan flowing across, they stay put.

The Kokuyo Tack notes come in the 75x105mm size shown here, but they're also available in 74x52mm. Along with the two sizes, there are also several color options, like yellow, green, blue, and pink. The larger size will run you just under $5, while the smaller size costs about $3.

These Kokuyo Tack notes are affordable, colorful, and work really well. If you want sticky notes that handle fountain pen ink better than most, these are a great option.

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

---

Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!

Tuesday Toolset, First Edition Edition?

I want to add a regularly scheduled post to the blog around my personal daily and weekly carry items, and Tuesday Toolset is my answer to that. It is absolutely a work in progress, and your feedback is appreciated. Here is the general idea:

— Each week, I pick a small group of items I plan on carrying and using as my primary stationery tools for the week.

— There are no fixed rules, but in general, it will be a smaller carry. Something I can grab in one hand and take with me on the go.

— I’m not limiting myself to only these goods for the week - I have other pens and pencils in use at my desk and around the house at all times (especially review goods) - but these will be my primary tools.

The reasoning behind this is that readers want to know what I am using on a regular basis. I use A LOT of stationery, and this will be a way to rotate through it and share my thoughts. This will be a short-ish post, with pictures, links, and a few words about each product. Something like this:

— Rotring 600 0.5 mm Mechanical Pencil loaded with Rotring Tikky Hi-Polymer HB Lead.

The 600 lives on my desk and will be in even more frequent use now as I go through my graphite testing. This week, it is the Tikky Hi-Poly HB, a more mainstream lead than I reviewed earlier this week.

— Sailor Pro Gear Imperial Black Fountain Pen, F nib, inked with Sailor Sei-boku blue black ink cartridge.

This is a great pen that doesn’t get enough love from me, so I am correcting that right now. I chose the Sailor pigmented blue black ink cartridge because it performs well with nearly every paper I’ve tried it on. Since this is a portable carry, I wanted an ink to fit.

— James Brand Benton Limited Edition loaded with the Jetstream SXR-600-07 refill.

I’m enjoying this pen, but I don’t think it is worth the price tag. I bought the $85 model because of the color scheme and notebooks that came with it. The $60 standard model may be more in line. That said, this refill absolutely lives up to the hype so far.

— Nock Co. DotDash Pocket Notebook.

My favorite every day carry pocket notebook. Works with almost anything I throw at it.

— Nock Co. Tallulah Pen Case.

It’s slim, it’s pocketable, and it holds everything I need. The notebook doesn’t fit, of course, but I can fit all of the pens in it and grab the notebook all in one hand. It slides into a pocket or backpack easily.

So that’s an example of what I think this post can be. Here are the questions/problems I have in my head that hopefully you can help me solve:

— Is this worthwhile? If nothing else, it is a pocket dump, what’s in my bag type of post, and I always enjoy those. Maybe I get readers to submit theirs too to keep it fresh? That seems like a no-brainer to me. I do think that would require rules, ie. maximum of five items.

— Minimal notebook variance. That’s kind of a self-imposed thing, as I am trying to keep one pocket notebook active per month. That doesn’t mean I don’t try and test out other things, so maybe it is a non-issue. We will see how it plays out.

— Nock Co. over promotion. If you know me, you know how I like to conduct business, and that is not by slamming my business down your throat at all times. But guess what? I started Nock to make the things I want to carry, and I carry Nock goods all the time because I love them. If I have a case in my carry there is a 75% chance it is a Nock Co. product. Is this a problem? This goes for paper, current and future pen and pencil products, all of the things I sell.

— Naming convention. This is small potatoes, but I like to have fun with my titles. I think something relative to the products within is fun, similar to how I do my weekend Misfill post. It beats “Tuesday Toolset, 1/8/2019” I think.

— Do I need number pointer overlays on each picture to correspond with each item? Probably so. I’m open to simple OS X or iOS recommendations for this.

That’s where I’m at right now. I think the easiest solution is taking submissions for Tuesday Toolset, which honestly didn’t occur to me before I typed it above. I get a lot of feedback that requests more of me on the blog, but maybe the real answer is the collective we. What do all of us stationery geeks like to carry on a daily basis? Something to think about.

Let me know your thoughts!