(Kimberly (she/her) took the express train down the fountain pen/stationery rabbit hole and doesn't want to be rescued. She can be found on Instagram @allthehobbies because there really are many, many hobbies!.)
I remember the last shipment that Brad sent me with items for review and my thought was, holy cow, did he ship a brick? Apparently the answer is “yes”, because among the box of various pens and inks was this sketchbook from Ferris Wheel Press. Aside from “holy crap, this thing is big and heavy!”, my other thought was “But Brad, I don’t draw/sketch/art, what the heck am I going to do with it?” Throw ink in it, of course! Coincidentally, I recently bought three Ferris Wheel Press inks from Vanness Pens, so I thought they’d be a great set of inks to try in the notebook. So let’s see how it performs!
The Ferris Wheel Press Sketchbook, which retails for $40 USD, comes in 4 colors: Moss Park Green, Three Steamboats, Timeless Blue, and the one I’ll be reviewing today, Autumn in Auburn. It is a large sketchbook (7.75” x 10” x 1.25”) and heavy, as it contains 240 pages of 160 gsm white paper. It is acid-free (so good for attaching photos) and has an accordion pocket in the back as well as a wide grosgrain ribbon bookmark..
I wasn’t kidding when I said this is a heavy book. 2.91 lbs (or 1.166 kg) - It’ll only get heavier as you fill it up with ink, paint, etc.
These beautifully packaged inks are going to get a test run inside!
Ferris Wheel Press came out with three inks for their Fashion District Collection earlier this spring: Bathurst Blue Denim, Queen Allium and Spadina Rose.
Bathurst Blue Denim is a lovely muted, dusty blue with subtle gold shimmer. The shimmer does show up in writing samples but it’s not overpowering, which is nice. Even with shaking the bottle vigorously, the shimmer particles settled into the bottle pretty quickly so keep that in mind and make sure you gently rock the pen back and forth periodically to distribute the shimmer. I didn’t have any problems with clogging in the ST Dupont Initial D, which has a steel medium nib. The ink has a medium to slightly dry flow, which gives it a bit of shading as well.
It’s a little hard to photograph but the shimmer is there.
Queen Allium is a light purple/mauve ink with gold shimmer and behaves similarly to the Bathurst Denim Blue.
Last but not least is Spadina Rose which is a medium reddish pink color but does not contain any shimmer. It also has medium to slightly dry flow and has some shading.
All three of these inks look great and I’ve been enjoying using the Bathurst Blue Denim in the ST Dupont so far. My only gripe isn’t about the inks but the bottle design - they are so narrow but tall, that it is very easy to knock over the bottle. The designs of the bottles and boxes are stunning but not very practical.
I almost knocked the bottles over several times during the swatching process.
When laying down the swatches with a paintbrush, I noticed dark “specks” forming from the paper. Most of them weren’t noticeable once it was dry but I saw more with the Spadina Rose swatch, maybe because it didn’t have any shimmer and therefore the specks were more visible.
You can see some of the paper texture coming through while Bathurst Blue Denim was still wet. The dry swatch above doesn’t show much of that.
Some darkers specks were still visible on the paper after Spadina Rose had dried.
Some spotting on the back with the wetter portions of the swatches.
One of the features of the Sketchbook is lay-flat pages, but I didn’t get any of the pages to actually lay flat. Maybe I have a different definition, but I expected the pages to stay open without needing to be held down AND not to have the inside edges to curve.
Would you consider this “lay flat”? ‘Cause I don’t.
I had to hold it down and even then it wasn’t totally flat.
As I mentioned before, I’m not an artist so I don’t have a lot of other “media” to use in the sketchbook but I did try some writing samples with a Tombow dual tip marker, Sharpie, pencil, rollerball and a fountain pen with a flex nib. The paper is fairly smooth with a little bit of texture without feeling bumpy or rough, so using the different writing instruments felt fine. There was some mild spotting on the reverse side from the Sharpie and the flex nib. For the flex nib, which writes pretty wet, you can see that the spotting affects the front side too.
Spotting on the back with the Sharpie and flex nib media.
Spotting on the front with the flex nib.
As someone who doesn’t draw or sketch, I have a difficult time imagining toting around a large, thick, 2 pound book for sketching. Ferris Wheel Press does make an A5 size with half the pages (120), so that might be a better option. It also doesn’t really lay flat, which is one of their selling points. And when you add that there is some spotting with certain media, including wet fountain pens/inks, and it’s tough for me to recommend this. But if the size/weight isn’t an issue and you plan to use other “dry” media like standard pens, pencils or maybe pastels, etc., the Ferris Wheel Press Sketchbook would make a beautiful addition to your collection.
(Vanness Pens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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