They gave it to me, and now I’m giving it to one of you. What exactly? The Goldspot exclusive Retro 51 Coffee House Tornado Fountain Pen, which I reviewed yesterday. This is my review pen, so it is lightly used, and it is looking for a new home. The winner is:
Congrats Michelle! I’ve sent you an email to collect your shipping address.
Is Jetstream ink in our future?
Where were you when the Hobonichi site crashed under the launch night load? Or when Pilot Iroshizuku eliminated three inks, in favor of three new ones? Or when Mitsubishi announced that the Safari will use Jetstream ink next year?
This episode of The Pen Addict is sponsored by:
Hinze Pens: Custom hand made fountain pens, made using traditional methods.
Factor: Healthy, fully-prepared food delivered to your door.
(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!.)
It’s apparently planner season and since I don’t use a traditional planner, I decided to get these Midori MD Diary Stickers from Vanness Pens when I was at their shop back in late March (thank you to them for providing these items for review.) These stickers from Midori are meant to be used in notebooks (or really anything) where you need monthly layouts. They come in three sizes (Small, Medium, and Large), but I am only reviewing the Small and Medium ones.
D Diary Stickers in M (left) and S.
Both sticker sets come with the following:
Small (top) and Medium monthly and year stickers.
The Small stickers measure roughly 5.5” x 3.75” (or 14 cm x 9.5 cm), while the Medium Stickers are 6.75” x 4.5” (17.2 cm x 11.8 cm). The Large set is 8” x 5.5” (20 cm x 13.8 cm).
The monthly calendar stickers are Monday - Sunday and also have the year in the bottom right corner, which is very handy as there are 2 December and 2 January stickers. They also have Sundays and Japanese public holidays circled. Japanese and international holidays are noted in Japanese as well. Other than Christmas Eve & Christmas and New Year’s Eve & New Year’s Day, the holidays aren’t particularly useful for most folks.
Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve (as confirmed by Google translate) both fell on Sundays last year.
Since I don’t use A6 for my bullet journal, I decided to use the Small monthly sticker as a tracker for dental hygiene and skincare. I didn’t want to adhere the sticker to my bathroom mirror, so I used washi tape to put it on, where I tracked my skincare routine (A = AM, P=PM, and checkmark for evening flossing/brushing - I know, I know, I need to floss more, lol). I kept a Zebra Sarasa 03 handy to mark it up. I often forget what I did by the time I update my habit tracker, so this was a handy way to keep track.
I’m sure this wasn’t the intended use case but I kinda liked tracking things on the mirror.
The Small stickers fit nicely in an A6 notebook, and the Medium stickers are good for an A5 notebook. It could also fit on B6, but with very little margin on the sides.
The Small Diary sticker in a B6 notebook (I did not affix it to the notebook because this “The Little Prince” notebook is my only B6 notebook.)
The Medium Diary sticker in a B6 notebook - this would be more difficult to put in place due to the minimal margins and the curling (see below.)
The stickers are fairly thick and the sticker release/backing paper is much thicker than what you’d typically get with regular stickers. Midori recommends peeling just one side of the release paper, positioning the sticker onto your page, and then removing the other side. I didn’t follow this recommendation for the A6 monthly sticker. Even though the release paper is scored down the back, peeling the stickers took a bit of effort and the resulting curling made it a bit annoying to deal with. It was mostly fine once I got it on the page and was able to close the notebook and have it weighed down by another book for a few minutes.
This is what it looks like when I peeled both backing papers off of the sticker.
This is how the Small sticker looked when I first affixed it to the page. I quickly removed it and decided to move it to another Hobonichi.
Moved to another notebook and squished it down for a while and the sticker page is now behaving. You can also see the text underneath that I was covering up (more on that below.)
I used the Medium sticker in my A5 Leuchtturm and it fit just fine with some margins to spare on the top and bottom (I like to use washi tape to give it a little bit of flare and so I’m not just hoarding washi tape, lol). Following Midori’s recommendation to only peel and stick one half at a time did not make a difference in the curling but it did make placement a little easier. It was almost impossible not to bend it backwards when removing the backing paper so there is a bit of a crease in the middle after peeling. The creases are more noticeable in some angles than others.
You can just make out the horizontal crease in the middle of the Medium stickers.
The crease is much more prominent on the Small sticker in the Hobonichi. Not sure if it’s because I removed both backing papers or not.
I decided to follow instructions (for a change) and only peeled one side. It’s still very curly.
Because my current A5 Leuchtturm has 120gsm paper, you don’t really see much ghosting, so you don’t see any writing below the sticker from the other side. With the Hobonichi though, you can see what’s underneath, although the writing is “extra” visible because I put the sticker on top of the writing, whereas the A5 had writing on the other side of the page. You can get an idea as to how “see through” the stickers are, if you are going to put it on top of an already-written-on page.
The Medium sticker in the A5 Leuchtturm.
The stickers are fountain pen friendly, which is great because I only use FPs in my bullet journal. There was some slight smearing when I smoothed the Small sticker onto the sheet because I wrote on the sticker before sticking it in the notebook. It is the same paper that is in the Midori MD notebooks (but not MD Cotton), which means it is cream-colored and not white. The paper is fairly smooth but slightly toothier than Tomoe River. It was nice to write on and I didn’t have issues with the few FPs I used on them.
Overall, aside from the not-super-easy peeling and the resulting curling of the sticker, I liked the convenience of having the monthly sticker for my undated notebook. I used to print out monthly calendars and tape them to my bujo and now I don’t have to. I also liked that there are stickers for 14 months. I think the only thing I could do without is the holiday text since it isn’t useful for non-Japanese customers and it takes up room in an already limited space. I don’t know if I would use the yearly stickers but it’s nice to have for reference.
You can find the Midori Diary Sticker Small 2025, Midori Diary Sticker Large, as well as the day free/undated Midori Diary Sticker (same size as the Small), on the Vanness website. The Medium Diary Stickers have been ordered but are still making their way to the shop, so that’s what I’m going to be ordering when it arrives in the next week or so.
(Disclaimer: The Midori Diary Stickers were provided for review by Vanness Pens at no charge. The notebooks pictured are my own.)
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