As many of you know, we heartily endorse the customization of notebooks and planners, both inside and out. A mind-blowing example of the latter: Shanti Marie’s collage journals, which I discovered last week thanks to a post on Inkophile.
Visit Shanti Marie’s blog to see a bigger picture of this notebook and find out how to make one like it.
Here are a couple more reviews from our St. Patrick’s Day ink giveaway… Since they come from blog-less reviewers, we figured we’d just post them here.
Erin C. tested Vert Reseda and made the lovely clover drawing that’s posted above. (“I realized a bit too late that it’s only a 3-leaf clover instead of the lucky 4-leaf shamrock,” she writes—oh, well.)
She also sent us an image of her wonderfully comprehensive test pages, which I uploaded in its original PDF form since the color came through much better.
Nanci F. tested Lierre Sauvage, and here is her review:
“I tried the ink in an Levenger Tru Writer and an Omas Emotica, both with M nibs. The ink ran very well in both pens. I’ve have other J Herbin inks and I generally like the brand. I love the bottle with the built in pen holder. The color is is a beautiful green. From the bottle it looks like it will write much darker than it does. In the bottle it looks like a forest green while it writes more like a grass green. It is a great color. I love using many colors for writing at work every day. This will be a green I use in the mix. After my sample dried I did a water test and it held up very well. This is a good ink and a great color. I would buy it. Thanks for the free bottle, this was a very generous offer.”
Thanks again to all our reviewers!
The first batch of reviews are in! Leah and I will post the other reviews as they arrive.
Our first annual St. Patrick’s Day Ink Give-A-Way allowed volunteers to pick any J. Herbin green ink or orange ink to review. I included 2nd choices when I could, and also stuck in a Clairefontaine or Rhodia pad as a little surprise.
Thank you to Marie from Z. Quilts for the beautiful holiday artwork! 
Marie from Z. Quilts reviewed Orange Indien and Vert Pre.
Brian from Office Supply Geek reviewed Vert Empire and Orange Indien.
Erin from La Plume Etoile reviewed Vert Empire and Vert Olive.
Margana from Inkophile reviewed Vert Olive.
BiffyBeans from the Spiritual Evolution of the Bean has recently reviewed Orange Indien, Vert Olive and Vert Empire.
Jeff from The Fountain Pen Network reviewed Vert Pre.
Zoe from Pentamento reviewed Vert Empire.
Stephen from The Eccentric Orange Gentleman reviewed Orange Indien and Diabolo Menthe.
I have two other ink reviews I would like to include with this post:
Chris from Amateur Economist did a review of one of the J. Herbin scented inks, Encre Bleu. And Murderface from Reciprocal Crap Exchange did this one of Cafe des Iles awhile back.
Thank you all! I’m glad everyone had fun with the inks!
A couple people have asked us recently when we’re going to join Twitter. Some of our competitors (and many of our friends) use the service, but neither I nor Karen has gotten that into it, so we weren’t quite sure what to say.
On the one hand, we don’t generate a whole lot of “news” on any given week, and of course we always have the blog to broadcast our announcements. On the other hand, Twitter isn’t necessarily about official news/announcements, and there are plenty of paper and pen related topics we could tweet about.
What do you think? If we created a Twitter stream for Quo Vadis or our parent company, Exaclair, would you read it? What sorts of things would you want to learn about in 140 characters or less?
I’m glad Chris, our Amateur Economist, thought to try them, because they’re something I’ve been curious about for months: scented inks from J. Herbin. I first noticed them in the Exaclair product catalog, and I have to say, I was a bit skeptical at first. I don’t wear much perfume, and I can’t imagine smelling anything other than pulped wood when I open a notebook.
Then I realized the scents are probably not as overwhelming as, say, the scratch-and-sniff stickers I remember from my childhood (which are the only real association I have with perfume and paper). Sure enough, Chris seemed to like the bottle of Encre Bleue that he tried, describing the scent as “flowery and generally pleasant.” His daughter liked it, too.
According to the J. Herbin website, scented inks were “inspired by a tradition that began in Italy in the 19th century,” when ink manufacturers “used to collect different scents from the perfume industry and add them to their inks.” Each ink matches fragrance and color: blue has a lavender scent, green has an apple scent, amber is orange, red is rosey, and violet is, well, violet.
Have you ever used scented inks?
Susan Cianciolo is an artist and designer–and a fan of Quo Vadis planners–who treated us to a night of eco-friendly fashion a couple of weeks ago. I caught up with her via email to learn more about her work…
I understand you’ve been working with recycled, organic, and eco-friendly fabrics since 1995. What prompted you to seek these materials out—ecological principle or simply aesthetics?
I seek out these types of fabric because it was what I found and what was available, damaged materials I could make special with silk screening and natural overdyes, also going into the woods and finding materials that we untreated and turning them into prints by hammering onto organic fabric that was always very simple and fun to make it your own, as well as using yarn and wools from local mills and farms in New England where I am from.
Does each piece of fabric inspire its own design, or do you first come up with a design and then look for fabrics that will help you realize it?
Both the fabric and the sketch come at the same time, i have just now begun next season and i am sketching my ideas from recent inspiration, and i have already received organic hand dyed hand woven fabric from japan -kyoto from hinaya who i collaborated with this season and the last six years, so inspired by them is happening while being inspired by new ideas for shapes and patterns, forms and conceptual development.
It was great to see your drawings at the fashion show last month. Do your drawings often translate into actual items of clothing, or do you see them as a separate endeavor?
Yes, my drawings are the first step, for all aspects that follow, meaning the clothes and the set design.
What materials do you use to sketch?
I use recycled paper to sketch my drawings.
Any particular kind?
Whatever I have in my house: blank pages from old notebooks, blank pages in books, the backs of old documents, etc.
One of the coolest things about being a part of this blog is the opportunity it gives Karen and me to learn about random, fun, and interesting corners of the internet—and get to know the people involved.
We were thrilled to discover that Izuno Travel’s Jordan Needham likes the look of our journals. We were also thrilled to discover Izuno Travel itself. It sounds like an interesting project, and it’s been great to read old posts and learn about the site’s mission. I particularly like Jordan’s “Long Live Shantytown” photographs, which, if I understand correctly, were inspired by her realization that “Colby Jack cheese, sliced thin, resembles [the] coastline of the earth at around 10,000 ft.”
In New York and on the web, people have been talking about Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara, who was arrested last week for tagging a graffiti portrait of two friends in the Union Square subway station.
When I first moved to New York in 1996, the city was making a huge effort to curtail graffiti (along with other petty crimes like public drinking, turnstile jumping, and yes, broken windows) in an attempt to prevent larger crimes. The connection is still controversial, though The Economist recently reported on an intriguing study done in the Netherlands, which found that trash, graffiti, and other signs of vandalism doubled the number of people who were willing to litter and even steal.
Those findings notwithstanding, I don’t see any reason we have to take a “zero tolerance” approach to graffiti. In my neighborhood in Brooklyn, there are a number of empty lots enclosed by ugly metal fences. Were it not for fantastical images like the ones above and after the jump, there’d be no reason at all to linger on those blocks, and you’d hurry by as quickly as you could, and the street would feel even more deserted than it already does.
Kenneth Schwartz is an inventor and entrepreneur. He is an expert knife sharpener, particularly of Japanese kitchen knives, a gourmet chef, and most of all, an aficionado of fountain pens, paper and inks.
I first got to know Ken when he volunteered to review a Quo Vadis planner late in 2008. At the same time I sent him a Journal 21 to review, I included one of Quo Vadis’s Habana notebooks. Ken liked it very much, and posted his review here on The Fountain Pen Network. He is a regular contributor as “ksskss.”
What was intriguing is that Ken made the notebook into his “ink journal.” He was using the notebook to record as many different inks and colors as he can possibly experience. I asked him how he got started, and what are his current favorite pens and inks.
Kelly and Katie McMenamin are two sisters who run a home and life organization service called Pixies Did It. Their philosophy: if your life is not organized around your own habits and personality, it won’t run smoothly. Here, the Pixies talk about a subject I suspect is close to many of our hearts: organizing paper…
Your personality tells you more about how you should organize than you think. Use your natural strengths to get a quick Pixie Fix and bring order & serenity into your life. We offer online Myers-Briggs personality assessments through our business, PixiesDidIt! You should recognize which fix is for you without taking the test, but if you want more personality specific organization help, give us a call or an email.
When it comes to paper, we break the 16 Meyers-Briggs personality types into four major groups, NJ, NP, and SJ, SP. What unites us? No matter who you are it seems to never stop coming and it can get unruly. Whether you are in an office or at home, you need to create the right structure for you. We all get overwhelmed by paper and find ourselves asking, “Weren’t computers supposed to make us paperless?”
Click through to read the fixes (and see pictures!) for realistic decision makers, visionary decision makers, adaptable realists, and adaptable innovators…
