Archive for May, 2010
Changing ink colors with the seasons?
Image courtesy of Biffybeans © All Rights Reserved
With summer just around the corner, I was wondering if some people liked switching ink colors at various times of the year.
I have 11 fountain pens currently inked, and I recently just flushed & filled 9 of them. For the first time ever, I resisted putting a different color in every pen and actually have 5 pens filled with the same black ink and two with the same blue. That leaves 4 – one red, one purple, a magenta and a bright Florida blue.
What about you? Any new colors? Staying with the same?
Back from the NSS Show!
Your Rhodia Driver, Stephanie “Biffybeans” Smith in the Rhodia section of the Exaclair booth.
Well folks, I made it back in one piece from my visit to the National Stationery Show last Tuesday. It was my first time attending a trade show of that magnitude which meant there was an awful lot for me to take in in a very short period of time.
Inside the Exaclair booth, they had all of the new products from each of their lines such as the dotPads, Le Carre, Rhodia Academic Year planners, new blank Webbies, (Version 3.0) blank Quo Vadis Habanas in 90g, Clairefontaine Graf-it pads, Roadbooks, Staplebound Basics, Twinbooks… I was like a kid in the candy store! I fully intended on taking lots of pictures but there were always customers in the booth and I didn’t want to get in their way.
It was great to see Karen, Christine & Cecilia again, to meet members of the sales team AND my sister blogger Leah Hoffman from the Quo Vadis Blog, but one of the most interesting things happened literally minutes before we were about to leave for dinner. Continue Readering »
Exclusive NEW Clairefontaine products available from Levenger for a limited time!
For a limited time, Levenger will be carrying an exclusive line of Clairefontaine Linicolor products – spiral bound with bright Polypro covers, (blue, green, orange, pink & yellow) they contain Clairefontaine 90g paper and are available in the following formats:
- 4 7/8″ x 5 7/8″ Lined Wirebound Notebook (120 pages)
- 8 3/4″ x 11 3/4″ Lined Wirebound Notebook (80 pages)
- 5 3/4″ x 8 3/4″ Lined Wirebound Notebook – Steno Style (80 pages)
- 8 3/4″ x 11 3/4″ Lined Wirebound Notebook – Top Bound (80 pages)
- 8 3/4″ x 11 3/4″ Wirebound Notebook – Meeting Format (80 pages)
The Violet Lines
I have always been curious as to why Rhodia notepads have violet lines. When I was growing up, my notebook paper and notebooks had blue lines. Some sported a red line near the margin or header. 
So I put the question to someone who would know…..why does Rhodia have violet lines? She said, “More restful for the eyes.”
What do you think? Is violet less obtrusive than blue? Does violet work better with grid formats? Is it more soothing on your eyes?
Graph Paper – Better for Handwriting?
The middle tablet in this photo was one of my first ever Rhodia pads. I bought it after learning that someone I’d admired always had one tucked in their back pocket- and I guess I’d hoped that some of his artistic mojo would rub off on me if I implemented one of his favorite tools… Continue Readering »
Where You Buy Your Rhodia: Notemaker.com.au
When I found the above image on Flickr, I had to know more… This was Scatrd’s Rhodia and pen collection as of 11/09 and the image includes the following:
1x Rhodia Essentials Pack
1x A5 Webnotebook
1x A6 Webnotebook Continue Readering »
A Puzzle for The Fountain Pen People and Those Who Like a Good Mystery
I recently came across this book at a local bookstore and it prompted me to ask several questions:
- What kind of pens are these?
- Why pens on the cover?
- Did the author use a fountain pen to write this book?
- Was the book any good? (A quick glance on Amazon gives it 4 stars out of 5 with 15 people having reviewed it.)
Any guesses or comments?
Isometric Graph Paper
Recently, Janine from California wrote to us looking for notepads filled with “isometric” graph paper. As that was a new one for me, I went to Wikipedia and found the following definition:
Isometric graph paper or 3D graph paper — This type is a triangular graph paper which uses a series of three guidelines forming a 60° grid of small triangles. The triangles are arranged in groups of six to make hexagons. The name suggests the use for isometric views or pseudo-three dimensional views. Among other functions, they can be used in the design of triangle point embroidery.
The following video seems to really drive home the way in which this paper could be used, and I am SURE this is just the tip of the iceberg. Anyone else out there using or looking for this kind of paper?
Retailer Spotlight: The Pear Tree Pen Company
Tell me Ryan, how did The Pear Tree get started?
The answer is almost so comical that you’ll think I made it up…but I swear that it’s the truth. James Partridge, the company’s founder, was on a mission to find “the perfect blue ink” for his personal collection of fountain pens. After messing around with as many different blues as he could get his hands on, it dawned on him that perhaps he could help other people who were on the same mission…and thus, The Pear Tree was planted! Continue Readering »
Come and visit us at the National Stationery Show May 16th-19th!
This Sunday through Wednesday, come and visit Exaclair at the The National Stationery Show being held at the Jacob Javits Center 11th Avenue & 34th Street, NYC. Exaclair’s brands include not only Rhodia, but also Clairefontaine, Exacompta, Quo Vadis, J. Herbin & Brause.
I’ll be there on Tuesday afternoon, along with my sister blogger Leah Hoffman from Quo Vadis. Be sure to stop by and say hello! Exaclair’s booth is #2537.
Rhodia will be showing off the the brand new blank Webbies, the new Le Carre and dotPads, as well as the new Rhodia Weekly Notebooks in the academic year format. We will also be raffling off to some lucky person one of the Rhodia leather bags from their new “Bagagerie” collection. Continue Readering »
Try out some Rhodia paper and J. Herbin ink this weekend at the New England Pen Show
Image courtesy of Sid Falthzik via vintagewriting.com
For this weekend ‘s New England Pen Show May 15th & 16th, Exaclair provided a selection of Rhodia paper and J. Herbin inks for you to test pens with – be sure to check out Rob Morrison’s table for these items. Rob tells us that he always uses Rhodia paper for writing samples because he recognizes its excellent anti-feathering qualities, smoothness, and overall accuracy which shows how a pen will write.
The 23rd Annual New England Pen Show
EARLY BUYING
Saturday, May 15, 2010
9 am to 5 pm
Admission $15
Sunday, May 16, 2010
10 am to 4 pm
Admission $6
Location: Somerville Holiday Inn, 30 Washington Street,
Somerville, Massachusetts 02143
Directions and hotel information 617-628-1000
For show info and exhibitor info contact Rob Morrison:
robmorrison@charter.net, 828-298-0331
Webbie to be THE conference notebook for upcoming TED Global event in Oxford
TED’s mission: Spreading ideas.
Rhodia will be providing 800 pocket Webnotebooks to the participants of the TEDGlobal event in Oxford this July. TED is an “intelligentsia” group of intellectuals, business people, creatives, academics, entrepreneurs from around the world. (Primarily Europe, North America and Asia.) Continue Readering »
Guest Blogger Clem Dionglay: Pen Meet in the Phillipines
A Rhodia pad beside the pen case of UP Professor Butch Dalisay. (Photo courtesy of Leigh Reyes)
Clem Dionglay from the blog Rants of the Archer, sent us the following about a recent pen meet:
“It was another fun/pen meet for the members of Fountain Pen Network – Philippines (FPN-P) held at Conti’s. Fourteen of us met at lunch for another 3-4 hours of pen talk and pen ogling. We are a diverse bunch of pen enthusiasts: writers, college professors, advertising executive, business entrepreneurs and computer graphic artists. If a non-fountain pen person accidentally comes into the room and sees that we are all hunched over endless pads of paper and notebooks trying on pens and inks, they would be puzzled and confused. Continue Readering »
Yeti Kitteh
Our friend Alberto from the blog Lung Sketching Scrolls seems to have captured an intruder (named Yeti) while trying out some new art supplies. I can tell from the look in his eyes that he was heading straight for the Rhodia pad…
I love animals and would love to see photos of your cat/dog/frog/iguana/lemur posing with your favorite Rhodia products. You can send them to stephanie at rhodiadrive dot com to be considered for blog publication.
Reading and Writing: Fiction or Non-Fiction?
Some of my all-time favorite non-fiction reads.
To expand on my recent post asking whether or not if what you read inspires your writing, I started to think about various trends in my reading habits and how over the last 5 years I have been both reading and writing non-fiction almost exclusively. Continue Readering »
