The other day when I asked what you thought about our dotPads and dotWebbies, we heard you loud and clear that you loved using them! Many of you shared with us your reasons for liking this format by way of how you use it. One suggestion was to use the dots as a guide for pasting things onto the pages. As in Halstead’s image above, “no more crooked tape!”

I keep a special blank book (glue book?) for pasting images which I use for art inspiration – colors, textures and the like. I’m not too particular with how I paste them in, but I can imagine that it would look even better and become more of a work of art in itself if I were using dot paper.

Do you tape/paste things into your journals?

This video shows an inspiration book similar to what I make:

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. It is also the first day of the 2nd half of 2011. Today I decided to set a very specific intention for the rest of the year. Having felt burdened for the 1st half of the year by an emotional heaviness, I am first and foremost consciously choosing to let go of that which isn’t serving me and focusing on that which will nurture my growth. I find whenever I mindfully attach intention to any project or situation, it significantly increases the quality of whatever I’m looking to achieve.

Just for today, grab your journal or writing pad and think about something you wish to accomplish. Write it down and then think about your intention for that goal. Perhaps you wish to save money to take a vacation – so “Save $1200 for vacation” might be the goal, but the intent would be, “By creating some much needed time off and away, I can rest and return to my busy life with a clearer mind.” Write down your intention and feel free to return to it for inspiration and tweak it as needed. You may find it helpful to write your intention on pieces of paper to post in places where they will remind you of why you are working so hard to achieve your goals.

If you’d be willing to share your goals, feel free to post them below. Putting them out to the world is a great way to solidify your intentions.

Have a safe and wonderful holiday weekend!

Mandala by Stephanie on Clairefontaine Pollen paper.

Taken on a sunny day with slight editing for contrast. From left to right these are, Clairefontaine 90g, Clairefontaine Triomphe 90g, Webbie 90g, and “R” 90g.

A closer look at the Webbie paper and the paper in the new “R” premium pads. (Note – Webbie 2.0 paper is the same color as the 3.0. 3.0 version removed the Rhodia logo at the bottom of the page.)

Do you prefer white or off white paper for writing?

The metric system never really caught on in North America- though I can remember my elementary school teachers in the 70′s doing their best to confuse the heck out of us with it. (A meter stick? Whaaa?) This means that anytime someone writes to me with a request that a particular Rhodia product expanded to include A4 or A5, I have to scurry to Wikipedia for a refresher on what the similar US sizes might be. If you yourself are not sure, I am attaching these handy charts (courtesy of Wikipedia) that I should probably print out and slip into my Exaclair catalog for future reference. (For the record, A4 is roughly 8 1/4″ x 11 3/4″ while US letter paper is 8 1/2″ x 11″. )

Someone recently asked me about which was the better fountain pen- the Sailor Sapporo or the Pelikan M200, and whether or not it was cumbersome to utilize a pen with a screw cap.

In my opinion, there is no best- only what works for you. The Sapporo is a cartridge/convertor pen which holds less ink than the piston filler M200 and will need to be refilled more often. This could be a good thing if you like to frequently change ink colors in your pen. The M200 (for me) takes longer to flush/clean so I usually leave the same color ink in these pens (I have 2 M200′s) to avoid cleaning them until I absolutely have to.

The Sapporo is more expensive ($150.00) than the M200 ($90) and IMHO, has the higher quality nib and feels more significant in the hand. The M200 is a very light pen and the Sapporo is better balanced for my hand when posted.

A big plus for the Pelikan -  you can buy different interchangeable nibs for the M200 – visit Richard Binder’s site for options. Note that Japanese pens have thinner nibs than their western counterparts. A Fine Sailor nib will be finer than a Lamy or Pelikan Fine.

Regarding the screw cap, this is a very good question and I think it depends on how you use it. If you write for long stretches at a time, the screw cap isn’t as obtrusive. If you are putting the cap on and off for quick notes, it could be a chore.

Do you post your pens? (Put the cap on the back of the pen as you write.) Each of these pens are on the small size- especially compared to many people’s 1st fountain pen, the Lamy Safari. If you have large hands or do not post your pen, you may likely find these to be too small.

Lastly, you can get some pretty good deals on used pens in the Marketplace on the Fountain Pen Network. I bought my Sapporo in brand new condition and for significantly less than what they sell for new, and found one of my M200′s with a custom ground Binder cursive italic nib (!) for only $45. (Actually, I wrote a post saying I was looking for one. One came up and a friend snagged it for me. Thanks James!)

If you want to know which is my favorite, well… if I had one, then I’d only have one. :o)

To see more photos of the size comparison between the M200, Sapporo, 1911 and a Lamy Safari, see this post on my Bean Blog.

I have a mild obsession with Post-it flags. I have them in several different sizes and colors and it’s hard to keep me away from the Post-it aisle when I go to Staples. I really don’t need any more, but there I am once again, like a kid in a candy store- Is there a color or size I don’t already have? How could I use the ones with an arrow printed on them?

In my experience, the smallest flags often come loose from their packaging and get scattered all over the house. One day I noticed some sitting near this candy tin and realized the size and shape to be just right. This is one of the Altoid “Smalls” tins and is the perfect size to hold these flags. Pop them in your purse or briefcase and off you go! (Sometimes I think I buy these candies just to get the tins…)

Do you have any re-purposed packaging tips that you would like to share?

Leah from Quo Vadis here, coming to you from Karen’s account to blog about my new favorite product, the so-called “Clic Bloc” mousepad-cum-notebook by Rhodia.

I thought I’d worked out a pretty decent system for keeping track of work-related tasks: my planner holds my appointments, while a Steno pad on the side of my desk houses a running project to-do list. Various other notebooks are dedicated to specific projects or assignments, like interviewing sources or jotting down story ideas.

But as everyone knows, there’s still a lot of stuff that comes up in the course of the day—phone calls I need to return, random details I need to jot down, and so on. Things that are too granular to put on the to-do list, but nonetheless need to be recorded, because if I don’t, I’ll never remember ‘em. Up till now, I’d always relied on a fairly haphazard array of Post-it notes and whatever scraps of paper were handy at the time.

The Clic Bloc changed all that, because it’s always within immediate reach, and the graph paper is the perfect home for my intermittent, non-linear jottings. If one page starts to get too cluttered, I can just tear it off and start again. The ink sometimes smears if I roll the mouse over it before it dries, but I tend to write around the mouse anyway, and tear a new page before that can happen.

Image ©Biffybeans All rights Reserved

Curious on how to use the J. Herbin glass nibbed pens? JetPens has put together a quick and easy tutorial on how to use them. I have one (that’s mine in the image above) and I love it for dip testing inks and I also use it for drawing. I was at first afraid that a glass pen would be extremely fragile, but having had it accidentally hit the kitchen linoleum, I was quite surprised when it did not shatter into a billion pieces- in fact, it survived unscathed.

I seem to have some sort of artistic blockage when it comes to metal nibbed dip pens – I know how they work but just can’t get them to work… and so the glass dip pen is my friend.

Have you tried one yet?

One of our Rhodia Drive Readers had asked us if there was a list of Rhodia Pad No°s along with their measurements for the ones that Exaclair imports into the US.  For your convenience I present:

Rhodia Pad No. 08
74 x 210  (3 x 8 ¼”)
Available lined and graph (5/5)

Rhodia Pad No. 10
52 x 74  (2 x 3″)
Available lined and graph (5/5)

Rhodia Pad No. 11
A7 – 74 x 105  (3 x 4″)
Available lined and graph (5/5)

Rhodia Pad No. 12
85 x 120  (3 3/8 x 4 ¾ “)
Available lined and graph (5/5)

Rhodia Pad No. 13
A6 – 105 x 148  (4 x 6″)
Available lined and graph (5/5)

Rhodia Pad No. 14
110 X 170 ( 4 3/8 x 6 3/8 “)
Available lined and graph (5/5)

Rhodia Pad No. 16
A5 – 148 X 210  (6 x 8 ¼ “)
Available blank, graph (5/5) and also lined + margin

Rhodia Pad No. 18
A4 – 210 X 297  (8 ¼ x 11 ¾ “)
Available blank, graph (5/5) and also lined + margin

Rhodia Pad No. 19
A4+ – 210 X 318  (8 ¼ x 12 ½ “)
White paper available blank, graph (5/5) and also lined + margin
Yellow paper available lined + margin

Rhodia Pad No. 38
A3+ – 420 X 318 (16 ½ x 12 ½ “)
Available in graph (5/5)