Pens and Ink: Recently Inked

While this section of my blog has been on hiatus for a little while, it doesn't mean that I have not been using/enjoying my pens and inks any less. Above is a group shot of pens which were inked up recently. From left to right: Online College calligraphy pen, Edison Nouveau Première LE 2014 summer edition Caribbean Sea, Pelikan Ductus P3110 (recent acquisition), Sailor 1911 Sapporo Starburst Galaxy finish, Pilot Namiki Vanishing Point Raden galaxy (brought back into rotation!), Omas Ludovico Enaudi LE in Milord size (recent acquisition) and the Omas Ogiva Alba Orange.

Some recent acquisitions I'm quite enjoying and one that is getting a second chance, the VP Raden galaxy. I could not get used to the grip section at first, but this pen is just too pretty to keep in a drawer and not being used.

Just look at that sparkle! It's fitted with a juicy B nib and I inked it up with Sailor Jentle Sky High (discontinued ink) The nib sings on the page (Claire Fontaine paper) and I just need to use it more to get used to the clip placement. So it was taken off from my sales section and gotten back into rotation  :)

And sometimes instead of going all matchy-matchy, contrasting colors are super fun too! The ENP is inked with Akkerman Pulchi Pink and I absolutely adore this combination!

But demonstrators/clear pens I just have to match with the ink, like this Omas Ogiva Alba in Orange. I had paired it up with Private Reserve Shoreline Gold before, but Sailor Jentle Apricot (sadly also a discontinued ink) is an amazing match as well as you can see above :) 

Next week I'll show a pairing of one of my newest acquisitions.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day.

namasté

Pens and Ink: Omas Lucens with Omas Sepia

Returning to an Omas pair up this week.  This pen was one of my purchases at the Tilburg Penshow last year. The pen is a vintage Omas Lucens and has an amazing stub nib on it. Even though it did cost me a pretty penny, it simply had to go home with me. 

I paired it with Omas Sepia, a gorgeous vintage looking brown with a lot of character, just what this pens needs! First some more info on this pen.

 

The pen has a beautiful black and amber transparent body and the engraving for such an old pen is pretty crisp on it. I found a vintage Omas booklet where these pens were described and I'll share the pages here.

The Omas Lucens has a cylindrical shape and the Omas Lucens Extra has facets as you can see below. My pen doesn't have the art deco ring band on the cap so it means it's from a later production.

The arrow clip sure does look a lot like a parker pen, doesn't it? The nib also has an arrow on it, but I can tell you that these Omas nibs are really not comparable to the parker ones!

There was a wide assortment of nibs on the Omas Lucens fountain pens. You can say the nib I have on mine is "extra Grosso" seeing the line variation it can produce, it's definitely larger than the width shown here. It's a vacuum filler pen, so it does take a bit of fiddling to get the pen working properly. But when it does, oh such lovely writing!

The pens surely does have some start up issues, but I got it fully working and wrote a page in my loving kindness metta meditation journal with it.

The wide stub nib shows a nice line variation and the shading of the ink pretty well. It's got a gorgeous coffee brown color to it. This pen lays down a lot of ink but Claire fontaine paper is a trooper, held up really well!

The nib is pretty difficult to whield I must say. Even though it flexes, perhaps it's not what you're supposed to with it. When I flex the nib, the ink flow just stops completely, but when you write normally, without too much pressure, the ink flow keeps up pretty nicely. Maybe I need to reset the feed (I heat set it a few times but still didn't work) but I am hesitant taking this pen apart seeing everything else works well. And vacuum fillers are fickle pens to fiddle around with!

About the ink, it's a beautiful vintage brown color with great depth. I'm glad I snagged a bottle of this at akkerman with Omas Turquoise when I had the chance!

I like to experiment with fountain pen inks in my art so it's fun to test and try different things with the ink. And with this ink I noticed that when you let it dry naturally it's dries up a reddish brown, as you see the ink smear above. When you apply a heat gun to the ink to dry it, it becomes a more burnt umber color, as you can on the writing below. That's pretty fun to see the different characteristics to an ink!

It's definitely a gorgeous pen and such a beautiful writer (when you can get it to work properly) but it's not a daily carry due to it's fickle filling system and start up problems. I think this is the first pen that I actually got because I wanted it in my collection and not necessarily to write with. But it's fun to take it out once in a while and take her out for a drive :) 

Hope you enjoyed this week's pairing. Next week an iconic Bauhaus style fountain pen and some great news on a returning ink company! 
Thanks for stopping by & have a great day!

namasté

Paper goods: Papelote Notebook Cover & Clairefointaine 1951 vintage notebook

It was a beautiful day out and we decided to make good use of it and go to the beach. The perfect opportunity to test out the great Papelote A5 Notebook Cover outdoors! This notebook cover, together with the Clairefontaine 1951 retro cloth bound notebook was so kindly sent to me by Mishka from Bureau Direct for review purposes! Thank you so much Mishka!!

The papelote notebook cover is made with soft cotton cloth and comes in various designs. I was sent the red and white striped with blue inseam cover. A lovely combination! The cover has an elastic strap attached to it, which can hold 5 writing utensils. It comes with a pencil to get you started. You can see the array of items I've chosen to carry with it; a few fine Steadtler fine liners, a faber castell brush marker, sakura gelly roll pen and a water brush pen. The size I have here is the A5 size, which can fit any A5 size notebooks like the Leuchtturm 1917 and Rhodia notebooks. I chose the Clairefontaine 1951 vintage style notebooks, because of the fact it has fountain pen friendly paper and well just look at it.

It's pretty and it's turquoise! They come in 3 different sizes, the pocket size, A5 exercise and A5 clothbound books. I got to test them all and they fit in very nicely in the notebook cover.  

 Also I used some fun journal rubber stamps to categorize my notebooks :) 

Fun fact, Bureau Direct also offers the pocket books in a fun compilation with the J. Herbin rollerball pen and ink cartridges. The turquoise set comes with J. Herbin Bleu Pervence turquoise ink cartridges. They also have the bottled ink here. A scrumptious set for a turquoise fanatic like me :D

Anyhow, back to the notebook cover! You can carry a lot of tools inside the cover besides just the notebook due to the flexibility of the soft cotton cloth cover!

Look at that! Doesn't that look scrumptious?? Yes, the brownie was really yummy as well ;) So what did I take with me in my notebook cover? Take a look below:

I tucked in a pack of water color pencils, a pocket size coloring book, the Lamy Safari Dark Lilac (see my pens and ink post about it here), a pocket sketchbook and...

An A5 Clipboard! The cover has a seem opening on the back where you can tuck this baby in! I found this discovery brilliant as you can add sturdiness to the cover which allows you to sit down anywhere and write, draw, color or whatever on the go! I already had this one, but Bureau Direct are selling these clipboards by Penco as well. So what do I use my clairefontaine journal for? I use it as my Daily Gratitude and Loving Kindness journal. You have seen shots of the pages in my Pens and Ink post, surely. Every morning (or at least I try to) I write down the loving kindness meditation to set the tone for Compassion for the day. I will write another post about this type of journaling at a later point, but let me show you a page as a reminder.

As I said before, the paper in clairefontaine books hold fountain pen inks really well. It's definitely one of my preferred notebooks for journalling as I love the line spacing (7mm) for my handwriting and the smoothness of the paper lets the nibs just glide over the paper. 

In conclusion: The combination of the Papelote Notebook Cover with these Clairefontaine 1951 notebooks is a wonderful thing! I thoroughly enjoyed using cover. A major plus point being the flexibility of it. Also a great thing about the fact that it's a cloth cover is that you can wash them quite easily if you spill any (non permanent) ink on it! The straps are mighty handy too! It works best if you have something sturdy in the cover like a clipboard or a hard cover notebook, though. If you are looking for only the notebook straps, Papelote also makes them separately which Bureau Direct also sells. Those work best on hard cover notebooks. 

Thanks again Mishka/ Bureau Direct, I've really improved on my daily writing sessions by having such a wonderful set up for it :) By the way, if you're looking into journalling yourself, and looking for something that might work for you, why don't you check out Stationery Wednesday as this month's spotlight falls on  the Bullet Journal. And while you're there, don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter if you haven't already. Next to fun news, specials and competitions, it also contains a weekly discount code for 10% off your purchase at Bureau Direct shop! That's not something you'd want to miss out on!

Hopefully this review was useful to you and inspired you to go out and journal in the wide open :) 

Thanks for stopping by & have a great sunday!

namasté

(disclaimer: I got these items free of charge for review purposes and was not monetarily compensated. All opinions stated here are my own and there are no affiliate links.) 

Pens and Ink: Omas Blue Paragons with Sea Blues

At the Tilburg penshow last year I found one of my grail pens, an Omas Vintage Paragon with BB nib stubbed by Mottishaw. Such a beautiful pen body with a great nib! A few months later I had the opportunity to buy some vintage LE Omas pens from a collector and one of them was the one on the right, the blue marbled paragon with a b nib. So happy to have these in my collection! They both write really wonderful and I have paired them with turquoise inks.

The Omas with the BB nib has Omas Turquoise ink (I finally got a bottle through Akkerman in the Hague, but now they are all sold out everywhere it seems :( ) and I inked the Omas Paragon with the b nib with Roher and Klinger Blu Mare. Both are gorgeous turquoise inks. But I have to say that my fave pairing is this one:

Such a beautiful and unique nib - esp. since it's hard to get a pen worked on by a nibmeister esp. in Europe. So I am really glad that I got this one through Sarj Minhas at the penshow last year!

I try to write my daily loving kindness metta meditation to get a good feel with the pen and ink combo. I came to the conclusion that I need to have this pen in rotation more (and write more letters to use the ink up). And of course keep practicing my written meditations in my loving kindness journal. With that a more personal note...

Last sunday I had the opportunity to attend a workshop about compassion and yesterday there was a book reading both by Thupten Jinpa, the author of a Fearless Heart. It was definitely insightful and very helpful with my own mindfulness and compassion practices and trainings. He said so many things that struck a chord, it would be a very long post if I recited it all. But if I could choose of the things that really struck with me and which I want to share with you, is that when you set the "tone" in the morning for the day and reminding yourself of that intention you set, it will keep you connected and grounded with yourself. We often loose touch with ourself during the busy course of the day, and while you can always return to your breath to stay grounded in the moment, reminding yourself of the intention you have set from within your heart, helps to reconnect with your inner core and cultivates compassion. Compassion is a core value we all have, but it's also a choice to act on it or not. We just need to cultivate it more so it extends beyond a reactive setting and becomes more active and natural in our daily lives. So when you are dealing with difficulties/obstacles through the day and catch yourself thinking unkind thoughts towards another, try to turn it around. This is where Jinpa said to add "just like me" to your thoughts/intentions toward others. So for example instead of thinking "that bastard cut me off" and whatever profanities may come next, while in traffic, think "This person wants to be someplace, just like me. May they arrive safely to their destination, just like me." etc... This way we can connect to humanity, in compassion and kindness. And we also "set the tone" of the world around us and especially within us. 

Luckily I don't drive, but daily irritations towards your fellow human being, can be found anywhere!

It takes courage to be actively kind and compassionate (hence the "fearless"heart) but it's a choice none the less. Every morning I will try to set the tone from my inner core and consciously make the choice to engage and act with kindness and compassion. 

Tonight we will remember the fallen in WWII and we'll have a collective national silence at 8pm to remember the deceased. And tomorrow we'll celebrate liberation and life in freedom. It's a good moment to be reflective and think about what life in freedom means to oneself. And to me, life in freedom means to always have a choice, at every moment. 

And I hope we will choose to act with kindness and compassion towards one another. 

Thank you for stopping by and have a wonderful week (...just like me :) )

Namasté

Monthly Planning MTN: March 2016 overview

It's halfway through April, so high time for March Monthly update in my Midori Travellers Notebook. A lot of fun stuff happened last month, but also some tragedy's.

It's very cathartic to take the time and process it all. 

 On the creative side: I've used some more illustrative rubber stamps and color combinations this time. The sakuralala 365 stamps being the base as usual. The large hot air balloon and cracked egg are hand carved stamps. The Bird stamp is from Oxford Impressions and The city stamp from Stampothique. Fountain pens and inks used: Sailor Sapporo LE seasons Sky with Montblanc Turquoise. Lamy Vista 1.1 nib Eyedroppered with Sailor Tokiwa Matsu. Pilot Parallel with Pilot Red. Franklin Christoph 66 with 1.1 nib and Faber Castell Deep Sea Green for the numbers and days. See them on my currently inked page op March 27th.

On the fun stuff: I had my 36th birthday on the 14th and this year we took a trip to Turkey visiting Kapadokya (Cappadocia) for a week. We went on a Hot Air Balloon ride, saw some beautiful sights and well... pictures tell more than a thousand words...

It was amazing. So beautiful and serene.
If you ever have the chance to go there, you definitely should!



And there were some tragic days as well. In the time I spent in Turkey there were three bombings: two in Ankara and one in Istanbul. They did not have a lot of media coverage, but that doesn't make them any less tragic. There were more bombings occurring in Turkey and before we left my father in law asked us if it was a good idea to visit a country that is in such turmoil and can be really unsafe to be. I told him that "being safe" is a relative concept these days, seeing with what happened in Paris and Brussels last year. But of course we would not visit the capital and the borders as those were marked as "unsafe to travel" zones. On 22 March the bombings in Brussels showed us again that "being safe" is a relative concept. That sadly in these times, there is no place that is really safe from psychopaths with bombs.
 I share the grief and loss. 
They are attacks on humanity which transcends borders, race and religious beliefs. 
I do not want to end this post on such a tragic note.  
However I hope that by sharing with you what I do when these feelings of powerlessness arise and overwhelm me, could provide a positive outlet for you as well.
 I pray for peace and well being for all of us living on this earth every time I write down my Mindfulness Metta Meditations in my journals. 
This month in my Mindfulness Compassion in Connectivity training's I learned the practice of Tonglen which I find healing to do in these strange and unsettling times. 

In tonglen practice, when we see or feel suffering, we breathe in with the notion of completely feeling it, accepting it, and owning it. Then we breathe out, radiating compassion, lovingkindness, freshness; anything that encourages relaxation and openness.- Quote from Pema Chodron from When Things Fall Apart:Heart Advice for Difficult Times (more here) 

 We can change the karma of this world. 
With one heartfelt, compassionate breath at a time.  

Thank you for stopping by.

namasté