Notebook Review: Daycraft's Juicy Notebook

The rainy season has definitely started here in the Philippines, but I'm stuck in summer's ambrosial delights - fruits! At home, we still get to enjoy these colorful, sweet, and juicy summer pleasures: plenty of bananas, cantaloupes, green and yellow mangoes, pineapples, and watermelons. Soon, most of these fruits will be gone from the stalls and we will all wait till next summer to enjoy them again.

Luckily for me, one watermelon has remained to keep me company until the next summer. It's Daycraft's Juicy Watermelon notebook that Foreal Lee, Retail and Marketing Manager of Hong Kong's Tai Shing Diary Ltd. sent to me a few months back. With a very apt tagline of 'Pick A Fresh One', Daycraft's Juicy notebook line comes only in A6 size, but has five 'delicious fruit flavors' to choose from: orange, watermelon, strawberry, pineapple, and honeydew melon.

The Juicy Watermelon notebook's cover is soft, fine Italian polyurethane (PU), designed to resemble the rind of a watermelon.

This notebook opens to a wedge of watermelon. You'd want to grab a juicy, wet bite when you see the front and back inside covers are watermelon red with watermelon seeds.

The Watermelon notebook, like the rest of those in Daycraft's Juicy line, have 128 pages of 6.5mm lined cream-colored paper with distinctive 'fruit' designs. The 'fruity' spread below has apples on the lower left of the page and watermelons on the upper right of the page. The 6.5mm spacing is just right for my handwriting.

Here's the watermelon design up close. I think the fruit designs are cute. And because they're printed lightly, I can write over them and still read the text I've written. 

The notebook's back cover has the same watermelon rind design as its front cover, but bears the clearly pressed Daycraft logo centered at the bottom.

Like most of Daycraft notebooks, the Juicy line is case bound, so the pages are threaded and glued together to make it durable.

The pages have round corners which I like very much. Pointed/Squared corners are more likely to snag my arm while writing, so the rounded corners are safer and better.

And now the best part of the review is here: pen and ink tests! I always do a number of tests when I have a new notebook. These tests help me choose the best pen and ink combination for any particular notebook. I grouped the tests according to the ink brand this time.

The first page has the ink tests for J. Herbin, Diamine, and Caran d'Ache. There was no feathering on the page and all the inks dried fast. Most of my pens have medium nibs and put large amounts of ink on paper, which is why I am concerned about the inks' drying time. Surpisingly, they all dried fast, including the saturated J. Herbin 1670 Anniversary ink. I'm loving this Juicy Watermelon notebook's paper already. The Herbin inks looked bright and happy, but Diabolo Menthe is the runaway winner here. It looked so beautiful and yet so cool. Diamine Royal Blue appeared so bright that I instantly filled two more pens after seeing it again. And then there's Caran d'Ache Saffron which will always be the perfect orange ink for me.

I tried Private Reserve, Waterman, Pelikan, Noodler's, and Mont Blanc inks on the other page. This time, I saw some feathering in Private Reserve and Noodler's inks, but that's okay as I already expected that. PR Black Magic Blue is a gift from fellow fountain pen collector Karlo Tatad and it surprised me because of its close resemblance to one of my favorite blue inks, Diamine Majestic Blue. Pelikan Blue-Black is another surprise for me because I did not see any feathering even though it's on a BB nib. I also tried two of my Zebra Sarasas here and they looked good on this cream-colored paper.

Below is the back of the first page with ink tests. Note that there is only minimal bleed which is seen only as tiny blue dots. Again, that's okay. This is still way, way better than the first Daycraft notebook I reviewed last year.

The second page revealed more bleed. Private Reserve Avacado on my no-name Maki-e pen is the one bleeding here (on top), as is Noodler's Midnight Blue (lower part of the page).

Here are some macro shots of the inks on the Juicy notebook paper. I was surprised to see under a 10x loupe that the 1670 ink feathered. But Vert Pré did not, and even showed some shading. 

I love the shading that Saffron produced, as well the Blue Sky; and both CdA inks behaved properly: no feathering, no bleed!

After all is said about this excellent little notebook from Daycraft, I realized I forgot to mention that this Watermelon notebook comes with a felt bookmark instead of the usual ribbon pagemarker - cool! It is shaped as a curled stem of the watermelon fruit. Other notebooks in the Daycraft Juicy line have their own respective bookmarks according to their fruit designs.

And what else is good about this notebook? It is sold here in the Philippines at Scribe Writing Essentials! Daycraft notebooks have been available at Scribe's flagship store in Eastwood Mall since last year, and in several PowerBooks outlets this year.

Daycraft products are also widely available now. Aside from Daycraft's distributors, their products can also be bought in stores from these countries: (click on country name to see retail stores) Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, South Korea, Macau, Poland, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and Thailand.

Ink Review: J. Herbin 1670 Ink

Red was your colour.
If not red, then white. But red
Was what you wrapped around you.
Blood-red. Was it blood?
Was it red-ochre, for warming the dead?
Haematite to make immortal
The precious heirloom bones, the family bones.

- Ted Hughes, 'Red'

Karen Doherty, Exaclair's Marketing VP, surprised me with a box last September. It was completely unexpected, and I jumped like a little kid when I saw the 1670 Anniversary ink, a large Rhodia dotPad, and an anise green blank Habana inside the box all swathed in seemingly endless piece of bubble wrap. I felt very lucky to receive a bottle of this ink because it is a limited edition ink, released early this year to specifically commemorate J. Herbin's 340th founding anniversary.

The J. Herbin Anniversary ink is named 1670 after the year the company was founded. It is also called Rouge Hematite for its color, taken after the mineral hematite (blood ore), which is also the Greek word for blood.

I like the unique design and packaging of this ink. Unlike the other J. Herbin inks, the 1670 Anniversary ink arrived in a new bottle inside a new box. The 1670 comes in square 50ml bottles, with 1670 simply embossed on gold wax to tell its name.

The 1670 Anniversary ink's clear square bottle reminds me a lot of Caran d'Ache ink bottles, but the gold string on the bottle's neck caught under the gold sealing wax (which Stephanie of Biffybeans blog wrote as glue gun wax) adds a touch of elegance into its simplicity.

The gold wax on the bottle, according to the J. Herbin website, is "reminiscent of the wax used for the 'grand cru' wines of France," and all gold wax seals on all 1670 ink bottles are handmade. PaperAndCo.com has a video of this process and it's amusing to see how it's being done: the person assigned to this task puts the gold string on the bottle's neck, pumps the glue gun wax onto the gold string and the bottle, stamps the 1670 on the glue gun wax, cuts the gold string to desired length, and does the whole process again. Cool!

The red wax on the ink bottle's cap is made of official wax cherry, and strongly reminds me of the wax used in cheeses, especially the big queso de bola (Edam cheese) we see in supermarkets around Christmas time here, and get either as gifts from friends or as part of our Christmas grocery package. According to the inital set of reviews, the red wax used for the earlier batch of inks was brittle and crumbled easily, but I received a newer version with a more flexible wax. But all the same, I am very careful when I cap and uncap the bottle. I don't want to destroy the beauty of this ink yet. 

This ink's bottle cap is made of aluminum, and I wished they used the usual hard plastic caps. Then again, wax may not stick to the plastic very well, and so they decided to use aluminum.

The 1670's box is another J. Herbin work of wonder. It has been carefully designed to represent the life of J. Herbin, who was a sailor. The ship, anchor and palm tree represent navigation and discovery; while the crown is a reference to the red sealing wax color used in the royal courts of Europe.

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Rouge Hematite is a unique ink color in the red/orange/brown range, which is my favorite. It has an intense, vibrant, earthy and blood-red color that is reminiscent of the historical J. Herbin logo and the sealing wax used in the royal courts of previous eras.
 
The 1670 ink has the same qualities of J. Herbin inks I have tried in the past. It has smooth flow, good lubrication, shading and of course, excellent color. However, it is very, very saturated compared to other J. Herbin inks.

For a larger photo click here.

I used a Rotring ArtPen with 1.5 italic nib for the calligraphy, and my white Schneider Base with a firm medium nib for my written review. The grid notebook is from Saizen, which took the inking very well. There is no feathering and bleed for both of the pens I used. Notice the difference in color and shading for the two pens.

The poem I wrote using the 1.5 italic nib looks a brighter red, with more evident orange hues.

The text I wrote using the medium nib looks a darker red, though.

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And now here are some macro shots. I hope the images below captured the gold in the letters I wrote, especially where more ink was placed on paper.  

Below is the 1670 ink in comparison with other red inks: Diamine Poppy Red (dries a bright red), Camel Scarlet Red (dries a pinkish red), Parker Super Quink Red (dries a pale red), J. Herbin Rouge Opera (not a true red, but dries a beautiful rose red), and Diamine Oxblood (a dark, dark blood-red color). The 1670 ink is the stand-out color in the group, its reddish somewhat brownish-earthy-golden color is a winner!

I mentioned earlier that the 1670 ink is a highly saturated ink. This may be a problem among left-hand writers because this property makes it such a slow-drying ink. I used the Base pen on Rhodia paper for this test, and though several factors may have contributed to drying time, the 1670 is undeniably a slow-drying ink to be 'almost dry' at 1 minute 30 seconds.

I tried writing with the 1670 ink on different papers from several notebooks I got. Below are several pictures of them.

I am so in love with this ink I have been using it on three different pens since I got it. I love the color, shading and the tiny gold flecks I see when I look closely at the dried ink on paper. But this is a limited edition ink, said to be produced only this year, and I hope that J. Herbin will include this ink into their regular production.

Aside from the 1670 Anniversary ink, J. Herbin also offers 30 more inks in beautiful colors. These water-based inks are non-toxic, have neutral pH and manufactured using natural dyes. Dowload a printable PDF of the J. Herbin fountain pen ink swatches here.

A 50ml bottle of the 1670 Anniversary ink sells for US$20 at the Goulet Pen Company, and will soon be available at Scribe Writing Essentials here in the Philippines. (I have no affiliation with either companies, though.)

The 1670 Anniversary ink used in this review is courtesy of Exaclair, Inc. through Karen Doherty, as well as the Rhodia pad. Daycraft notebook courtesy of Foreal Lee of Daycraft, and Reecovid notepad courtesy of Ingrid Savill of Reecovid. The Pukka notebook and two pens used in this review all belong to my personal collection.