Fountain Pen Friendly Notebooks For School (or When You're on a Budget)

One of the "next stages" of discovering fountain pens is that you realize that fountain pens don't work the same on different kinds of paper. There's office copy paper or school exam paper that can be too absorbent and your ink can feather and bleed all over. If you're stuck using what you're using, you can try a finer nib or maybe a different ink, but sometimes you just want your fountain pen ink to look like fountain pen ink. We get asked about cheap fountain pen friendly notebooks quite often. It's sometimes from students who are also paying tuition and textbooks and trying to get a meal in every once in a while, but it's also from people who write a lot and maybe don't necessarily want something expensive if they're just scribbling or doodling or writing for fun, or maybe even just trying out fountain pen friendly paper for the first time to see if it will really make a difference (it will!). We have one customer who writes in her journal every night and then throws out her journals when she finishes them, and I'm pretty sure she's not using Webnotebooks :)

With back-to-school, we figured this would be a great time to bring in some new affordable fountain pen friendly notebooks, whether you're a student or you're just looking for a good notebook. (Please bear in mind, when I say these are budget friendly, I mean relative to other fountain pen friendly paper offerings. These aren't going to be as inexpensive as the lower quality spiral bound notebooks from local big box stores, but these are pretty reasonably priced notebooks in general, and you can't beat Clairefontaine paper for fountain pens.) We've got some new Clairefontaine notebooks, all with the same 90gsm white paper that we know and love from our favourite French paper maker. Favourite?? I don't know. One of our favourites. Top ten for sure ;)

These notebooks are staple bound and with a durable, water-resistant polypro cover, which is great for handling some rain on the way to class, or being used as a coaster. 96 pages, 90gsm white paper, and available in A4 ($6 CAD) or A5 ($4 CAD). Like almost all Clairefontaine notebooks, these come to us in assorted colours of blue, yellow, red and green. You can leave a comment if you have a colour preference, although we can't always guarantee it.

We also got these new Clairefontaine A5 Pocket Notebooks, which is divided into three sections, with each section ending with a card stock divider with pockets on both sides. Spiral bound, 120 pages/60 sheets, an elastic closure, 90gsm white paper and assorted colours for $12 CAD. As a bonus, this notebook has perforated pages for clean tearing.

And we're now also carrying these large, A4 wire bound notebooks, with 180 pages/90 sheets, for $12 CAD. This is the notebook for when you want to take lots and lots of notes.