Review: Mon Carnet des Poche (Pocket Notebook)

I was enticed into ordering the Mon Carnet des Poche notebook thanks to my pal Carolee of Good Mail Day‘s sly tweet. I found that Kate’s Paperie in NY carried the notebook and I placed my order the same day. Knowing nothing of the book other than a TwitPic, it was a treat when it arrived.

It’s a B5 (approx 7″x10″) notebook that has simple cardstock covers with book cloth along the spine. The covers are not thick so the book is a little floppy, especially since it boast over 250 pages. Inside, the paper is three different styles: 112 pages of lined, 64 pages in brown kraft grid and the112 pages of blank sheets with perforations along the spine and in the middle of the sheet to create B6 (approx 5″x7″) note sheets.

The name of the book is stamped on the bookcloth spine in gold foil.

There is a little discrepancy in the trimming along the edges. You can also see the distribution of paper. There isn’t nearly as much of the kraft paper as the lined and the blank sheets.

The grid lines are printed in black and are very tiny.

The lines are spaced like wide-ruled (approx 7mm) and printed in a light grey.

The back section of the book is micro-perfed. In order to tear out a sheet, fold on the perf to crease is a couple times and then it should easily tear out.

In writing tests, the lined and blank paper is identical. Its a light ivory color and has a pleasing weight and tooth to it. The paper performed admirably. I had a little show-through but all the fountain pens I tried did not bleed or feather, nor did the paper resist the inks. Pencil and fine gel pens also wrote lovely on the stock. Because of the slight paper color and the grey lines, some tools were a touch to light for good, clean readability but overall I’m quite pleased with the lined/blank papers.

The kraft paper posed a bit of a challenge. Its a dark kraft color with black grid marks… whatever could I do with this? I decided that it was best suited to more artistic pursuits like opaque gel pens, oil pastels, watercolor, colored pencil and watercolor crayons. These pages are a little heavier weight so they would also be excellent places to glue, tape or staple ephemera or other collage projects. The watercolor warped the paper a little bit but not too severely.

I like that, for travel, I could carry just this one notebook and be able to journal my trip (lined paper), collage ticket stubs and other ephemera (kraft paper) and have scratch paper to jot notes or write letters (perforated, blank stock).

The large B5 size is available from Kate’s Paperie for $17. A smaller edition (5.2″5×7.5″) is also available for $10.