Link Love: The Perfect Pencils

Posts of the Week:

I confess the Post of the week was going to self-indulgent and feature Ken Crooker’s very flattering review about the Col-o-ring Ink Testing Books (I swear I did not put him up to writing it!) Instead, I want to point you to some lovely articles over at CW Pencils about the history of pencils and a little behind-thie-scenes about the making of Caroline’s recently released book The Perfect Pencil. If you haven’t purchased the book yet, you can order it directly from CW Pencil Enterprise and have it signed by Caroline too!

Pens:

Ink:

Pencils:

Paper, Notebooks & Planners:

Art Supplies:

Other Interesting Things:

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5 comments / Add your comment below

  1. You’re so modest! Your Col-o-ring books are pretty awesome. Question, though: I was flipping through some swabs, must have had some moisture on one of my fingers, and smeared one a little. Happens to me with most papers when using non-water-resistant inks. Do you ever treat your swabs with any sort of sealing spray to prevent that? I figure if I’m going to be flipping these around, non-bulletproof inks may smear from time to time…would be cool to seal it with something to keep that from happening. Any thoughts?

    1. Someone else actually asked if I went back and rewet my samples to see how water resistant they were.

      If you wanted to seal samples, you could try an art supply acrylic matte fixative. I recommend doing one swatch as a test and compare to the same color without fixative to see if the color shifts at all. Some fixative sprays can cause colors to yellow. Then leave both samples to sit for a couple weeks and compare again. Be sure to leave samples out of direct sunlight so your inks don’t fade.

      1. Thank you, Ana. I didn’t even think about the fixative potentially causing discoloration. That would be bad. I’ll have to run a test or two and see how it works out. Thanks for the tips!

  2. Your links to CW Pencil made me peruse their store, and after some emails with Caitlin, I made my first premium pencil purchase. Her customer service was outstanding, extremely helpful, kind, and prompt. Thanks for sending us to great people like this!

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