What would you do if you spied a real wood covered journal with an exposed coptic-style binding and a whopping 400 pages just languishing on the table at your corporate card shop? You wouldn’t just leave it there, would you? I didn’t. I grabbed it faster than a discounted flat-screen TV on Black Friday.
Real wood covers! Silkscreen stars! Blank paper! If I didn’t know better, you’d think I was on the design team. (I wasn’t.)
Look at all that paper!
Lay flat!
This journal from Plum & Punch. It’s inelegantly called the “Wood Cover Journal With Exposed Spine, White Celestial Design”. I’m going to call it the Celestial Print Wood Journal because THAT other thing is a mouthful. And this beauty was only $20 for 400 pages of what felt like pretty thick paper so I was willing to take a chance on it.
In my first round of writing tests, which I literally did the minute I got back to my desk (shhhh, don’t tell on me! It was Friday afternoon.) started off remarkably well but when I got to the fountain pens I had some dry time issues. I couldn’t figure out if I was just impatient, if it was the inks I was using or if it was just really humid in the office.
From the flip side of the paper though, there was no show through and no bleed through. Can you see a couple little tiny dots? I think its from the Decimo. That’s it. Pretty impressive.
Later, I tested some other pens and had no drying issues. So… huh? Weirdness.
And then I did some colored pencil and even added a bit of water because, why not? The paper tacoed right away but it was in no way designed for wet media. Still, it did not get those little pills so that was a bonus.
The nice thing about having a reasonably priced notebook with a metric ton of paper is I don’t feel badly about just turning the page and using another sheet. I am loving this book and I don’t really know why. Sometimes, a notebook just strikes a chord.
You can see the waffling effect from my water application but also how many pages I’ve already churned through in a few days. Might need some sort of book band to flatten it out a bit.
There are other journals available from Plum & Punch if this might be your thing too. If you want to see these in person, check out your local Hallmark Gold Crown store.
This product was purchased from my company store. Plum & Punch is a subsidiary of Hallmark Cards, Inc., the kind folks that keep in health insurance and cat food. I was not asked to write this review nor compensated in anyway to write it. See my About page for more info.
Gotta love those unexpected finds!