Notebook Review: Catherine Pooler Canvo Journal

Review by Laura Cameron

Last month I had the chance to attend the Association for Creative Industries’ Creativation conference. Creativation is an industry trade show geared towards creative businesses and includes everything from knitting and needle arts, to cardmaking, stamping, scrapbooking and other papercrafts, to sewing, macrame, craft supply organizing and more! I spent some time in the Catherine Pooler Designs booth (primarily stamping arts) and fell in love with their Doodle Garden Canvo Bullet Journal ($24.95).

While I don’t keep a bullet journal, I was impressed by the beautiful thick paper designed for stamping and water-based markers. The durable plastic covers, spiral binding, and numbered dot-grid pages appealed to my list making senses, and that beautiful paper seemed perfect for fountain pen inks!

The journal gets right down to business with a first page where you can fill out your name and dates, and then there is a lovely doodle design that you can color or just use for inspiration. Then we jump right into the numbered pages (150 in the whole book)

As I said, I don’t really bullet journal, but this notebook seems like it could fit a variety of needs – build your own calendar, keep track of your ever growing to do list, record your daily musings or doodles, track goals or anything your heart desires.

I wasn’t able to find a specs on the paper, but I can say that the paper is gorgeously thick, and seems perfect for fountain pen ink. I didn’t notice any sheening, but there’s ZERO ghosting. None. At all.

That makes my Type A heart burst! (I really hate ghosting but often just live with it.) I don’t have any stamps (yet!) but I do plan to acquire some and test them out in here. And I think I may have found my newest pen show journal for testing all the pens and swabbing all the inks!