I’ve been in a muted, subtle, nature-inspired color vibe lately. When I stumbled across the Stabilo Boss Original Textmarker in the NatureColors 6-pen set ($14.70), it seemed like a great chance to expand my palette of potential nature vibe colors.
I can’t remember if I’ve ever owned a Stabilo Boss Textmarker in the past. I might have had one classic yellow highlighter back in college but its been a long time since I’ve held one in my hand.
I forget how much I like the unique form factor. The flat, wide barrel shape is comfortable and doesn’t roll off the table. It just feels nice in the hand and since many people end up holding these for a long time while reading and highlighting, its nice that you want to hold it.
The set has six muted tones. The colors are only listed by number on each marker: 175 (terra cotta), 163 (greyish blue), 186 (sand), 165 (brown), 137 (moss green), and 193 (greige) . The names in parenthesis are names I’ve given to the colors. The official names are: Beige (sand), Earth Green(moss green), Mud Green, Sienna (terra cotta), Umber (brown), and Warm Grey (greige) but I don’t find them particularly descriptive. Its not important but I hope my names will give you a better idea of the colors, in case the screen images aren’t entirely accurate.
I really like these colors. There isn’t one I’d kick out of bed. And I’m surprised because I tend to avoid sets of just about anything because there’s always one or two colors that I don’t like for one reason or another. But the NatureColors set? Chef’s kiss!
The colors are beautiful and will be fantastic for any annotating I might want to do but I was curious how these would work if I was highlighting over pen in my journal or planner?
So, I wrote with a bunch of pens to test out how well these would work over fountain pen, felt/fiber tip, gel pens, pencil and various other pens.
In the photo above, stars next to the color are good highlight candidates. There was a little with some gel pens. Of course, fountain pen inks which are also water-based smeared more than anything else, except for Diamine Ghost which was surprising. Most of the fiber/felt tip fineliners were good. Pencil and Jetstream were also great. I wouldn’t highlight pages of text and paper choices will effect your results so I’d test in the back of your journal or planner before highlighting on your pages, just in case.
Overall, the Stabilo Boss pens worked pretty well with pens for highlighting. Its great with printed text like textbooks, magazines or other printed matter. The colors are gorgeous and the form factor is unique and appealing. I don’t have a lot bad to say about these. I’m low-key in love with these markers.
DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by JetPens for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.
