NatStatWeek- My favourite stationery: Pens!!

It's National Stationery Week in the UK!! I think it should be international really, so everyone around the world, come and join us celebrating!!

 

To celebrate, I am doing a series of blog posts this week, showing you my favourite stationery items!

Today: Pens! 

I really love pens, they are some of the greatest tools for me. Besides paper and my laptop, I really can't think of anything else that I NEED for my working life (university included), hobbies, projects and personal life. 

I really think that pens are some of the best things to invest in. I don't mind using poor quality paper, cheap sticky notes etc, but pens are something I prefer to spend money on to buy quality. If you buy cheap pens which are of poor quality, you could end up with a pot full of pens that don't work well, and feel obliged to use them up. But if you buy quality, those pens will last you ages, won't dry up, won't fade, etc etc. And you will enjoy using them!

My aim is to get rid of all my cheapy pens (I recently gave loads of cheap biros to my mum, who doesn't care about good stationery, she will use anything!!), and only have great quality pens that I actually need!

Some pens I don't really like, e.g. gel pens, which always skip for me :(

My favourites!

Fountain pens:

Lamy Safari Aquamarine, Safari Pink, Al-Star Raspberry, Vista, Safari Apple Green, a Waterman pen, Rosetta Magellan, and Parker Urban Pink. (I also have a Al-Star in Purple, but I can't find it at the moment!)

I LOVE Lamy fountain pens, specifically Lamy Safari, Al-Star and Vista. I have a couple of more expensive fountain pens, and some more on my wishlist, but I love my Lamys more than any of them! They are lightweight, pretty colours, I love the design, and the strong clip! I have to have quite lightweight pens because I only have small hands. The Parker and Rosetta pens are too heavy for me, so they make my hand hurt and my writing poor- but the Lamys are perfect.

My other favourite writing pen:

Uniball Eye Micro in black!
I use this when I'm not using my fountain pens. I love it because it is a great writer, it never skips (ever!), it doesn't tend to bleed through cheap paper (including Filofax paper), it's permanent and it's waterproof, which means you can use a highlighter over it and the ink won't run!

More lovely pens:

A Vera Bradley ballpoint pen from the lovely Kristin; a big chunky resin/glass ballpoint pen I bought years ago from The Works; a pretty Swarovski lilac ballpoint I won from Karina; a Hello Kitty Liberty ballpoint; and an Egyptian Exhibition souvenir ballpoint pen from The British Museum where the mummified body moves through the Book of the Dead's judgement scene to the sarcophagus as you tilt the pen!!

Favourite coloured pens:

Stabilo Point 88s in the pen wrap my mum helped me make!
I love these pens, the colours are so vibrant and they work great for my colour-coding! They bleed through cheaper paper a tiny bit, but it's worth it :)

Multi-coloured pens:

Pilot Coleto Lumio with black, blue, red and pencil inserts (I have a pink Coleto with green, light blue, purple and pink, but I can't find it at the moment!); Muji 3-colour plus pencil multi-pen; Zebra 4-colour pen; Bic Fashion 4-colour pen.

More coloured pens:

This tin pot contains lots of assorted coloured pens, including my favourite felt-tip pens, from Crayola; sparkly gel pens; two more Muji multi-coloured pens, and some more coloured biros :)


Tune in for more posts this week about my other favourite stationery items! 

It's a dream, but a lovely one! My hypothetical stationary shop! :D

If I could set up my own business, I would have an online stationary shop!

I would sell the best stationary around. Not the most expensive, but the most efficient, practical, and best value for money stuff out there! I would specialise in things going out of production, stocking up where I can so I can supply them to people who couldn't buy them originally!
Unfortunately I don't have a business head at all! So I would hire people who could deal with all that, but I would be Head Buyer! And I would hire my Philofaxy friends!
And Philofaxy people and my blog readers would get a discount!

These are the things I would stock:

Filofaxes! Of course! I'd sell all of them, but focus on ones going out of production, or already out of production, so that people could have the chance to own them when they normally couldn't. I would buy them off ebay and amazon and anywhere else I could, and put them up on the website. I would also buy them off people who were trying to get rid of them. Stocks would be limited, as these are the rarer ones, and for these it would be a first-come, first-served basis. People could also request certain filofaxes- if I find one, and you're first on the list, it's yours! I'd also sell inserts, refills and accessories! And people who make inserts and dividers etc could sell through my store!

Notebooks- Moleskine, Paperblanks, Clairfontaine, Rhodia, etc. I love notebooks, they can become such a part of you! I'd especially try to stock ones available in other countries, but not in Britain, so GB people could get their hands on them!

Pens-
Lamy! I LOVE Lamy!! Safaris, Al-Stars; fountain pens, ball-points, pencils; converters, nibs...
Multi-pens
Pens to fit in tight Filofax pen loops
Bottles of fountain pen ink- I love the traditional way of filling a fountain pen, and all the brilliant colours! I use Parker and Waterman bottled inks at the moment, and I would stock those, and Diamine, which has an AMAZING array of colours!!!
And everything in between in the pen world!

Pencils-
I LOVE mechanical pencils, and my favourite is Kuru Toga! I would also sell other types of mechanical and normal pencils of course!

Post-it notes-
Pretty coloured ones, cool shapes, different sizes, lined, squared, pretty designs, super-sticky...

Kawaii stationary- love love LOVE!!! Hello Kitty etc!

Anyway, this is all a pipe-dream!! But if I had the opportunity, this would be my business!!

Hope you are all having a great Christmas!!!