Tools of the Trade: Ink Review - Callifolio Yalumba

As much a writing enthusiast as I am, I had not heard much about Callifolio inks until recently. They're manufactured by L'artisan Pastellier, a French ink and calligraphy tool producer, and have had a good reputation amongst the lucky few who were able to try them over the last several years. They've been notoriously hard to source in the U.S, but not anymore.

Vanness Pens is carving a niche sourcing hard-to-get international inks and making them available to the American market. Callifolio is the latest to crawl ashore and pick up citizenship on their vast ink shelf. Vanness graciously provided me this ink in exchange for an honest review. Since I don't know how to do them any other way, I was happy to oblige.

The first thing I noticed about the ink was that it is in the exact same bottle as the Diamine 150th Anniversary inks. I opened up the bottle of Yalumba and saw instantly a similarity to Diamine Terracotta, a standout from the Diamine 150th Anniversary set. I wondered if maybe it was a rebottled Diamine ink, since Diamine has been known to allow retailers to relabel their inks. I checked them out side by side and saw that while they're part of a similar color family, they're definitely not the same ink. From what I've been able to glean about L'artisan Pastellier, they take pride in formulating their own inks, which they state are Ph neutral and ideal for fountain pens.

I would say right away that I would not fear putting this ink in an expensive pen. It is not highly saturated, and doesn't cling to plastic or metal. It knows what it is there to do, and does so with little fuss. I do like that in an ink (though sometimes the fussy ones are worth it).

I started out writing with my Sailor 1911s with H-MF nib. The Sailor has a very rigid, fine nib with a small sweet-spot that can seem to be scratchy at first if you're not accustomed to it. Even with my overwhelmingly positive relationship with this pen and the miles of paper we've covered together, I couldn't shake the scratchy feeling. The ink is very thin and doesn't give much cushion to ride on. I am not blaming the pen--I imagine any fine nib you use will have similar results. The ink itself appeared to be rather light and unsaturated, but I was pleased to see that it went down legibly even in such a fine nib.

I switched to my Lamy Al-Star with medium nib. This is an exceptionally smooth, cooperative German medium nib, which is significantly broader than the Japanese medium-fine I had been using on the Sailor. Right away, I experienced a much cushier ride. The broader nib also gave the ink a chance to show off its superpower: shading.

I really enjoy the color of this ink, which is somewhere between a brown and an amber, but part of the fun of a lighter color is the shading that can be developed to add character to your writing. This ink has character in spades, and I'm looking forward to trying it out in a flex nib. I have a feeling it will be stunning (though my unskilled flex lettering will leave much to be desired).

Check out my handwritten review of this cool boutique ink, and if you like what you see, you can find many more like it at Vanness Pens.

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Tools of the Trade: Poopoopaper Panda Poo Journal

On a trip to the Memphis Zoo last year, I ducked into the gift shop with Husband and my friend. They meandered around, trying on safari hats and sunglasses, smugly ignoring all the snake memorabilia hiding on the shelves. I do not like snakes, remember? So, that left me creeping around the aisles, holding my breath and steeling myself so I could walk past the big display of plush snake stuffed animals (ages 3+). I was quickly becoming a nervous wreck and needed something to focus on so I could bide my time in safety.

My sixth sense kicked in and I finally located a panda-adorned table full of books, pens, and paper. There were no snakes anywhere near it, and no one else was standing there. Plus, PANDAS! Perfect.

The table was piled high with these:

They were made with panda poo.

Like, poo from actual pandas. Like this one, who posed so nicely for me:

He's making new raw paper material right now.

Naturally, I had to have one.

The manufacturer, Poopoopaper (their webstore is called the "Pootique"), uses the back cover to assure me that the poo in question was sifted for bamboo fibers, which were washed and sterilized before processing, ensuring an environmentally sound and odorless writing experience. Uh huh. Let's hope so.

There is good craftsmanship in this notebook. The cover is adorable. It is well-made and quite artful, especially the inset panda portrait with an origami-style plant for it to munch.  It does not smell like poo of any kind, unless Panda poo already smells like paper. I kinda doubt that.

I was not expecting this paper to be good for use with fountain pens, which are pretty much all I ever use. The paper is thick and spongy feeling, like most handmade pulp papers. Of course, that didn't stop me from giving it a try.

It went a bit better than I expected, and wasn't entirely unpleasant. It was obviously a bad pen and paper match--it was rough and there was plenty of feathering and "ink-bloat"--but I still found a lot to like about the paper. It is as soft and thick as the cover led me to believe. The front side is "smoother" but that is like saying my cat's tongue is smoother than 40-grit sandpaper. It is smattered with little fibers throughout. Fibers that came from poo.

The back side of the paper is quite different. It has a uniform "grid" pattern embedded into it from the paper manufacturing process. This type of paper is not press rolled like most commercial papers, but is dried on a screen, creating this unique pattern. I don't believe the notebook is designed for writing on both sides of the page, but I can't help myself. I hate wasting paper.

I tried the paper with a gel pen as well. I used the fake Mont Blanc someone gave my husband for free loaded with a Parker Gel refill. It's normally a nice writer, but I had a similar nagging fear that the tip of the pen was about to clog up with fibers.

Then came pencil. It is hard to go wrong with a pencil since they're fairly indestructible. If I'd had the right pencil in my hand, I might have found it a little more pleasant, but in this case, the one I had was a little light and hard for this paper. It dug into the soft paper and produced much too faint a line for my liking.

The best pen for the job on this particular paper, as I'm pained to admit, is an old fashioned paste-ink, 39¢ ballpoint pen.

The ballpoint matches pleasantly with the soft paper, and the lines are dark and easy. This paper makes for one of the better ballpoint pen experiences I've had, actually, mostly due to the pleasant sinking of the pen into the paper. It reminds me of when I used to flip over my mom's floppy plastic and rubber placemats when I was a kid and doodle on the backs of them. (Yes, I eventually got caught.) I thought I'd be as nagged by the fear of clogging the tip as I was with the gel pen, but for some reason, it wasn't a factor. It just didn't scratch into the paper as much.

On the whole, this is a nice notebook if you're not picky about your writing instruments. It is cute, it is quirky, it is well-made, and it is made of poo. How can you top that?