It's very hard to know. After all, the two go hand in hand and if I were to change one, the other might become an issue. For a little while now, I've been carving stamps to liven up boring stationery to write letters to friends with. (Side note: if you'd like to send me your address, please do go ahead. I would love to write to you.) I fell off a bit when the whole "moving to another country" thing happened. Actually, let me not lie here, I fell off a bit before that. Regardless, my point still stands, as the only point I'm trying to make here is that it is a thing that I do. Why is it so much more difficult to write the first paragraph of a blog post about paper than it is to write those silly stream of consciousness ones? I digress.
I don't know if you're into fountain pens or paper or whatnot, so I'll assume you're not and just give you the background information. And the background to my specific situation. Fountain pen ink is very different from the ink in, say, a ballpoint pen. Rather than sitting on top of the paper, it seeps much deeper into the paper. In Germany, it is very common for people to use fountain pens, as they're required in school, so a lot of notebooks and paper options you can buy here are much more fountain pen friendly than they are in the US. In the US, you really have to be particular about what it is you're buying if you're going to be writing with a fountain pen, and you can find some random notebooks/writing pads/etc. that are great for it and others that you think would be good that really just aren't. I don't particularly like to write in Moleskine notebooks with fountain pens, but I've had random legal pads before that work well. Do I still write in Moleskine notebooks with a fountain pen from time to time? Of course.
I ran out of the stationery my mom had gotten me for Christmas years ago probably around this time last year. Maybe a few months later. That was the catalyst for all of this. I had a very specific image in my head of what sort of stationery I wanted to buy, if I was going to spend money on it, and I just couldn't find anything that was up to par and in my price range. I found everything worthwhile to be too expensive and everything within my price range to be ugly. Also, I wanted very specific things like stationery with bleeding hearts (they're my favorite flower) and snails and the like. Not necessarily impossible to find, but just difficult enough to put me off. And what if I found beautiful, affordable stationery and then the paper was poor quality and didn't do well with fountain pen ink? As silly as it is, this was a multi-day dilemma. It haunted me. I went down a number of Etsy rabbit holes and accidentally almost paid $10 for a couple sheets of Soviet era stationery at one point. I would highly recommend searching the word "ephemera" on Etsy.
Anyway. I had decided that, if nobody else was going to do it for me, I would simply have to make my own stationery to my liking. I'd learned in an art class once in middle or high school about lino printing and had just done it for the first time since with only my vague memory of how to do it to guide me. That was totally enough because, as I'm sure you know, it is extremely self explanatory. The important thing to note here is that I decided I was too lazy to use actual ink and a roller so I've just been using ink pads for stamps this whole entire time.
Paper! Finally! The thing I said this was all about. By this point, I was in Utah with my older sibling, who is extremely into pens and paper and calligraphy. I am more interested in it than the average person, sure, but I defer to them on any and all related questions. I tried out the paper they have, didn't like it, and ordered some other ones for myself.
They had two A5 tablets (no, I'm not being a weirdo calling them tablets, that is what they're called) and I'm fairly certain one was the G. Lalo Verge de France and the other was the Original Crown Mill Classic Laid. I'm 100% sure of the brands but not sure if they were exactly those or some other similar products, I'm basing them off of what's currently available on the Goulet Pens website because that's where they buy most of their writing stuff from. What I found was that both of those had a bit too much tooth for my liking. I prefer a smooooooth writing experience. Based on that, we went onto the Goulet website and compared and just chose what seemed, based on the reviews, to match what I wanted. I ended up with a tablet of the Clairefontaine Triomphe and the Original Crown Mill Pure Cotton, also both A5 tablets. I bought the matching Clairefontaine envelopes but not the Original Crown Mill (it felt silly to buy cotton envelopes and my sibling had some regular ones from the brand that I took).
Paper 1: Clairefontaine Triomphe
This one is a regular pulp paper (I'm not sure that that's what it's actually called, but that's what I call it). If you've ever used a Rhodia (they're sister companies or owned by the same company or one is a subset of the other, I can't remember) notebook or pad, you've got an idea as to the texture. It's extremely smooth and sometimes you feel as though you can't think or write fast enough for how quickly your pen sails across the page. This paper is stark, stark white.
The envelopes have a straight across flap and are peel and seal envelopes.
Paper 2: Original Crown Mill Pure Cotton
When I say cotton, I mean cotton. I know, I know, I know. It seems ridiculous. This paper is seriously so nice though. It's extremely smooth and homogenous while still having the tiniest bit of tooth. It feels so crisp. I could go on and on and on. The paper is a bit of a warmer white. Ever so slightly off-white. Not in a way that I would say should make them brand it as off white, but still. It is embossed with the Original Crown Mill branding, which I ideally wouldn't have, but you can't win them all. The Clairefontaine Triomphe is not embossed.
The envelopes (regular, not cotton) have an angled flap and are gummed.
I only have one fountain pen with me in Germany and that's my LAMY Safari, which I'm using with the LAMY T53 Crystal Ink in a color I can't remember the name of. Isn't that embarrassing? Looking online, it seems that the closest match is azurite, but that has shimmer so I don't think that's it. Oh well. I'll leave a note here if I ever do figure it out. This ink I'm using is a true blue, which is different from what I'm used to. I used to religiously use the LAMY blue/black ink until I decided one day that I was over it and that I was now into true blue and true black.
The ink pads I'm using at the moment for the stamps are the Ranger Archival Ink, which I got at the stamp shop near my job. I wonder if it's the only stamp shop in all of Berlin as it is the first stamp shop I've ever heard of existing.
