Hi,

I just received an order of goodies from Nota-Bene and wanted to share a description of them with you:

1. Maruman Mnemosyne TO DO pad - a small reporter type note pad with a detachable writing area of 85 mm wide x 140 mm long; formatted in a TO DO list style - 6 items per page that are 20 mm in width,
2. Maruman Mnemosyne journal - small journal with a detachable writing area of 137mm wide x 210 mm long - each page has a heading with date and title; lines have width of 7mm,
3. Behance Dot Grid Book - 50 sheet double sided, 80lb premium, 8.5" x 10.5" paper in a geometric dot matrix - no lines or boxes so you can write/sketch as big or as little as you want! Russell has a whole bunch of Behance goodies but the Dot Grid Book really caught my attention! Wow, it is even neater that it looks!
4. Behance Action Cards - package of 30, 3"x5" cards. front - bright orange lines to capture to dos/action items and the back - geometric dot matrix,
5. Russell also sells this wonderful Maruman loose leaf paper packages of 50, B5 size - 7"x10", punched, in different line widths and formats (lined/grid), as well as a heavy vinyl "binder" to put them in. Such terrific paper and the flexibility to choose your format - just fabulous!,
6. Maruman also makes these neat B5 size "sept couleur" notebooks - translucent vinyl type cover in 7 colours (mine is blue), I think this has 80 sheets in it as well,
7. The always cool Rhodia reverse books in black and orange - 21cm x 21 cm, 80 sheets of grid paper,
8. A nice bright orange coloured Atoma copy-book, A5 - 6 1/2"x 8 1/8", 72 lined sheets, and lastly,
9. An Arbos journal - 100% recycled paper and recycled leather cover! 6" x 8 1/4".

I obviously have not had a chance to try my different pens and inks on these different papers but I will make note of how they do as I use them.

The main point of this is that Russell at Nota-Bene has just about anything and everything that I have ever wanted and tremendous service. No affiliation, just an insanely happy and loyal customer.

Wow! What a boon! The price is right too? Thanks for this. What does "a detachable writing area" mean?

Would you believe we've added a stop in Montreal to our summer vacation trip--primarily so I can go to Papeterie Nota Bene again? Don't get me wrong, Montreal is a terrific city, but we don't usually visit cities on our summer trips. However, I liked the store so much last time… And I hate to pay shipping costs.

I too confess... we added a stop at Nota Bene on our way home from vacationing in the Ayers Cliff, QC area. It was heaven to see the store in person and to meet Russell!

When we cleared customs driving back, the US Border Agent looked at my receipt and said, "You bought paper?"

I have not had the pleasure of visiting the store and meeting Russell in person, although we have had a number of conversations over the phone (as in me ordering paper). Every time I look at Russell's on-line store, I seem to find something different - something that I have not tried or seen before. This time the Maruman Mnemosyne stuff - apparently Mnemosyne was the Greek goddess of memory as well as the Sept couleur notebooks and loose leaf pages - just amazing and the Behance items - this Dot Grid Book is just so cool - and Behance has a whole raft of material on the net at www.behance.com . The prices are always very good.

Russell is such a nice person to deal with and his service has no equal, imho.

It's too bad that the postage charges for some of you are too much. Perhaps because mine is a domestic Canadian shipment they are less - although that is a relative term, I think they are still high if you were to compare them to a US equivalent. Anyway, you get used to them after a while and the best way that we deal with them is to combine orders with friends/pen club members . In other words, I am a member of a pen club and every time we want to order something, whether from Canada or the US, we check with each other and then combine our orders so that we have one large order. The postage charges are spread across a larger number of items; while the total cost increases but everyone's individual share is less than it would be if they ordered on their own.

A detachable writing area is just my (unusual?) way of saying that the journal page, whatever, is perforated and can be removed.

You should see the looks in the eyes of the customs/border agents on both sides of the border whenever we are going to/coming home from a pen show and they ask where we are going/where we have been and we say "pen show". One time one of the agents actually asked what the most expensive pen in the world was - of course, none of us knew the answer (though let me say that some of us had a far better idea than others!) and neither did the agent; they were just trolling for information as far as I could tell.

Just wanted to add my thoughts on Russell's excellent service! He is a pleasure to deal with, no doubt I'd stop by his store if ever in the area. MikeW, that's quite a collection of paper to try out. Have fun!

R.

Ah, thank you! I thought perhaps this was a system-type journal in which parts could be switched around.