Pastellini – a tin of colour!

Pastellini Colour Pencils
Pastellini is a set of 98 small colour pencils housed in a cylindrical tin, made by Seletti in Italy.

The tin has a lid with a clear cutout to see the many colourful pencils.

Pastellini Colour Pencils

The pencils are quite small and round – making them more of an amusement than a practical tool. Still, they look great, and really brighten up a desk.

There aren’t 98 different colours – there is considerable duplication. And the leads are quite waxy, with weak colours.
Pastellini Colour Pencils

They were $11.95 at a bookstore. That’s about 12 cents a pencil!

Fabriano Classic Artist’s Journal

Fabriano Classic Artist's Journal
Fabriano is possibly the world’s most distinguished paper mill, with roots dating to the 13th century. It created the paper that Michelangelo and many other greats used.

One of their many current products is the Fabriano Classic Artist’s Journal, a paper journal with various formats. All are 192 sheets of toothy, mould-made (Ingres) 90 g/m2 paper.

I have the small version (12cmx16cm) with twelve alternating sleeves of white and cream paper. Alternately, there is a version with the twelve sleeves each a different colour! These journals are very nicely made. There is also a larger 16cmx21cm version.
Fabriano Classic Artist's Journal
They seem expensive, but they’re actually in the same range as the Moleskine, which tells me that one of these brands is overpriced. Guess which?

Felt tip pen, charcoal, pastel, and chalk all lay down very nicely. The tooth of the paper loves these media.
Fabriano Classic Artist's Journal
Overall, it’s a great product, and I’m looking forward to trying the other formats.

Exacompta Bloc Faf – Retro Office Excellence

The Exacompta Bloc Faf
The Exacompta Bloc Faf is a cool retro inspired pad of paper held together with real metal bolts and washers. People just adore this pad of paper when they see it. It has a mid-20th century styling (think Perry Mason and Della Street) while being incredibly sturdy and useful.

It stays put on a desk, with the underside having five rubbery feet. A bloc of two hundred sheets is deposited on two metal spokes, and held in place with a metal bar and two washers. The metal does corrode a bit over time.
The Exacompta Bloc Faf
It will definitely get double-takes in an office – yet it is in no way fancy or overdone – just great design.

A nice “upgrade” I recently discovered is that it can take quadrillé (graph paper) refills! I’ve got one waiting to jump into service.
The Exacompta Bloc Faf
Recommended without reservation!

Koh-I-Noor Hardmuth Triograph 1830 pencil

Koh-I-Noor Hardmuth Triograph 1830 pencil
The Koh-I-Noor Triograph is an unusual offering. The oversized triangular shape along with the rich stained wood finish make these pencils seem like small pieces of furniture.

The pencil diameter is 10.5mm, and the core a very wide 6mm. It weighs 11 grams. To contrast this with other large triangular pencils, here are some statistics (all values approximate):

Pencil Weight Diameter Core Sharpened Cap
Koh-I-Noor Triograph 11.2g 10.5mm 6mm yes finished
Faber-Castell Jumbo Grip 7.3g 9mm 3mm yes unfinished
Dixon Tri-Conderoga 7.1g 7mm 2mm no ferrule/eraser
Mongol Trio 8.2g 9mm 3mm no ferrule/eraser

Even compared with other oversize pencils, the Triograph is quite hefty.

Made in the Czech Republic, the pencil comes in three soft grades – 2B, 4B, and 6B. (Pictured are the 6B, with the darker stained wood, and the 2B.) They have a nicely finished black cap, and the stamping is in gold. The pencil’s wood stain surface is what makes it so unusual. It really does look like something that shouldn’t be disposable.
Koh-I-Noor Hardmuth Triograph 1830 pencil
The lead is dark and rich, and certainly quite usable. The finish is unique, quite different from any other pencil I’ve seen. The large triangular shape will be a deciding factor for many. It’s large enough that you either like the feel or not. As well, like the International Arrivals pencils, it’s too wide for even the wide hole in dual hole sharpeners. This puts it in sharpen-by-knife territory, which may or may not be something you’re fine with.

Behance Action paper

The intriguing Behance box.
This isn’t just paper – it’s Action paper!

Behance offers a variety of notebooks and pads that embody the company’s three point “Action Method” – capture actions, keep a backburner, and file reference items. Here, we’re going to focus on the paper.
Behance Action Book.
Behance is nice enough to offer a downloadable PDF file of the Action pad if you want to scrutinize the format, or if you’re sitting on a stockpile of inkjet cartridges and want to try and print your own.

I ordered two action books, three large action pads, and two small action pads. These were in a mixture of orange, grey, and turquoise.
Behance Action Book.
The packaging is nice. You will certainly know that you’ve bought a premium item! The products are very stylish.
Behance package.
The wire coil notebook, embossed “Action Book”, has a felt-like surface – quite unusual. After a bit of use, I also notice that it’s a bit of a fingerprint magnet.
Behance Action Book perforations.
The perforations are a pleasant surprise. One line near the coil allows tearing away the sheet for placement in a binder. And on the other side of the holes is another perforated line – for when you just want your piece of paper.
Behance Action Book Grid.
The notes area has a dotted grid. The entire backside of the page is this dotted pattern. I like it. It looks like it could even be useful for working on visual mathematical ideas, such as topology and knot problems. Behance makes another notebook whose paper uses just this dotted paper – the “Dot Grid Book”.

The paper itself is stated to be an 80lb weight – much thicker than most notebooks. This is something I like – the feeling of a piece of paper actually having some weight. What I noticed right away is that the paper has quite a “tooth” or three dimensional texture. I’m not sure what sort of coating it might or might not have.
Behance Action Book.
This tooth was so noticeable because I had trouble writing on it. My fountain pen didn’t seem to want to adhere. I’ll have to try denser inks another day. Pencils also seemed to skate the page, again not really adhering, and being quite smudge prone. Softer lead grades seemed a bit better. A ballpoint – my Bexley Multi-Max – also seemed to skirt the surface. I’m not a regular felt tip user – but this seemed to be the paper’s sweet spot. No problem at all, works perfectly. I would suspect gel pens would also do well.
Behance Action Book.
The right hand side has eleven colour sections for “Action Steps”, and one grey area for the “Backburner”.

The small action pads are all business – just action items on the front, and the dot pattern on the back. The large pads have the Action Book format.

It may be a great organizational tool. At worst, it’s an expensive and beautiful looking to-do list.

I have given a few away, and they have been very well received. The notebooks and pads are definitely a unique and compelling product.

Unfortunately, the purchase experience was diminished as shipping took a full month, and despite what appears to be very careful packaging, the notebooks arrived with dented corners.

Would I recommend them? Absolutely, especially if you write with a felt tip pen.