Let’s talk notebooks! One of the perks of being a writer is that I always seem to have a good excuse for buying new notebooks. New project? New notebook! Yay!

I’ve tried many different kinds of notebooks: cheap, expensive, ruled, unruled, hardcover, softcover, spiral-bound, and so on. After years of trial and error, I believe I have finally found the one notebook to rule them all: Paperblanks!

Design

Paperblanks come in several sizes, shapes, and variations: planners, notebooks, and journals with lined, graph, and blank paper. I’m currently using the ultra-sized, lined, hardcover journals in de Old Leather collection, which are slightly larger than the traditional A5 notebooks. The Old Leather collection journals are probably the most understated of all the Paperblanks designs, but I like that they look like an antique leather journal. They are Renaissance and timeless at the same time. 

These journals are quite heavy, but they also somehow manage to stay slender and elegant. They are a wonderful conundrum! The binding is sturdy and beautiful in its own right and allows the journal to lie flat on my desk – which I find super convenient.

Page Quality

The quality of the pages is perhaps the best part of the Paperblanks! The warm white color of the paper is gorgeous and feels smooth but slightly gritty to the touch. The line spacing is about 8 mm, which is pretty wide-ruled. I like it a lot because I’m not forced to scribble, and my pages don’t feel overcrowded with words. The lines are a soft-grey color, so they don’t dominate the pages.

Also, I love the page thickness: the GSM (paperweight) is 120, which means there is no show-through (I use regular ballpoint pens and markers), and the pages stay beautiful and neat even with writing on both sides. For me, this is a MAJOR plus; notebooks are a way to organize my thoughts and ideas, so I don’t like them messy and crumpled. My Paperblanks’ pages are tidy and orderly and awesome.

Feel Like a Writer

I know I already gushed about the beautiful aesthetics of the Paperblanks journals, but I cannot write this post without telling you how they make me feel: they make me feel like a WRITER.

They make me feel like I am a badass writer who has their life together and knows what they’re doing. Perhaps it’s because the journals look like actual books when you put them on a shelf. The result, however, is pretty darn good: it kicks my creativity into gear!

So: bravo and hooray to Paperblanks!