Desk News & Beyond

Shop Updates:

If you’ve been waiting to purchase a Col-o-ring, the wait is over! The shop is not only stocked with Col-o-ring books but we are adding other products back to the inventory as well including some choice stationery goodies like the Star Chart note cards. These cards are a joint-venture from Skylab Letterpress and The Well-Appointed Desk and feature multilingual “thank you” messages for all your galactic sending needs.

Edit: To our friends across the pond, Cult Pens has Col-o-rings available (and currently featured on their home page which make me flippin’ giddy!) so many of our UK and EU pals now have a source  for their inky needs! In Canada, Wonder Pens is stocking Col-o-rings and will gladly help our friends to the north. Down Under, Notemaker in Australia and Pen Classics in New Zealand should soon have Col-o-rings available. Col-o-rings are invading the world! Who would have ever guessed such a thing?

Blog Improvements:

Did you notice there’s been a bit of a facelift around here? Besides updating the looks of the design a bit, there’s also been improvements made in the background to help make searching the copious archive of posts a little bit easier.

The fonts have been updated to (hopefully) be more readable and the whole design is now more consistent across all platforms: desktop, tablet and mobile. I’m really pleased with the look ad I hope you will be too.

If you look up in the top menu bar, you’ll notice that as you scroll up and down, the menu bar at the top will stay visible. It has the search bar in the far right corner and hot links to the refill guide, guide sheets, ink reviews, pen reviews and a new separate category for fountain pen reviews!

You’ll also notice that there are now featured posts at the top of the blog. Above the fold, so to speak, special posts will be featured for a week or so. Giveaways, new products, hot reviews, pen shows or other notable stories will be featured there so they won’t be missed.

It was time to retire the old template as it broke every time there was an update to WordPress so hopefully this version will be able to grow with us.

 

DeAtramentis Pearlescent Inks:

While they may be a little late to the game, DeAtramentis has finally decided to try their hand at making a line of sparkle inks. They’ve divided their ink colors into Pearlescent Gold, Pearlescent Silver and Pearlescent Copper flake bases. Then they offer eight ink colors with each sparkle: Whisky Brown, Amber Yellow, Helio Green, Cyan Blue, Camellia Red, Brilliant Violet, Magenta Red, and Velvet Black.

YStudio Pens:

Finally, a retailer in the US is stocking YStudio fountain pens. Vanness Pens is carrying the YStudio Brassing fountain pens, ballpoint and mechanical pencil. I reviewed the portable fountain pen awhile back and I’m still enamored with it.

Ink Academy:

Ink Academy is a crowd-funded campaign to create an online calligraphy school. Master Penman and one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, Michael Sull will be the academic director of the school. There are also a host of other amazing calligraphers involved in the project including a former White House calligrapher. The project has about a week left to fund and a long way to go to meet its funding needs. Whether you have a desire to learn calligraphy yourself or just an appreciation for the art form, it’s definitely a project worth some consideration.

Pen World:  June Issue 2017

The June issue of Pen World magazine hits newsstands on Tuesdays. This issue features articles all about paper including my first published article in the magazine: an interview with Bullet Journal creator Ryder Carroll. There’s a sneak peek of the article below but to see the whole magazine, hop over the the Pen World web site and subscribe or visit your local book shop or newsstand an pick up a copy soon.