Quo Vadis Planner Giveaway at Pen Archives

Pen Archives is having a giveaway of a Quo Vadis Planner. But hurry! The contest ends on Halloween. Just visit Pen Archives and leave a comment on this post on why you should win this planner.

Good Luck!

PS- this picture is not it. I just grabbed an image that I had in my files.

Next Great Idea Contest

The feedback for ideas on what the magazine should cover has been wonderful! Thank you! I'm so excited about Letters & Journals and am glad to find others who feel the same way!

This picture of .44 Thanksgiving stamps is one of six prizes being offered in this contest. The two previous blogs show the other prizes as well as the comments which have been submitted so far.

As a reminder, here are the contest rules:

1. Contest will run between Oct. 26, 2009 and midnight Sunday, Nov. 1, 2009 (CST)

2. Entries can be made by:
A) leaving a comment with a story idea for the magazine
B) leaving a comment with a suggestion of what would entice you to buy the magazine
C) leaving a comment with a link back to this blog from your blog or on twitter

Multiple entries can be made as long as they are legitimate ideas/links. The comments must be entered on blogs created between 10/26/09 (today) and 11/1/09 (midnight on Sunday).

Contest (continued)

Here is the photo of the Sakura pens that I'm giving away in the Next Great Idea contest (along with the Next Great Idea notebook as shown in the Oct. 26, 2009 post)

Imagine my surprise to see that there are only 4 packages of pens- not the 5 I had mentioned in yesterday's post. Boy, is my face red! But to make up for it, I will add a sheet of .44 stamps as the missing prize. I just got the new Thanksgiving Day Parade stamps that I will include as the 6th prize (picture to follow tomorrow).

Letters & Journals Contest Rules

'Next Great Idea' Contest

Welcome to the first contest at the Letters & Journals blog! As Kathy (Daisy Mae Design) and I work on finalizing some of the design templates for the magazine, I would love to get some feedback on articles you would like to see covered in the magazine. What is your great idea?

If you've been following this blog at all, you probably know that the vision for Letters & Journals is for it to be a quarterly national magazine celebrating the arts of letter writing and journal keeping.

Some of the featured articles can be found in this earlier L&J blog posting, as well as the blog that features the Table of Contents (still being updated). Now that you know what the vision is for Letters & Journals magazine, tell me what story idea would draw you in.

Here are the contest rules and prizes. There will be six different prizes! The 'Next Great Idea' notebook as pictured above is one of the six prizes. The other prizes are all pen sets that Sakura Pens of America furnished. I will post pictures of these in tomorrow's blog.

1. Contest will run between now and midnight Sunday, Nov. 1, 2009 (CST)

2. Entries can be made by:
A) leaving a comment with a story idea for the magazine
B) leaving a comment with a suggestion of what would entice you to buy the magazine
C) leaving a comment with a link back to this blog from your blog or on twitter

Multiple entries can be made as long as they are legitimate ideas/links. The comments must be entered on blogs created between 10/26/09 (today) and 11/1/09 (midnight on Sunday).

3. I will draw all of the names on Monday and post the winners on Nov. 2 or Nov 3. I will contact each winner and get their mailing information.

4. Each person can only win once and each winner will get to choose their prize in the order in which their name was drawn. Winner 1 would have a choice from all 6 prizes, winner 2 the remaining 5 prizes and so on.

Thanks! And Good Luck!

Clairefontaine Notebook Review

This Clairefontaine notebook came from Karen at Exaclair who had some extras and offered them up on Twitter. Lucky me! You can follow Karen at @exaclair if you're on Twitter.

The paper is lined and very smooth. The book lies flat when it's open, which is important to me. There is a slight bend to the front cover and the first few pages, but I think this could be from shipping.

First, I used my Lamy yellow Safari with the EF nib and the blue ink cartridge. It wrote very smoothly and had no bleedthrough. Next I wrote with my Waterman ballpoint pen and that was slick. I think I preferred the ballpoint on this paper.

Some pen and paper combinations are naturally a good fit and the ballpoint pen with the Clairefontaine was what worked for me.

In Letters & Journals we will have a regular section on product reviews. This includes notebooks, journals, stationery, pens, ink and much more. I love to read reviews by others but don't write a lot of them myself.

Postcard from Russia

This postcard from Russia is a perfect depiction of what I imagine Moscow to look like. Trading postcards through Postcrossing has been a phenomenal experience. You can get them as often as you like and are willing to send them, as you have to send one to receive one.

At the first level you sign up to send cards to whatever addresses are assigned to your account. You also receive cards from random countries each time one of your sent cards gets registered.

But on the next level you can sing up for the Forums on Postcrossing and choose to do tags, trades, notebooks, round robins, pen pals, postcards art, fan clubs and more. If you don't see one you were looking for, you can always start your own swap. If this is new to you then you should spend some time reading through what other people are doing here so you can understand what the expectations are, the lingo and how things work.

Stationery Shopping in San Francisco

A city-by-city stationery shopping guide is the sample magazine feature you see to the right. This one features San Francisco where there is a wealth of stationery stores and pen companies. Future editions of Letters & Journals will feature such cities as New York, Paris, Chicago, London, Hong Kong, Minneapolis and Denver.

This magazine feature is still being tweaked and Kathy Forss at DaisyMaeDesign is busy finding more stationery related photos to replace the more generic ones in this layout. Don't you love it? When I first saw this design it took my breath away. I don't think the scanned photo does justice to what should be a 2 page magazine layout (with more pages to follow).

Do you have a lot of stationery stores where you live? Where do you like to shop? What city would you like to see featured in the magazine?

New Stationery

I received this lovely stationery from Julie at We've Got Paper. Julie has a blog and an Etsy shop where she sells her unique selection of stationery.

I love finding and collecting different kinds of stationery. I have a box filled with an assortment of old and new papers that I've accumulated over the years.

This was my first purchase from Julie and she was generous with sending some unexpected extras; cute notepaper, lots of stickers, 3 postcards.

Julie is sponsoring a giveaway of some her product if you visit her site and leave a comment. Here is a link that tells you about the contest. But hurry, the contest ends on Oct. 14, 2009.

Travel Journals

Expedition Journal: A Logbook for Travelers (published by National Geographic)

We started this travel journal in 2000- the year our family took a vacation to Washington DC. Since then we have recorded visits to Mexico, England, Ireland, Chicago, Boston, New York, Paris, Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Francisco and a Caribbean cruise.

I love this journal and am grateful for the opportunities to be able to travel to the different places and record our little adventures. After nine years it's almost full, but we still have room for a few more expeditions before buying a new travel book.

This journal is great because it has a soft leather cover and is interspersed with vintage pictures, quotes and some bios of famous explorers; Shackleton, Earhart, Cousteau.

In the magazine Letters & Journals, we will feature excerpts from famous travel journals as well as reader submissions of some of their travel journals. Do you keep or read travel journals?