Nebula by Colorverse A5 Premium Notebook Review

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)

My first impression of this Nebula Premium Notebook by Colorverse was “Why do I need another hardbound, pleather, elastic closure, A5 notebook?" I have six different brands of nearly identical notebooks on a shelf right next to me--so what was going to make this one stand out from the crowd? It turns out there are a few standout things about this notebook. It's a good one. It's not filling a gap in the market or anything, but it is offering some choices of features that I enjoy and appreciate.

It has a very firm cover bound in faux leather with a smooth texture to it. My notebook is a lovely shade of lavender blue, but there are a variety of colors available. It has rounded corners and sturdy endpapers prettily decorated with stars and constellations, and the inside back cover has a generous gusseted pocket. One cool feature is that, instead of a ribbon bookmark, this notebook comes with two magnetic flap bookmarks that can be used beyond the life of this notebook alone. I love magnetic bookmarks, so this delighted me. Ribbons are nice, too, but they get caught in case zippers, fray, and get ink stains. The magnets are a huge upgrade, in my opinion. The binding is sewn and the notebook lies open flat with no trouble.

Between the covers are 192 pages of 90gsm, "ink-proof" white paper. Mine is lined, though blank paper is also available, and maybe preferable, as the blank notebook comes with some very cool writing guides in unique formats, including boxes and lines for ink swatching.

But could you swatch in this notebook? Yep. The paper is impressive. When I first felt it, it had the crisp, textured feel of paper that usually feathers and bleeds, so I was expecting at least some degree of failure, but it did not do either of those things in any measure. I suppose a notebook made by an ink company would know how to make their paper truly "ink-proof" as they claim. My skepticism was short-lived.

The slightly fibrous texture of the paper makes it great for pencils and standard pens alike. It's not fibrous enough to be snaggy with sharp tips, but it offers enough friction that it gives good control even with smooth, broad writers and glassy nibs. There was not a single feather to be seen, and nothing bled through--not even the fineliner Sharpie. Not even where I literally poured ink on the page. There was some ghosting with the latter two, but hardly any show-through at all for regular writing. Given Colorverse's affinity for outer space, I can only assume this is some kind of alien technology.

With the matte, textured surface of the paper, I did not expect to see much shading or sheening, but both definitely made an appearance. Sheen was a little rarer, only really showing where the ink pooled, but it's definitely there in wetter inks and nibs. Personally, I prefer the way ink looks on more smooth, coated papers, but one major benefit of this paper is dry time, which was surprisingly fast, depending on the ink and nib. In fact, this notebook is now high on my list of ones I'd recommend to left-handed pen addicts.

The Nebula Premium notebooks sell for $20, which puts it on equal footing, price-wise, with most of the notebooks it so closely resembles. Did the market need another clone A5 notebook? No. Is there room for everyone at the table? Yes, and Colorverse has definitely brought some nice treats here to the notebook potluck.

(Goldspot provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

---

Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!

Musubi Cosmo Air Light Folio Notebook (A5): A Review

The Musubi Cosmo Air Light Folio Notebook is a beautiful minimalist notebook with 208 pages of Cosmo Air Light paper. Simple white cotton adorns the cardstock covers of the notebook. The cotton has a lovely texture to it, and the only branding is the barely-visible Musubi logo embossed on the bottom right corner.

The end pages are made of a thicker, water-color-like paper. There's no printing, branding, or decoration whatsoever. The outside corners of the notebook are rounded.

Inside, the pages are Smyth-sewn, so they lie completely flat when the book is open. Cosmo Air Light is 83gsm, so it is thicker than Tomoe River Paper, but lighter than Bank Paper. My notebook is the lined version. The lines are printed in a light sage ink and are spaced 7mm apart. In addition, there are small marks at the top and bottom of each page which divide the page up into halves, thirds, and fourths.

I first discovered Cosmo Air Light paper when I did a review of the Yamamoto Fountain Pen Friendly Paper Collection (part 1 and part 2). It was one of my favorites in the collection.

The paper is smooth and lacks any texture. Its smoothness derives from a coating that is put on the paper (originally for book printing). The coating enhances any ink's sheen or shading properties. The thickness of the paper means that there's very little ghosting and no bleed through, which makes Cosmo Air Light more user friendly, in my opinion, than the popular Tomoe River Paper.

I tested the paper with eleven fountain pens with varying nib sizes and different inks. The paper handled all the inks with ease--no feathering, no bleeding, and only slight ghosting (so little it doesn't show up in photos). Several inks shaded well, and sheen was evident in Iroshizuku Take-Sumi, Robert Oster Tranquility, and Iroshizuku Yama-Budo. The only negative was a lengthy dry time for the wetter inks.

Swabs on this paper look fantastic. The ink colors are vibrant and true, and shading and sheen are pronounced. On the reverse side there's no bleed through and only mild ghosting.

I tested the paper with a dip calligraphy pen inked with Taccia Sabimidori (reviewed here). I discovered that Cosmo Air Light is not the best paper for calligraphy. Because of the coating, the ink does not settle into the paper well, resulting in thick lines and uneven lettering. Compared with Ayush Paper (reviewed here), Ayush wins hands down for calligraphy--the paper absorbs the ink more quickly, allowing for good results with flex. Although the ink doesn't sheen as much as Cosmo Air Light, I think the trade-off is worth it if you're doing calligraphy.

I did longer writing samples with three pens: a Santini stub (reviewed here), inked with Robert Oster Tranquility; a Lamy 2000 fine, inked with Iroshizuku Take-sumi; and a Leonardo stub (reviewed here), inked with Monteverde Mulberry Noir. Cosmo Air Light really shines as a journaling paper because it handles different pens and inks so well. There's a pleasant sensation as you write on this smooth paper. Once again, I noted no feathering or bleed-through and only slight ghosting.

Cosmo Air Light remains one of my favorite papers. It outshines Tomoe River Paper in many ways: it is thicker and therefore does not suffer from ghosting; it has a smooth surface and is pleasant to write on, much like Tomoe; and it enhances sheen and shading even better than Tomoe (although that can mean longer dry times). I realize that one of the things people (me included) love about Tomoe River Paper is how thin and light it is. That's a great quality for planners, because it keeps them thinner overall. But for journaling, I think Cosmo Air Light is a better choice because you can write front and back without your writing showing through.

The Musubi Cosmo Air Light Folio Notebook retails for approximately $25.00 (35 Singapore dollars). You can get it with plain pages, lined pages, or cross grid with page numbers. It doesn't have many bells and whistles--no ribbon bookmark or pockets or elastic closure, but I love its minimalist design. I've never seen a notebook with so little branding. It's elegant, beautiful, and functional. And, sometime in 2021, Musubi is planning to release covers for their Folio Notebooks in the beautiful materials they use for their handmade notebooks. I can hardly wait!

(Musubi provided the Cosmo Air Light Folio Notebook to Pen Addict free of charge for review purposes.)

---

Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!

Maruman Glyphy B6 Notebook Review

The Maruman Glyphy notebook line is a new offering that hasn't quite hit US shelves yet, but you should see it arriving soon. Like all new notebook options, everyone's first question is usually something along the lines of "what kind of paper does it have, and does it work well with all types of pens and pencils?" Maruman might be most known in the US for producing the luxurious Mnemosyne notebooks — which are incredibly well-made and perform quite admirably. Does the new Glyphy match up to the high bar that Maruman have set?

The Glyphy comes in two sizes, but I have the B6 size (175x144mm) with 60 gsm art (blank) paper (the other size options is A6). There are 88 pages in the glue-bound, hard-cover notebook, and they are fairly thin. There's a prominent texture on the page that reminds me how fancy cotton resume paper looks, except this paper is incredibly thin and doesn't behave like thick absorbent paper. Unfortunately, this paper suffers from a pretty significant amount of feathering and show-through. It's certainly not unusable due to this, but you do have to be careful about which pens/inks you use with the notebook. As you can see in the writing samples, similar pen/ink combos work better than others. I attribute this to the ink characteristics more than anything, but I'd certainly test a pen with this notebook before writing for any significant amount of time. With many pen/ink combos, the back of the page is unusable (for me, anyway).

Does that mean you should avoid this notebook? I don't think so. It works great for gel and ballpoint pens, and I've really enjoyed using it with pencils. The paper texture reminds me of sketchbooks, and I think that's really how it's going to be marketed when it hits the shelves in the North American region. It takes graphite marks really well and provides a satisfying amount of feedback due to the paper texture. This is mostly due to the paper being uncoated (and also why it suffers from feathering).

The cover of the notebook is nicely done. It's a fabric cover that has a nice tactile feel, a solid binding, and opens and closes easily. The only branding is on the top right corner of the notebook — a bold white "Glyphy" to announce the name, but it's also quite helpful in determining which way is right-side up before opening it. I love it when manufacturers decide to take a minimal route when it comes to branding their products. They Maruman Glyphy does an excellent job at producing a strong aesthetic appeal without needless and excessive graphic art additions.

The B6 size isn't one that I use very often. Every time I do, I feel foolish for not using it more often. It really is a perfect size for a lot of what I do. It fits into places easier than an A5, but you really aren't sacrificing much in the way of paper real estate. If it were just 30mm shorter, it would be square. It's a fantastic size, and the hard cover will protect the pages from a lot of abuse.

Once the Maruman Glyphy notebooks are widely available, I encourage you to try them out. I'm really interested to try out the other paper type options to see if they handle fountain pens inks differently than this particular variant. According to the Maruman product catalog, the other versions have either 90 gsm or 126 gsm paper, with blank or grid formatting, so it should be interesting to compare all of the options.

(Maruman provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

---

Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!