Review: Scrikks NoteLook Notebook

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APPEARANCE

This notebook has black fabric-covered covers with rounded corners. The front cover has a bicycle on it and cute retro-style writings. There is a black elastic closure attached to the back of the cover. The inside back cover has a pocket, and there are two brown satin bookmarks inside.

The thin, cream pages are also rounded to match the covers. The lines run from one end of the page to the other, in a light brown. The brown lines and cream paper are a lovely match. I love how this notebook looks - the colors were well chosen.

PERFORMANCE & FEEL

The front cover doesn't really do much for me, but other than that, I really enjoy this notebook. A lot. I like the thickness of the notebook - it's easy to use both sides of the page. It also opens easily and lies flat, from start to finish, without having to destroy the binding. The elastic closure is not too wide or loose, and the two bookmarks are quite handy. The markers are also sealed at the ends, so they have not frayed - something I hate because it looks ugly. The material of the cover attracts fur and lint, and it's hard to remove.

The paper is thin, light, and crinkly (think Tomoe River). It's smooth and pleasant to touch - it doesn't feel toothy or textured, just nice and smooth. The paper performed well with pencils, ballpoints, gel pens, roller balls, liquid inks, roller balls, and markers. They all glide on to the paper smoothly. Since the paper is so thin, there was show through and with much wetter writers, there was some bleed through. There was no feathering, though.

The paper did well with fountain pens. It tolerated a range of nibs from extra-fine to triple broad, flex, and calligraphy nibs. It handled all these nibs without feathering. Again, because of how thin the paper is (and that it's obviously not Tomoe River), there is show through, but not bleed through with normal use.

Sheens and shading show up well, but this meant drying times were on the longer side - as compared to, for example, regular copier paper. I treated the drying times to be the same as those for my Rhodia/Clairefontaine notebooks.

OVERALL 

I love this notebook. It's a good, convenient, portable size for me, it's not too thick or too thin, it has a great color scheme (paper and ruling), lovely paper, and it offers the kind of writing experience I really enjoy. I use fountain pens the most in this notebook, and it's almost full now.