Nota Bene, Part 2

I made a recent visit to Nota Bene, Montréal’s glorious and very comprehensive stationery shop. I was on a bit of a mission to find some fountain pen friendly index cards, as well as some more of my stationery staples. I was quite pleased by some of the things I found.

Of course there were the index cards, which I intended to start using for ink swatches. One problem with most non-fountain-pen-specific cards is that they don’t show off the properties of the ink.

I know a lot of vendors sell swatch cards or books specially made for this purpose, but I wanted something in the index card form-factor that could be filed as an index card.

The cards I was shown by the lovely pen people at Nota Bene were Exacompta A8 dot-grid cards. The A8 size was very interesting to me, and I found a cute filing box online for this size that I’m waiting to arrive at the moment. The cards very nicely show the sheen and shimmer of the inks I’ve tried so far — those currently inked-up in my pens.

Additionally, on this trip I found a new Caran d’Ache pen, and some new bespoke books with Nota Bene’s logo — only their second product line as such.

Another lovely trip and I only wish I could have splurged even more!