Review: Rhodia Pads

Completing the roundup of my review on Rhodia products from Everything Calligraphy are Rhodia bloc pads in different sizes and colors. These are actually pretty nice. It’s a challenge to find fountain pen friendly pads because many will bleed through and feather in an awful way. A lot of pad papers I’ve used are only ballpoint pen friendly. A few do hold up well with fountain pens and rollerballs, but the texture isn’t as pleasurable to write on.

Rhodia is a bit expensive. Relatively more expensive than most pads you’ll see in bookstores or school supply stores. The quality of the paper is a lot different, though. Probably the only locally available “rival” in quality is the Elias notepads. Once you use one of these, you’ll understand why they’re pricier.

I tried out both the color and the classic pads. I’m leaning more towards the color pads because I like the texture of the paper better. I also like the color of the pages, they’re cream-colored and it really makes the fountain pen inks I tried on it look a lot lovelier. The photo below shows the difference in the color of the paper.

Below is a photo of the page of writing samples. As expected, the paper held up very well with fountain pens, brush pens, and parallel pens. The 3.8mm parallel pen did have a bit of bleed through. Not too bad, but it’s noticeable since the ink I used was the default black cartridge, which is highly saturated.

I think the paper is different from the Webnotebooks, but the writing experience is close to the Rhodia color pads. I love the texture of the paper. It’s different from the classic pads (which tends to be too smooth for some of my fine-nibbed, dry-writing pens). Rhodia’s color pads are 90 gsm and the classic pads are 80 gsm, both handle ink pretty well, but I personally like the color, quality and texture of the paper used in the color pads.

I noticed the white pads are more resilient to calligraphy pens, though. I’m not sure why, it could be just the pens that I have (I don’t really have that many to test it with).

Here are a few closeups of the writing samples for the color pads:

Here’s a close up of the writing samples for the classic pads.

I love that these pads can really show off the shading, sheen and shimmer of the inks and the unique character of each ink and pen combination. Such is the pleasure of using good paper. I also like that the binding makes it easy to fold the cover. It’s very durable and doesn’t break apart when you’ve been using up the pages and not tearing them off. I used up my last large Rhodia pad without hardly tearing a page off, and the binding held up really well. If you do need to tear off the pages, the mini perforations make it easier to do just that without compromising the binding.

Overall, these are good quality pads, no surprises there. 🙂

Rhodia pads and other paper products are available at Everything Calligraphy.

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT A PAID POST, I DON’T DO PAID REVIEWS.

Review: Rhodia Classic Stapled Notebooks

Here’s another Rhodia paper product that I’ve only tried recently. It’s the Rhodia Classic Stapled Notebooks. It’s a lot more affordable than the web notebooks (P199 per piece) and only comes in lined and graph.

The cover looks pretty simple. Just the basic soft cover in orange, black, and white. It looks like something I would have loved to use for class notes.

As the name implied, the notebook is staple-bound, which is why it’s more affordable than the other kinds of notebooks. While it’s pretty useful for basic writing, note-taking and other casual writing, it does have some drawbacks. The cover is pretty thin, and it’s a lot harder to lay flat unless you weigh the cover down.

It doesn’t have the premium feel of the web notebooks, but course this was not designed to be the luxurious leather-bound journal, it’s the affordable, rough and tumble cousin that you can take anywhere. It’s light, it’s no-frills, and the paper (while different in texture and quality) is still quite good.

The paper is 80 gsm, with lines that are a bit purplish-blue, reminiscent of the notebooks I used back in my school days. The lines were noticeably farther apart than the webnotebooks.

Personally, I prefer the width of the space between the lines of the webnotebook, and the light grey colored lines. Here are a few

The paper is not as smooth as the webnotebooks, but it’s still very fountain pen friendly. Doesn’t show off sheen or shimmer too well, but shows off shading just fine. It also holds up well to parallel pens and brush pens. It doesn’t feather or bleed through, and the show through is very minimal. Pretty good for an affordable Rhodia notebook. If you need a good fountain pen friendly notebook for casual writing and note taking, this is a great choice.

Rhodia Classic Stapled Notebooks are available at Everything Calligraphy.

Disclaimer: This is NOT a paid post, I don’t do paid reviews.

Review: Rhodia/Rhodiarama Webnotebooks

The first Rhodia product I ever tried was their winter white notepads. I thought it was pretty elegant, and the paper was excellent. I’ve been curious about their notebooks ever since, but they’re always out of stock (at least it always is here in the South). Good thing Everything Calligraphy now offers these notebooks. So are these really as nice as people say they are?

In a word, yes. These are very good, premium notebooks. They’re relatively expensive, but I believe it has a good reason for being pricey. I tried out the plain Rhodia Webnotebooks (photo above) and the more colorful Rhodiarama Webnotebooks, and there’s just so much to like about them.

The first thing you’ll notice is how beautiful these notebooks are. They’re very different from handmade leather notebooks, of which no two creations are the same. These look like they’re churned out of machines to make them look precisely the same, and there’s a beauty to that too, as much as there’s something beautiful about unique, handmade journals. I love the stamped Rhodia logo, and the quality of the cover is pretty excellent. I like the brushed steel look of the journal on the right, but the classic black journal really hits the spot. It has a soft, velvety feel, almost like high quality silicon. It’s very classy, very well put-together.

The more colorful Rhodiarama Webnotebooks are made of the same material and they’re also ridiculously perfect-looking.

I have a soft spot for happy colors, and I find the colors of Rhodiarama to be quite eyecatching. When you open up the notebooks, it’s even prettier.

A nice splash of happy colors! Also, psychedelic zebra. ^_^

All Webnotebooks have a pouch at the back for little slips of paper and whatnot. Pretty useful, though I personally don’t really use the interior pockets of any journal so it doesn’t add to the bulk when I close it.

The spine is neatly bound. Again, ridiculously perfect-looking. I find the bookmark a bit on the short side, I wish they made it just a little longer.

The notebook also lays flat quite easily. The smaller Webnotebooks don’t lay flat as easily, but that’re pretty much expected because of the size. These bigger notebooks are easier to write on because it takes little effort to make them lie flat as you write.

Aside from the aesthetics of these notebooks, the important thing is how they hold up to writing tests.

The paper they used in Webnotebooks doesn’t seem to be the same with the ones they used with the notepad. These have a different look and feel to it. According to the specifications of the notebooks, it has 96 sheets (192 pages) of ivory-colored brushed vellum paper at 90gsm. It’s thinner than how I remember the pad paper that I tried before. First impression was that the paper did not feel heavy or too thick.

The grey-colored dots of the dot grid notebook aren’t too intrusive to writing or drawing. The lined pages look pretty nice too.

I like that the space between lines isn’t too wide, and that the lines are light grey in color. Not too obvious, just right for a nice-looking journal. Writing on the paper gives some sort of feedback. It’s not glossy or smooth, you feel the texture of the paper as you’re writing. I find it pleasant. Here are a few close ups of the writing sample:

Even if it’s textured, it shows off sheen and shading. It doesn’t feather and has no bleed through and minimal show through at the back. It seems the paper is most pleasant to use with wet writers and wider nibs. Brush pens can feel a bit rough on the paper. It absorbs ink a bit too fast, making it feel like there’s some drag as you write.

Overall, pretty good! Expensive, but good quality notebook. I would recommend it for journal writing, things that you really want to keep over a long period of time. Not exactly suitable for watercolor and whatnot, but really great for regular writing, especially if used with fountain pens.

Rhodia and Rhodiarama Webnotebooks are available at Everything Calligraphy.

Disclaimer: As I mentioned before, I am not affiliated with Everything Calligraphy. This is NOT a paid blog post and I DON’T do paid reviews.