I reviewed Kikkerland’s Writersblok notebooks a while back, and now it seems their product line is expanding with these “Bamboo” notebooks, sold at RevDesign. I didn’t love the paper in the old notebooks, so maybe this new 80 gsm bamboo paper would be an improvement. They also seem to have a different binding with more of a square spine similar to a Moleskine Volant, rather than the old staple bound format. Has anyone out there tried these? Please let us know what you think!
The 4-pack no longer seems to be listed on the website, but they have 2-packs available.
Amazon’s got the four pack
http://www.amazon.com/Writersblok-Bamboo-Paper-Small-Notebook/dp/B002TDE9EY
Looks like the Small is the four pack
The medium is the two pack.
Bamboo is perceived as a totally green raw material. The economic and environmental costs of turning grass into consumer goods are completely irrational, depending on whose research you wish to cite. Just put “bamboo industry” into Google and get ready for some interesting reading. You will find scholarly and emotional opinions that vary widely as you might expect when examining a huge industry like mining or lumber. I encourage you to consider the upstream procedures and manufacturing processes required to farm, harvest, transport, and to pulp bamboo just to make paper for us.
As a niche of paper consumers, our appetite for coll bound journals and sketchbooks can be fed from many less intensive resources besides bamboo.
I first became aware of this irrational image of bamboo when I laid bamboo flooring in my home. It’s absolutely beautiful. But I only did my research after the job was finished. I would never consider bamboo again without carefully vetting the maker’s acquisition and manufacturing procedures for their impacts on land better used for food production and the disposal of the weirdly toxic byproducts.
david boise ID
I own a few of these notebooks (the large size). I actually like them a lot. The cover is soft (leather-like imitation), in comparison to the original hard cardboard cahiers from WritersBlok and Moleskine.
The paper has a rough texture…definitely recycled. There is no bookmark or back pocket. It’s a no frills, very basic notebook. But it’s flexible. You can bend the cover around and pretty easily write on the front and back of the pages.
I think I paid 10 bucks for the two pack which come in either a green/black bundle or red/white bundle. I’m not thrilled about a white notebook, but the red is beautiful.
It’s a great light weight notebook to use for note-taking, brainstorming, etc. Not bad quality for what you pay. And it’s definitely a step up from their previous cahiers.
-Victoria
I really like bamboo products — just discovered bamboo recently after having my flooring done in bamboo. I didn’t realize how many products out there were made of bamboo.
I have a handful of these notebooks, and I’ve actually been using them for more than just writing. The pages take a variety of media: I’ve used pencils, crayons, brush pens, watercolors… I’ve stuck to using only one side of the page just for aesthetic purposes, and the pages to wrinkle a bit when wet (which I kind of enjoy), and I couldn’t be more pleased with this purchase. I have both the red/white and green/black covers and for ~$10.00 it’s a great value.
I picked up the medium and large notebook sets in red/white because I needed some white notebooks with unlined white (not cream) paper inside for a project. The paper is whiter than the Moleskines (my usual tome) and smooth, takes a gel ink pen well even in sultry sweaty room conditions. I haven’t decided what to do with the red-covered ones. I wish they sold them as single color sets. I visited the Kikkerland site to investigate further but it’s not a generally available option.
These aren’t available on Amazon. Where else can I buy them?
I looked on the Kikkerland website but it looks like these notebooks have been discontinued. I would keep an eye on eBay in case anyone happens to be selling some there…