I am a self confessed pen snob. I love having a pen that feels just right to write with. I am just as picky about my pens as I am with my bullet journals. So today I thought I would share 6 of my favourite pens for bullet journaling.

6 PENS I LOVE FOR BULLET JOURNALING

PENTEL MECHANICAL PENCIL

Okay so I might be cheating just a little with this first one. I have to have a pencil when I’m bullet journaling. There are some things which can’t be done in pen. Usually this is the monthly log pages. I’m almost guaranteed to make a mistake.

When it comes to pencils I’m just a little lazy. I can’t be bothered sharpening pencils and I use them regularly enough for this to be a problem. For a while I had been using the Rotring Mechanical Pencil but it broke a few months ago. This was slightly annoying because it was quite expensive for a mechanical pencil.

So I bought a Pentel mechanical pencil from a local stationery shop to replace it. I actually think this pencil is much preferable to the Rotring. The barrel is much broader which makes it more comfortable to hold. And it was only £2.

TOMBOW DUAL BRUSH MARKER

I really enjoy adding bits of hand lettering while I’m bullet journaling and I do this with the Tombow dual brush markers. One end of the pen has a thin marker nib, the other has a brush nib. These are great for more than just bullet journals. I did a bunch of illustrations with the Tombow markers recently for a college project.

The only downside to these markers is that the ink reacts with water. Some times that might be an effect you want. But I’ve managed to ruin a few drawings by accidentally getting them wet.

UNI-BALL SIGNO

I think this is one pen I don’t use very often when I’m bullet journaling. The Uni-ball Signo is an opaque white gel pen. Originally I bought it to write my name on my college sketchbooks. But recently I’ve found I really enjoy doodling with it over watercolour paintings and on craft paper.

METALLIC SHARPIES

During my last college project a few friends and I sort of became obsessed with sharpies and in particular the metallic sharpies. These are very opaque, they are actually better than the Pilot metallic paint pens. I had quite a lot of fun annotating over photos with these in my sketchbook.

SHARPIE FINELINER

I got this Sharpie Fineliner in a pack of two from Cass Art for £3. The good thing about this pen is it doesn’t bleed through the paper like other sharpies. In fact it’s very similar to the Staedtler Fineliners.  I’ve use this quite a lot in my bullet journal and so far the nib hasn’t degraded which is a problem with the Staedtlers.

LAMY SAFARI FOUNTAIN PEN

Just before Christmas I decided to try a fountain pen and so bought a Lamy Al-Star fountain pen. This is a reasonably cheap fountain pen which makes it good for someone just getting into fountain pens and I actually really like it. The annoying thing about this pen is having to find the right paper for it.

It writes fine in my Leuchtturm and in my old Moleskine but I can’t use it in my bullet journal because the ink feathers really badly (I don’t think you can see it in the photo but it does feather). This is more of a problem with Moleskine changing to a lower quality paper but it’s still pretty annoying because I do really want to use this pen.