Midori MD Block Notepad and Sticky Notes on Desk — The Midori MD Memo Block (left) and the A7 Sticky Notepad (right).

Paper Review: Midori MD Fountain Pen Friendly Sticky Notes and Notepads

August 17, 2024

I went shopping in my own store yesterday - I know, typically a bad business decision - but since I’ve moved TGS out of my home office to its own commercial space I’ve had to rebuild my home office a bit to make it more suitable for it’s original purpose: reading, home-based projects, and personal writing. Yesterday morning I sat down to plan out my personal finances and errands for the week and realized that I didn’t have any decent sticky notes or even a tear-off notepad at my desk. This presented the perfect opportunity to test out two very popular items from our shop: the Midori MD Memo Block Notepad and the MD A7 Sticky Notepad, which I’d not used extensively myself.

Midori MD Block Notepad Writing Sample — The 500-sheet block notepad contains excellent paper. The thick 4"x4" pad is large enough to rest your hand on while writing on the top half of the sticky note, but most people will likely tear off the sheet to comfortably use the entire page.

Of these two products, the MD Memo Block Notepad is my favorite. I enjoy having a ready supply of tear-off paper that’s not too expensive, and I basically use these as scratch sheets. This large notepad contains 500 sheets of Midori MD Paper (the same as in the standard MD Notebooks), which measure 4” x 4” square and handle fountain pen ink extremely well. I’ve noticed no difference in performance between this notepad and any standard Midori MD paper product. The pad itself is glue-bound along the top edge and does not feature any “sticky” backing on the sheets themselves - these aren’t sticky notes, and if you want to attach the notes to anything, you’ll have to use glue, tape, staples, or a clip. You can also do as I sometimes do, and punch three holes in smaller sheets of paper and stick them in an A5 or Bible-sized Plotter.

Midori MD Sticky Note Writing Samples — One ink (TGS x Hinze Summer Sangria) feathered a little on the sticky note but not on the memo pad. It was worse at the top of the sticky note (where the adhesive likely mixed with the paper).

The Midori MD A7 Sticky Notepad is also a good product, especially when you consider that fountain pen friendly sticky notes are extremely difficult to find. While these are labeled “MD Paper”, this particular product feels slightly different than the Midori MD pads and notebooks. The paper is thinner, and doesn’t handle ink quite as well as the Memo Block, though it still performs nicely for a sticky note. Sticky notes are difficult to use with fountain pens for a couple of reasons. First of all, the paper can’t be too heavy, or else the adhesive won’t be able to support the weight of the note. Second, sticky note adhesive has a tendency to affect how ink behaves on the paper. If you’ve ever written on the top part of a sticky note and had it feather like crazy, only to have the bottom half behave differently, you know exactly what I’m talking about. While I’ve experienced a bit of feathering on these sticky notes with certain inks, they’re generally quite good (certainly better than other alternatives I’ve tried) and on par with the apparently discontinued Traveler’s Company sticky notes.

Midori MD Sticky Notes on Whiteboard — The adhesive on these notes performs well. I had no trouble sticking it to a whiteboard, and these adhere just fine to notebooks and other sheets of paper - which is how I generally use stickies.

Midori MD Sticky Note and Notepad Reverse Writing Sample — The Midori MD Sticky Notes (left) and MD Memo Block Paper. The sticky notes had a touch of pinpoint bleedthrough, but then again, who writes on the back of a sticky note?

Takeaways and Where to Buy

As always, Midori comes through with a high quality and generally fountain pen friendly product. While the paper in the MD Memo Block notepad performed better than the paper in the sticky notes, I suspect that’s due mostly to the adhesive on the back of the sticky note paper reacting to a very wet fountain pen ink. In any event, I don’t really demand top-notch performance from sticky notes, and these certainly fall into the “good enough and better than nearly everything else I’ve tried” category. The sticky notes will go into one of my Sinclair pen cases so that I have them available wherever I happen to be working, and the MD Memo Block will stay on my desk at home.

Midori MD Memo Block and Sticky Note Packaging

We’ve carried these in the shop for a long time - I’ve just never gotten around to using them seriously until this week. The MD Memo Block comes in three formats (grid, blank, and lined) and is priced at $12 for a 500-sheet pad. The A7 Sticky Note Memo pads run $11.50 each and come in five different formats (lined, blank, grid, dot, and framed). You can check out these and other Midori products by visiting the paper section of our store. Also, if you’re aware of any other fountain pen friendly sticky notes out there, let me know as this is a product category I’m interested in!

The Gentleman Stationer is supported by purchases from the T.G.S. Curated Shop and pledges via the T.G.S. Patreon Program.

Essential Stationery: For Me, It's Sticky Notes

April 23, 2022

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve basically been forced into stationery minimalism. Three quarters of my stash has been packed away, and while I don’t have as large a stockpile as many, and tend to keep only what I might reasonably use, it’s definitely given me a sense of what’s truly essential and what’s a luxury. Here, I define “essential” as “What have I had to go back into storage to dig out of boxes because I can’t function without it?” The number one thing? My stash of sticky notes and page markers.

I use a broad range of sticky notes and page markers for everything from making notes to myself, to creating makeshift bookmarks, to annotating documents at work, to marking up books I’ve been reading where I want to go beyond marginalia. Honestly, for my day job, I probably do just as much writing on Post-its as I do on traditional legal pads or notebooks.

A real-time shot of my work desk from this week. Lots of Post-It flags. Always.

So What’s In My Stash?

I keep a wide variety of stationery readily available for this purpose, ranging from your classic Post-Its (purchased in bulk every couple of years at Costco), to 3M document flags, to fountain pen friendly stickies from Midori and Traveler’s Company, to repurposed washi tape. For books that I plan to keep (as opposed to library books I can’t mark up), I’ll use Book Darts and more expensive paper tabs such as those from Duncan Shotten. Here are a few of my favorite options, chosen by what’s actually on my desk at this very moment:

Classic Post-It. While overall performance with fountain pens definitely varies by batch (and especially by paper color), on the whole I’ve had a decent experience using standard 3M Post-It notes with fountain pens and most other writing instruments. The classic yellow are my favorite, and as I mentioned, I usually buy them in bulk at Costco.
Midori MD Sticky Notes or Traveler’s Company Sticky Notes. I don’t use these on “throw away” notes for work, since they’re more expensive, but when I’m reading a book or wanting to add a sticky note to my journal, and intend the note to last for posterity, I’ll definitely use one of these higher-quality, fountain pen friendly sticky notes. The Traveler’s Company sticky notes come in a handy insert with plastic protector so you can store them as a refill inside your Traveler’s Notebook. The Midori MD versions are slightly larger (A7 size), so they can really double as “sticky memo pads.”
3M Post-It Flags. I probably wouldn’t buy these myself (b/c you can’t really write on them well), but I work at a law office and they have them lying all over the place so they’re always in my bag and sometimes “whatever’s available” (or “whatever’s free”) is what you use.
Book Darts. These classic metal page markers are infinitely useful, and I never find myself without a tin of them in my bag or next to the chair I’m reading in. While they’re reusable, I typically only use them in books I’m reading and plan on saving, since I like to leave them in long-term to revisit certain passages. (They’re archivally safe and won’t degrade paper over time.) You can also use them to create a multi-subject notebook divided into sections.
Duncan Shotten Sticky Page Markers. I have several packs of these quirky sticky page markers in various themes. (Lately I’ve been using the “alien” ones.) They’re great for when you want to show more personality than a Post-It flag allows.
Folded-over Washi Tape. If you ever want to mark a page in a book or notebook, and don’t have a Book Dart or other page marker handy, you can always fold a small piece of washi tape over the edge of a page. I forget who told me this trick but it’s stuck for years!

Anything I’m missing? What are your favorite sticky notes and page markers?

Book Darts in a Notebook — Book Darts on Tomoe River Paper!

Review: Baron Fig Mastermind and Nomad

May 6, 2017

Of all the seemingly never-ending stream of products coming out of Baron Fig these days, the ones that have me the most excited might be the ones that have received the least fanfare. A week or so back, Baron Fig announced the launch of the "Mastermind" desk pad and the "Nomad" sticky notes. Both fill a gaping hole in my stationery arsenal.

The Mastermind

I'm always on the lookout for a good desk pad. I've experimented with various formats, from the cheapest of At-A-Glance t ear-off blotter calendars, to Levenger Oasis Pads, to the Rhodia No. 38. The blotter calendar holds a special place in my heart, since it's what I used on my desk from high school through college, and I loved that at the end of the month you would have a collage of various notes, lists, telephone numbers, doodles, scratches, you-name-it for the past 30 days. Sometimes, of course, you'd forget to tear off the page for two or three months, and then you'd really have some exceptionally interesting works of art.

The point was that I never actually used it as a calendar. Rather, it was a giant scratchpad that I had at my disposal while I worked on whatever it was I was doing at my desk. Of course, as I grew older and started using rollerballs, fountain pens, and other wet writers, the blotter calendar grew less useful and I stopped using desk pads entirely. I still break out the Levenger Oasis from time to time for brainstorming sessions, but it's an awkward size for me: too small to use as a true desk blotter, but too large to have sitting to the side while you work on a keyboard or with another notebook open in front of you. It's more of a lap-based tool to use while you're in an armchair or on the couch.

The Baron Fig Mastermind "in writing mode." The pad is a great size for my desk. The paper seems to be standard Baron Fig paper stock, which I find fountain pen friendly enough for my day-to-day needs, and especially enjoyable to use with pencils.&n… — The Baron Fig Mastermind "in writing mode." The pad is a great size for my desk. The paper seems to be standard Baron Fig paper stock, which I find fountain pen friendly enough for my day-to-day needs, and especially enjoyable to use with pencils.

This is where the Mastermind excels. Baron Fig's desk pad is big enough pad (8" x 12") to make it useful for sketching out ideas on a larger canvas, but it's still small enough to be unobtrusive. Some might prefer the slightly larger, 80-sheet Rhodia No. 38 pad, but I prefer the Baron Fig paper because it's some of the most pencil-friendly paper out there. For brainstorming and sketching out ideas, I enjoy using a pencil. That said, if you're looking for a pad of paper with sturdy backing and a fold-over cover that you can take with you and use as a sort of lap desk, the larger Rhodia pad might be more your thing.

The Nomad

I recall there being a debate on the Pen Addict Podcast a few episodes back about the best fountain-pen friendly sticky note. I'm not a sticky-note or Post-it connoisseur, but I do use them frequently. Honestly, it doesn't really bother me whether or not a sticky note is particularly high-quality, much less "fountain pen friendly," though often a super-cheap generic sticky note will feather uncontrollably with anything other than a pencil or a ballpoint pen. Fortunately, my office stocks the Post-It Super Sticky, which generally works well enough for my needs.

Since I know people will ask for it: a writing sample with fountain pens on the Nomad sticky note. The TWSBI 580 with Diamine ink in a medium nib didn't feather all that much but bled through. The H-F Sailor nib with Sailor ink worked the best. &nbs… — Since I know people will ask for it: a writing sample with fountain pens on the Nomad sticky note. The TWSBI 580 with Diamine ink in a medium nib didn't feather all that much but bled through. The H-F Sailor nib with Sailor ink worked the best.

So what's the niche for the Baron Fig Nomad? For me, I just like having a dot-grid sticky note, and the slightly-textured paper is nice to write on, even if it's a bit thin. The paper seems like a lighter-weight version of the standard Baron Fig paper. For the true paper geeks out there, the Nomad actually resists feathering fairly well, though wet fountain pens will definitely bleed-through. (Again, I don't really care whether a sticky note suffers from "bleed through," since I've never used the back of one in my life, but if this is something that concerns you I'd recommend that you stick to EF and EEF nibs, or very dry inks.)

Takeaways/Where to Buy

While these are definitely "YMMV" products, depending on how you work and what you're specific needs are, I'm grateful to Baron Fig for putting these out there, especially the Mastermind. I picked up two packs: one for home and one for work. The Mastermind runs $15 for a pack of two pads at 35 sheets each. which is roughly comparable to the 80-sheet Rhodia No. 38. The Nomad runs $8 for a three-pack of 70-sheet pads, which is more expensive than your standard post-it but still fair. You can buy both directly from Baron Fig.

Disclaimer: I purchased all of the products featured in this review with my own funds for my own use. This post does contain affiliate links.