July 2025 has been an exciting stationery month for me! Not only have I got a new fountain pen and leather notebook cover, but I’ve also finished a journal, and started a new one, and revived one of my pens with a brand new nib. 

So let’s talk fountain pens first:

Fountain Pens

This month I received my preorder from Stilo & Stile of my Benu Talisman Moonstone. As I spoke about in my review, I’ve been loving this pen, and have it inked with Robert Oster Dusky Pink. 

I’ve also fallen completely in love with my Opus 88 Koloro, now it has a new nib, and I’ve discovered the perfect ink pairing for it. 

The fine nib it came with was always a little scratchy, but I bought a medium nib for it which is lovely and smooth, and works much better with the lighter inks I’ve been dying to pair with this pen. It currently has Herbin Parfum Orange in it, and it’s the perfect match.

Notebooks

I’ve been lusting after a Louise Carmen tri-fold leather traveler’s notebook for ages, but was very reluctant to pay the high price, especially considering some of the quality control issues I’ve been hearing about with their products. So after hunting around a bit on Etsy for an alternative, I found my dream notebook cover!

It’s from a Etsy shop called Hand Stitched Leather T who offer a huge range of colours and sizes of tri-fold leather notebooks, and lots of customisation options. I ended up choosing this pale pink ‘Barbie’ leather in the B6 size, with mint elastic and the large rose quartz charm. 

I’ll do a full review of this soon, but in short, I love it! I always love traveler’s notebooks, but I loved how personalized this one is, and I’ve managed to fit some much thicker notebooks inside it, which makes it feel more usable.

In other notebook news, I’ve also finished a journal! It took me just under 4 months to complete an A5 Leuchtturm1917 notebook, which is probably my quickest ever. Subsequently I decided to choose something a bit chunkier for my next journal, and went with a spiral bound notebook from Paperchase, with a cute coffee and croissant motif on the front. 

I’ve never used a spiral bound notebook as a journal before, so we’ll have to see how I like it. I’m hoping I will like it, since it’s so chunky I could be working on it for quite a while!

Other

In other stationery news, I got my first ever Blackwing pencil. I chose the matte green soft pencil, which is proving to be very nice for sketching, and especially for shading!

So how has your July been? What have been your stationery favourites of the month?