Paper

Well this was a lot harder than I expected and probably explains why our paper was so loved, as it has proven quite tricky to find cheap, readily available paper to use in our notebooks.

I'm going to focus on plain paper here, partly because lined, dot or grid seems very hard to find, but also because that's what I have used for 10 years - boxes of plain paper used to print diaries, templates and lined/dot/grid pages. Diaries and templates were always printed in-house on a laser printer, and most A6 coloured dot/grid and line pages were also printed this way - it was only when volumes of A5 and some A6 were much higher that I got the pages printed externally.

I have made the grey lined, dot and grid layouts available for download and printing (see the Layouts/Templates page), but it may also be easier to just print one of those as a guide sheet underneath plain paper.

For non-fountain pen users, there are options - a quick trip to Amazon, or a few minutes spent Googling will yield A5 plain or even lined paper that can be punched to use in our notebooks. I have not found A6 Lined, Dot or Grid paper available here in the UK, but A5, or even A4 plain paper, cut down to A6 size using a guillotine is easily done. 

For fountain pen users, it seems a little more tricky. There are a few brands of well-loved paper available - Tomoe River, etc - but sheets can be quite pricey. I'm not going to list any of those here because I have never used them myself and their availability frequently varies, but a question or search in fountain pen communities will find the current recommended options.

I have found and tested a couple of options here in the UK, and they may be available in Europe or the US too :-

Clairefontaine Triomphe Writing Pad (50 A4 Plain Sheets ) 90g/m².

This is a really lovely paper, and works great with a fountain pen. It comes in pads, and you have to remove the sheets from the pad, but that's easy and leaves no residue. I used the A4 version, cut down to A5 and punched, and it's lovely. At the time of writing, that pack cost me £5.53 from Amazon, so 50 x A4 sheets, cut to 100 x A5 sheets would be a bargain - even more so if you cut it down to 200 x A6. I have heard great things about Clairfontaine paper (and its sister-brand Rhodia) for years, and it's the one I would probably use myself.

I'm sorry I haven't been able to find many specific options to replace our paper, but with a guillotine and a punch it is relatively easy to take any good paper you find, and use it in your notebook. I encourage everyone to join the William Hannah User Group on Facebook - there are already a couple of posts about good, alternative papers, and the more the community shares, the easier it will be for everyone.