Stabilo Boss Pastel Highlighter Review

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)

If you're reading or studying to the point of eye strain every day, then pastel highlighters are a godsend. When my eyes are exhausted and there are many chapters to go, the last thing my vision needs is searing neon. I've become a huge fan of softly colored highlighters since returning to school, and these Stabilo Boss Pastel Highlighters are perfect for study time.

This 4-color set includes Breezy Blue, Dusty Gray, Frozen Fuchsia, and Pale Orange. The colors are saturated enough to be easily visible on the page, but calm enough that they're pleasant to look at. The grey can be a little harder to see when highlighting on paper that is cool toned or photocopies that have shadows or static. It works well on plain, clean paper, though. The blue is my favorite, as it's the calmest while still being very visible.

The highlighter bodies are flat and wide, which makes them easy and comfortable to grip. The broad surface gives you excellent control for marking in straight lines. They have the classic chisel tip, which can be used to make broad lines, or rotated to use the tip for narrower marking. The bodies do have a lot of branding on them, including barcodes, but I'm less worried about the aesthetics of something as utilitarian as a highlighter. I go through them pretty quickly, anyway. But these ones last longer than most--the broad body packs a nice, full cartridge.

The cap snaps in place and removes easily with a bit of a twisting motion. The cap does not post, however, which is a bit of a bummer for a highlighter. And there is no clip, which is a bigger bummer. I tend to use my highlighters as bookmarks, but they need that clip to stay put. Still, what they lack in cap features, they make up for in good ink.

The water-based ink in these highlighters has some magic potion added to it that prevents the tip from drying out even with prolonged use. It does not get dry or scratchy even hours into studying. That's very useful, as it can be easy to zone out when reading and forget about the highlighter till you need it again. The flip side to this wet ink is that it doesn't work very well over handwritten notes. It does fine with printer ink or textbook pages, but it smeared quite badly over gel pens, rollerball, and fountain pen ink (which it actually partially dissolved). It only slightly smeared mechanical pencil. Because of this, I think of these as better for studying and school use, and maybe less useful for planners or notes.

This set of 4 sells for $9.80 on JetPens, and individual colors are available for $2.45. It's a very fair price considering how long these last. This set will probably last me half the semester by themselves, while a regular highlighter doesn't make it a week. If your tired eyes have big studies ahead, I definitely recommend these.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Faber-Castell Textliner Highlighter Metallic Review

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)

Anything that can add a little festivity to homework reading is a good investment, in my opinion. Faber-Castell are among my favorite highlighters, so I was very excited to try these metallic shimmering varieties.

Faber-Castell highlighter bodies are a unique shape with broad bodies in a flattened oval silhouette. They are surprisingly comfortable to hold, as the narrow end of the oval rests against your hand and you hold it along its broader edge. The flat shape stops it from rolling off of desks, and even allows it to function as a decent bookmark. The clips are also broad and very bendy plastic. They aren't very strong and don't hold many sheets of paper, but they're fine for clipping to a thin book cover or a few pages of reading. The snap cap posts securely to the narrowed end of the marker.

The highlighter's chisel tip creates a 5 mm highlight when used on the broad side, and a narrower line when you use the tip of the chisel, so it's handy for highlighting large and smaller text.

What really makes these highlighters unique, of course, is the shimmer ink. I've used glitter markers before, but never in highlighter form. I would say these are marginally successful at the glitter effect. The four colors in this set are Shimmering Violet, Magnificent Blue, Precious Green, and Glorious Red, all pastel versions of classic jewel tones. They're all a little different in how they handle the glitter. Green shows no sign of glitter, red shows a hint, blue has so much that it has a mirror effect that's hard to read in bright light, and violet has the perfect balance. Part of that will be in how the shimmer particles are distributed and suspended in the ink. The package does say to make sure they are stored horizontally, which I was careful to do, but there still seems to be some issues with particle distribution, just as there often is with shimmer inks in fountain pens. The difficulty here is that it's harder to take apart and troubleshoot a felt tip marker than it is a fountain pen.

Another issue I had with these is that the ink is more flowy than normal highlighter ink. Regular highlighters generally feel a bit dry, even squeaky, which is a feature not a bug. The last thing you want is highlighter bleed-through, where it looks like the wrong side of the page is highlighted. Unfortunately, these bleed through a bit more than normal highlighters. They even cause a bit of paper buckling from the wetness of the ink. Caveat: these results were mostly on regular copy paper, which is what most of my school readings are printed on. They did not show any bleed-through or buckling on Rhodia paper. So if you're highlighting your own notes in a good notebook, you likely won't have any problems.

Apart from these issues, I do like them, maybe more as markers than as highlighters. The colors themselves are beautiful and not too bright or hard on the eyes. I think they'll be great for use in planners. The set of four costs $7.50; there's a set of 8 for $15; and individual colors are available for $1.75. That's a great deal for how long these highlighters last. I read and highlight many hundreds of pages every week and the Faber-Castell Textliners last longer than every other highlighter I've tried (I have tried all of them, as far as I know).

If you need to add some sparkle to your notes, I do recommend these so long as you have good paper, or don't mind a bit of destruction to your cheap paper.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!

A Stationary 2020 of Stationery

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)

Here we are at the end of 2020, with 2021 looming. Perhaps rather than a sparkling ball, we'll be dropping the other shoe. But, as Galadriel says, "Hope remains while the company is true" and there's no better company than the stationery community. A lot of us have sought solace and sanity in our hobby and in each other this year, and despite my analog disposition, I'm so grateful for the tech that has kept us in touch.

Whether it was Twitter, Instagram, or Brad's Twitch streams, reaching out to my pen fam helped dull the sting of lost pen shows and clubs. And thank goodness for online pen stores and the mail carriers who make them possible. I didn't save any money by not going to a pen show, that's for sure. Instead of the Chicago Pen Show, it was the Sarah's Mailbox Pen Show. I regret nothing.

A number of my 2020 acquisitions deserve a special shout-out. And my first accolade goes to the noble highlighter. I started grad school this fall, studying Library and Information Science. As you can imagine, there's a bit of reading in that field. I burned through 2-3 highlighters a week for my 14-week semester. Some were too dry, or too wet, or too awkward to hold, or ran out too quickly--but they all were necessary and I never went anywhere without a few of them. I could not have functioned without them and they were absolutely necessary to a successful semester. I raise my glass to you, highlighters.

My highlighters' constant companion was the King Jim Magflap Clipboard. A lot of my reading was scholarly articles that I'd printed out, and this clipboard made reading them a lot easier and more comfortable. I could curl up in a cozy chair and still have a reading and writing surface, and it fit perfectly in my bag when I needed to take my work on the go.

My third accolade, also used for school, was the Roterfaden Taschenbegleiter. It held the notebooks I used for lecture notes. The clip system, which I expected to be obtrusive and possibly even annoying, is actually fabulous. It's much more secure than an elastic band notebook system, and the clips never got in the way at all. I've already got it refilled for next semester.

Clearly the majority of my praise is going to practical things--in the year 2020, I most appreciate the things that made my life easier. But don't worry, it's not all school supplies. My absolute favorite stationery item I got this year was my birthday/mother's day present from my husband, a long-coveted Galen Leather Writer's Medic Bag in crazy horse green. In the stationary year of stationery it mostly sits on my desk, holding pens and looking pretty. But it is SO pretty, and sometimes I carry it around the house with me. You know, in case I want to write upstairs, or in the kitchen while I make more tea. I can't wait to take it to a pen show, though I know that may not be till 2022.

My favorite pen of the year was the Spoke Roady, and I'm not just saying that because Brad is my friend. It's a phenomenal pen and I've used it every day since it arrived. If there's one thing to look forward to in 2021, it's more Spoke pens.

I think there's a lot to look forward to in 2021, though. Maybe not all the things we normally look forward to, but I know I'm looking forward to chatting with you all about pens and paper and ink for the coming year. Take care and Happy New Year!