Heads up UK folks – you can now get US-made Doane Paper here! It’s now stocked in the UK exclusively by Fox and Hardy, who were lovely enough to send me some to try out, and to giveaway to you guys.

Doane Paper Notebooks from Fox and Hardy
They stock the Coloured Utility Notebooks, which come in packs of 6, for £19.95. These are normal memo book size and are stapled (as you can see). I LOVE the colour choices, and the covers are slightly matte, which is a really cool finish.

Doane Paper Notebooks from Fox and Hardy
The print of the paper is pretty unique – a cross between grid and lined, which came about when Chad Doane noticed half of people use grid, half use lined and he wanted to come up with a type of paper that allows people to use both a the same time. I must say, I think this will take me a little while to get used to, but I think it’s a great idea.

Doane Paper Notebooks from Fox and Hardy
I tested out the paper with my usual suspects; Mark’s Days ballpoint pen (biro), Muji Gel pen, Pedlar’s Signet 100 pencil, Kaweco Al-Sport and Le Pen felt tip. This paper holds up so well with all of these, it’s definitely up near the top in terms of the best I’ve tried. Even with fountain pen you can’t see the ink through the page, which is amazing. I’m impressed.

Doane Paper Notebooks from Fox and Hardy
Doane Paper Notebooks from Fox and Hardy

They also stock the Flap Jotter in the small size, which comes in packs of 3 for £12. It’s a reporter style notepad, and has the same Doane paper. You can also buy a leather case for your jotter.

So, I’m going to give away 3 of these Utility Notebooks to one lucky reader:

Doane Paper Notebooks from Fox and Hardy
In order to enter yourself into the giveaway, please comment below and say which of the 3 colours you’d like – I’m afraid I already used the dark blue, to test the paper, but you can choose from the rest.

The rules:

  1. Comment on this post by Monday 27th April 2015, 5pm GMT
  2. I will choose a winner at random
  3. This competition is only open to those in Europe I’m afraid (given that the notebooks have come all the way from the US, it seems silly to open this up to further afield than Europe).
  4. One entry per person

So get commenting – which colours are your favourite?

One last thing –  Fox and Hardy also sent me one of their super cool bandanas, and since I was wearing it to keep my hair out of my face when I took the photos for this post, I thought I’d share a shameless selfie 😉

Tessa Sowry in Bandana