5 of my favourite pens for letter writing

If you’re going to write a letter or send a friend a card, you’ll need a good pen. This blog post has come from a customer question about whether a certain pen is best to write on the lightly textured paper most of my cards are printed on. In short, any pen is good to write on the premium fresco gesso paper, but I do still have my personal favourites, so I thought I’d share those with you here.

1. The Lamy Safari fountain pen.

I grew up in France and we had to use fountain pens at school for all our work. It kind of shocked me when I found my children had to use lead pencils for all their work at school here in the U.K. In France, you can buy these special pens that erase blue ink (but only blue ink) and on the other end of the pen you have a blue pen that rewrites where you have erased, so the need to have pencils is less of a thing.

Anyway, that was a bit of a story telling tangent! When I got to secondary school, my friends and I thought it was cool to look for different coloured inks to put in our fountain pens. I had school notes written in purple, black, green and red ink. For a while, I had 3 fountain pens in my pencil case (yes, that is a trousse for those of you trying to remember your school french!) - one green, one red and one blue, to write titles and parts of my notes in different colours to stand out. It’s also fun to transition from one ink colour to another and watch the colour change as you write. But back to the topic at hand.

All that to say that I really love fountain pens. If you go to a french supermarket, you’ll find a wide array of them for about £5! My favourite recently, though is the Lamy Safari fountain pen. I love the feel of it, the way it writes and the lovely colour options. I’d love to go back to my school days and have a Lamy for each ink colour! For now though, mine just has blue-black ink in it.

The Lamy Safari fountain pen has a lovely weight to it, is a good width, has a really comfortable texture to hold and writes wonderfully smoothly. I got mine from Cult Pens which is like a stationery dream come true, and couldn’t recommend their service more. Quick, reasonable prices and even a little pack of love hearts and a fun paper clip included with the pen and cartridges. 

I have a medium nib and I love it, but you can get a whole range, including a left handed nib. I am left handed, but I have learned to use everything right handed. I find left handed scissors really tricky to use so I haven’t tried this nib.

2. Pilot v-pen

The pilot V-pen is not refillable, it is disposable, and as such isn’t very environmentally friendly. But they do last a good long while, and they come in a wide variety of ink colours so they still make my favourites list. They have a lovely medium nib and the ink flow is really good and regular. All the colours are erasable as well, which is good if that’s something you need. I’m a scribble out and start again kind of person, but I know some people like a tidier look!

I have a turquoise (which they call peacock green) and a purple for some fun colourful letter writing! They add a little joy to a birthday card, I find, and write lovely and smoothly.

3. Bic Bu3 Grip 1.0 (catchy!!)

Do you know, sometimes there’s nothing better than a good old biro! My favourite ball point pen for grip and consistent ink is a bic Bu3 Grip 1.0. It’s a clicky on off one ( do you know what I mean when I say that?) and has a lovely grip bit where you hold it so it doesn’t slip through your fingers as you write. I bought a pack of 5 black ones and I love having one wherever I need a pen.

These are actually my favourites for writing on the lightly textured cards I sell, because there’s absolutely no risk of the nib catching on one of the ridges of the paper. I also journal with them often because they don’t bleed through the pages of my journal, and I can write really fast with them, which is good to not lose my train of thought and I can (kind of) keep up with a sermon or talk!

4. Micron Pigma

These come in a plethora of colours. I like them best in a 0.5 nib, and I have a whole set. The first time I used one, I was given it by a friend for my 20th birthday. It was pink. I still have a pink one, but I love the light and dark green ones best. The blue ones are also a different blue ink colour to a regular blue pen which is nice for a change.

5. uni pin

I love these because they come in all nib sizes you could possibly want. I have a 0.03 and a 0.05 which I use for my the black ink lines on watercolour paintings. I also have a 0.1, a 0.2, a 0.3, a 0.5 and a 0.8. This last one is my favourite to write longer letters with. alongside these nib sizes, I also have a brush pen and as well as the black pens, I also have light grey ones which I love to add a little something interesting.

Do you have a favourite pen you’d like to recommend for writing letters and cards? I’m always on the look out for new stationery I love, so feel free to comment below!