Review: Veco Spiral Dotted Journal from NBS-SM Bacoor

Hi everyone! You know the drill. Just purchased another journal from my most favorite store ever. Of course, that is the National Bookstore. I found this cute Veco Dotted Spiral Journal and I’ll have our review for this.

Dotted journals are becoming popular these days since the start of the booming idea by Ryder Caroll about Bullet Journal. Due to its popularity, many notebook makers are now starting to release their own dotted journals. Here in the Philippines, the brands that I usually use for my journals are Victoria Journals and Limelight. Those are always available at National Bookstores.

Aside from journals I also buy steno notebooks and regular notebooks from Veco Paper and Cattleya ever since I am a student. In the past, maybe about 1 or 2 years ago, I never saw a dotted journal. I usually buy lined journals since that’s the only available option.

Just a few months ago, Limelight released their own dotted journals. A few months ago pertains to when I saw it for the first time not really the release date. I noticed that the pricing of their dotted journals was like 30% higher than the lined journals. I am quite disappointed about that. That’s one of the reasons I looked for another option.

They have 3 sizes of these journals. What I got is the smallest one which is about the same height as my Pilot Frixion Point. The next size is the same as the regular notebook size and the other one is the same size as the large college notebooks. Sorry I didn’t really know the A4 or A-Whatever sizes of the notebooks.

Related Item on Lazada: Pilot Frixion Ball Pen Slim

I took the smallest size to make this purchase discrete as possible. My husband tends to get annoyed whenever I purchase journals or pens because he keeps on saying that I have a lot. But as a matter of fact, one of my journals is already full and other journals are dedicated to something else.

Anyway if you could remember, I had a review about the Veco Sparkling Notes(which is a sketchpad) together with the Lil Hands Coloring Pens. That means I liked the brand so far. I should’ve bought the bigger version.

Let’s take a look at the Paper Quality

Thickness

This dotted journal I got has 100 gsm paper. I had no idea what it meant. The last time I bought a bond paper said it was 70 gsm. Based on my understanding between those two, the higher, the thicker the paper is. It is nice to have thicker pages because there are times I write heavily.

Bleed Through

I am not sure if I am using the right term for this. To test it out, I took a sheet out of the notebook to test if it will bleed through to the next page. I don’t wanna mess with the new journal yet so I have to tear it off. I tested some of my current pens and markers. So far there was no bleeding through the other page. The only time it did was when I placed the Sharpie on top of the page for few seconds. With normal writing, it doesn’t bleed.

Ghosting

The back of the paper to see the ghosting of each pen used to test it

I used a Sharpie fine point permanent marker and there was visible ghosting. However, after testing some other pens with it, you won’t really see noticeable ghosting at the back of the page.

Smoothness

As expected from Veco, the paper is really smooth. For regular pens and sign pens, you can write there smoothly. For leaky pens(is there such a thing?) like fountain pens, brush pens, or dip pens, it is super nice too. I can say that it absorbs the ink of some leaky pens quickly too. Not too quick though since these pens use more ink but it is decent enough for fast writing.

Now, what about the usage quality?

Handheld Writing

Since I got the smallest one, this dotted journal is perfect for handheld writing. Like when you’re taking notes in an event or somewhere that has no tables this is a great notebook for you. Aside from that, the cover is made of some sort of hard plastic that can support your paper while writing. I guess this would work for the bigger Veco spiral dotted journals too.

Flipping Experience

 

You can flip the pages up to 360 degrees since this is a spiral notebook. I’m quite disappointed at first though because the first pages were quite stuck together. The last time I used a spiral notebook was when I was in high school. I could barely remember if it’s normal for the first pages to be like that. Also, the papers came to be misaligned.

 

 

 

Btw sorry about my finger. It’s bothering to see that. I am just so excited to share this an decided not to recapture it. So later this day I will publish the full review of this dotted journal by veco. Hope you’ll check that post later. Visit and subscribe at https://mielygraphy.com for an update. You can also like my fb page at https://fb.com/mielyonline or follow me on twitter @mielyonline Happy journaling! #dottedjournals #bulletjournals #journaling

A post shared by miely echon (@mielygraphy__) on Aug 25, 2018 at 10:54am PDT

 

 

It’s definitely bearable because it only happens on the first pages. But If you could see on the video the paper is already outside the cover(CLICK HERE if the video doesn’t load). That could make the paper ugly after some time if it continues to be like that. I was able to manage to fix it but it took me like 10-15 minutes but it’s fine now (sometimes). I tried opening the bigger versions of these dotted journals at the national bookstore. I don’t think this issue happens to those sizes. I am hoping that this could’ve been better though.