My whole weekly spread bled through the page and ruined my monthly tracker

I was setting up my journal for next week and grabbed a new pen I got last month, some generic brand from the craft store. I did my whole Monday layout with boxes and lists, flipped the page, and saw it all ghosted right onto my monthly calendar. I tried to fix it by putting a sticker over the mess, but now the whole month's grid is off. Has anyone found a pen that really doesn't bleed on basic notebook paper?

4 comments

4 Comments

evan_carr1mo ago

Wait, you used a craft store pen on a whole spread? Honestly, that takes some serious hope right there. Pat_wood is totally right about gel pens, I keep a cheap pack in my glove box for notes. Tbh I'd be scared to even test a new pen without a scrap page now.

lily_stone769d ago

Yeah pat_wood nailed it with the gel pens thing. I read somewhere that most of those craft store pens are alcohol-based and that's what causes the bleeding, while gel pens are water-based so they sit on top of the paper more. I learned this the hard way after ruining a whole month too. Now I literally keep a scrap piece of paper tucked in the back of my journal and test every new pen on it before I even think about using it on a real page. That sticker fix sounds like a nightmare though, at least with ghosting you can still kinda read the tracker underneath.

pat_wood1mo ago

Feel your pain, that exact thing wrecked my February spread. Learned the hard way that gel pens are the only safe bet for thin paper. My journal still has a few ghosted pages as a warning.

robert_craig9d ago

Lost a whole month's worth of notes to bleed-through once. Gel pens or nothing now.