Celebrating National Stationery Week with Stabilo

Did you know that last week (29th April - 5th May) was National Stationery Week? Whether in my role as a teacher or a mum, I am always splashing out on new pens and pencils to keep our pencil cases overflowing with new goodies. At work, I need an endless supply of red pens for all my marking, but we also have a class that is marked on skills rather than with grades. Instead of totalling up a mark at the end of each test, we set targets then give them a colour from red (not attained), yellow (insufficient), green (attained) to dark green (surpassed). It's actually quite simple, but trying to find a decent yellow pen that is easily readable, as well as two different greens that can be easily told apart, is actually quite tricky ! The Madhouse kids are always colouring, writing secret messages and making lists so they get through lots of stationery too. We were therefore over the moon to receive some new pens to try out from Stabilo.

I always associate Stabilo with highlighters. I invariably have a yellow one (and sometimes orange, green or pink too) in my desk drawer at work and they're fabulous for highlighting key words or the important bits in notes from meetings or new pupil lists. I didn't know, however, that they have various different colours available - this mauve one (used to doodle the heart in the top picture) is from the Pastel collection, which includes pale orange, yellow, green, pink and blue too.

For years, I thought that Stabilo only produced highlighters, but at work, I am forever using their Fineliners, which are great for marking. I love the smooth flow of ink and, along with the usual red, green, black and blue options, this pack includes a purple and a pinky-purple pen. They are available in 41 brilliant colours and 6 fluorescent colours in total, according to the back of the pack, so whatever you're working on, you're bound to find colours to suit.

Most correspondance these days is done online or by phone, but there is something extra special about writing with an ink pen. I love to send special handwritten notes and cards to close friends and family members, to show that I'm thinking about them, or leave little notes in the Madhouse kids' school bags for them to find throughout the day. This funky fountain pen is from the beCrazy range. It comes with one ink cartridge already supplied, which is fabulous if you haven't had a chance to pick up a pack of spares, and it is also suitable whether you're left or right-handed.

The Madhouse kids begged to get their sticky little mitts on this pack of 15 fibre-tipped pens (from the top picture), so I relented and passed them over. They have beautiful bright colours (which you can see in the top picture), which have been perfect for colouring, writing messages or completing complicated maps for geography homework ! As a parent, I was also incredibly impressed to see on the pack that the pens will apparently still colour after eight weeks without a cap. That sounds like great news, as we seem to have a pen lid-eating monster hiding somewhere in our house ! But that's not all - more great news for parents is that they are washable and the tips are push-resistant. If I had to come up with a list of our top pen peeves, they have just solved most of them in one fell swoop !

Sadly, our package was delivered to the wrong address and has just been dropped off by a friendly neighbour, so National Stationery Week has now been and gone. As far as I'm concerned, there is no particular time for buying stationery though, as it always comes in handy. It never fails to put a smile on my face whenever I uncap a new pen and turn to the first page in a new notebook or diary. There's something much more satisfying about crossing things off a handwritten to-do list than deleting something quickly typed out online too !

Disclosure : I received some goodies from Stabilo in order to share my honest opinion.