a little info bubble before we dive into my go-to stationery: most (if not all) brands that i use are exclusively local brands. i'm from Turkey; so obviously depending on where you live, you might not be able to find these items i'm going to be talking about for a reasonable price or not at all. so i apologize for any inconvenience beforehand.
with that out of the way, let's talk stationery!
so i would love to start by talking about the notebooks i use on a frequent basis. usually i prefer anything in the range of 17x24 all the way down to A7, depending on the usecase. my "rough sketch and ideas" notebook is a Gıpta PaperMaster NoteBlock in 17x24. it has 100 pages in it (grid paper, i'm a sucker for grid paper, you'll soon see), it's a spiral notebook (the spiral is on top rather than on the side, which i love more than the latter) and the back cover is thicker; so if you were to have no flat surface to write on, the notebook will still hold its shape with no issues at all.
my favorite notebook that i use for lectures, i actually got two of from a dollar store at the district. it's the UniNote L!fe in A5, this also has 100 grid pages and it's also a spiral notebook and the spiral is located at the top. the texture of the paper is slightly different from the Gıpta notebook i've mentioned earlier; but aside from that and the size difference, they're exactly the same.
my pocket notebook that i carry with me wherever i go is the Keskin Color Spiral Bloknot in 7,5x11,5. this one also has grid paper, but it only has 42 pages instead of the glorious 100 pages from my other notebooks. there's another downside to this: the back cover doesn't support the notebook, so it sometimes bends out of shape when i pull it out of my pocket; there's a lot of visible wear and tear on this little guy. but i love the size, it's perfect for jotting down notes on the go.
now we're getting to my favorite part: the pens!! i love pens, i love anything regarding pens. let's kick off this category with a classic from the 1970s: the classic BiC 4-color pen. i have 5 of these in my stash, i absolutely love this pen to life. this thing has prevented me from carrying a pencil case around for a long while. it has red, blue, green and black ink in it, so it's basically perfect if i need to colorcode or annotate something. i LOVE love love this pen. my biggest gripe with it is the thickness of the nib though: 1.0mm makes my handwriting look a little meh, considering i write small. but it's fine, i still love this pen.
next in lieu: Gıpta Smells F1476 0.5mm in black. now this is a gel pen, and it's my favoritest gel pen i've used to this day. it unfortunately only has one color, but the clicker is so satisfying and the nib glides on the paper effortlessly (some of the gel pens i've used before used to make scratch noises on paper, which sucks). the 0.5mm nib makes my handwriting look prettier as ever!! i love this pen. my only issue is that if i write with this, and then mark the text with a highlighter, it smudges. (tip: highlight first, write on top!!)
speaking of highlighters, i have two Pensan Pastel highlighters in purple and green. honestly i don't use highlighters as much, however they're still nice to have whenever i need to annotate text.
i also have an Aihao Skater Plastic Tip Pen (what is this naming scheme even??) 0.4mm fineliner in gray; just because i write in markdown on paper (yeah, i'm that type of person...), and i use this gray pen for the markdown symbols like the pound sign, the brackets, etc.
now onto the good stuff: pencils. i have my two favorites here: the one i use the most is the Faber-Castell GRIP 1345 0.5mm in lilac. this is the most comfortable pencil i've ever used in my entire life. this is actually a gift as well, so i'm really grateful for this pen.
next up, the Faber-Castell POLY MATIC 0.5mm in purple. this is the old one; i've seen the new ones having a weird matte finish and boring colors, but functioning in the exact same way. i love this pencil as well, the grip is really comfortable; the only issue is that it's made of hard plastic so sometimes my fingers hurt if i were to write for a really long period of time.
and finally, for the eraser, i use the Tombow Mono Knock 3.8mm EH-KE in green. i used to use a regular plastic block eraser before; but for precise erasing in sketches, this is perfect. at first, getting used to a mechanical eraser feels a bit awkward, but after using it for a while i never looked back.
march 17, 2026 edit: an honorable mention goes to the Rotring Gel Rollerball 0.7mm in purple. i LOVE this pen as well; however my biggest gripe with this pen is the nib size. that's literally it.
and you might be asking "why add this edit today while you could've incorporated this pen into the main blog post?" and that's because: i forgot about this pen. yeah. i literally forgot that i bought this, it was collecting dust tucked into a little box on my shelf, and i forgot about its existence altogether, so...oops.
and that is it!! thank you so much for reading this MASSIVE wall of text about me rambling about my stationery!! hope you have an amazing day <3