JetPens Giveaway Winners

Thank you to all of our readers for participating in our recent posts and for all of your comments. We appreciate our community and are excited to give away some of our wonderful pens.

Please follow these instructions to claim your prize:

1. Leave a comment on this post.

2. Email jetpromos(at)jetpens.com with your mailing address.

Please note that you have one week from today, May 26th, to reply!

Without further ado, here are our winners:

Pen & Ink: Nibs Both Fine and Broad- Pilot Hi-Tec-C pen set



The Legend of the Blackwing- Palomino Blackwing Wooden Pencil - 602 Model set



Brush Pen Use for Celebrations and Condolences in Japan- $50 Gift Certificate



Pen & Ink: The Four Gentlemen- Akashiya Natural Bamboo Brush Pen



Congratulations again to our following winners and thank you once more to all of our readers! Keep an eye out for more giveaways!

JetPics - May 2012 Favorites

Here are our favorite customer images selected from our Facebook Page or the web for the month of May.

Picture 1 from Christina: Christina's wonderfully organized inventory of her favorite pens include the Tombow Mono Knock 3.8 Eraser, the Ohto Tasche Ceramic Roller Ball Pen, the Kuretake Zig Letter Pen CocoIro Pen, and more!

Pen and Ink: Nibs Both Fine and Broad

John Skoyles writes the column "Pen and Ink" and is a professor, a poet, and author of the memoir, Secret Frequencies: A New York Education.

When I was a kid, we learned to write cursive from teachers who had us trace letters that slanted to the right. Mine tilted left. Why? Because I was left-handed, but my mother made me use my right. (My mother is Italian, and the word for left is "sinistro"— perhaps she didn’t want a sinister son…) Whenever I reached for a fork, a ball, or a pen with my left hand, she tapped my wrist and made me switch. She succeeded, kind of. I learned to throw and bat righty, to open doors with my right hand, and now I do everything right-handed, including writing with the world’s worst penmanship.

I was so ashamed of my horrid handwriting that I made it tiny and unreadable because I wanted it to be invisible.

The Legend of the Blackwing

Fig 1. Palomino Blackwing 602 Wooden Pencils.

You may be familiar with the basics of the Blackwing story: introduced by Eberhard Faber during the 1930s, it was lauded by famous creatives like John Steinbeck and Chuck Jones. It claimed to write with “Half the Pressure, Twice the Speed,” and featured an iconic eraser and ferrule design. After it was discontinued in 1998, its desirability grew to a fever pitch until single pencils were selling for as much as thirty dollars.

Only twelve years later, sixth-generation pencil manufacturer Charles Berolzheimer II revived the brand as the newly minted Palomino Blackwing. The cacophonous fan reaction was equal parts criticism and acclaim, but one thing soon became clear: it was a commercial success.

That’s the short version of the Blackwing tale. But as any historian knows, history is more than just a sequence of events. To truly understand the reputation and hype that grew around the Blackwing, read on.

Artist Highlight - Alex Leon

Alex Leon is a 22 year old illustrator and graphic designer living in Atlanta, Georgia. Being a meticulous person, her love for drawing and design is matched by a need to be organized. Her studio is almost like a library; the walls are lined with shelves filled with personal art dating back to her preschool years. New sketchbooks and sheet protected drawings are continuously added to those shelves. Her choice of daily art and office supplies have to be of good quality to keep up with her. And it shows since the best have stayed within her pencil pouch for over 7 years. You can find more about her art at alexleondesign.blogspot.com.

Give us a little insight as to how you use our JetPens products in your illustrations.

I love Uni-ball Kuru Togas...