P365 Day 11 - the story of the brown pen

Almost from the time that I started scrapbooking, I’ve been looking for a brown journalling pen.

Black pens are all over the place. Take your pick. I have about six of 'em, of various sizes and brands.

There is a pen colour that is sort of brown. One pen brand even goes so far as to call it ‘pure brown’.

Now I'm not a regular peruser of paint charts, so I don’t know the names for every conceivable shade of every colour out there.  I’m not even sure I know the difference between salmon, peach and apricot.

But to me, brown, and 'pure brown' in particular, implies something reasonably dark and, well, brown. Not the orangey-brown that all the so-called ‘brown’ pens are. They’re chestnut. According to Wikipedia, chestnut is a ‘medium brownish shade of red’. Red. Not brown.

OK there are lots of shades of brown; some of them are light, some of them are reddish and some of them are dark. And like I said I’m not across the intricacies of the names of various shades.

But when I think of brown, I generally think of something dark. And when I wanted a brown pen, I wanted a dark brown pen. Not a reddy orangey chestnut one.

But the chestnut ones were the only brown pens out there, so when I was doing a scrapbook layout that needed brown instead of black writing, I had no choice but to use them. I never particularly liked the end result, but I knew black wouldn’t suit the layout.

I was always on the lookout for a dark brown pen, but until today, had never found one.

Today I was in a scrapbooking shop that I go to occasionally when I’m in the area or if I need something that my local shop doesn’t stock. While I was at the checkout I glanced over at the pen stand and there it was – a brown pen! I had to look again – no, I wasn’t imagining it, it was a real brown brown pen.

Never have I grabbed anything so quickly! The woman in the shop said it was the only brown pen they’d been able to find, and that they were really popular. I should’ve got two!

I was so pleased with my new brown pen that I spent every spare moment of the day writing with it. (OK, that’s a slight exaggeration, but I did write a couple of pages in my beautiful new journal, including a list of photos I want to take as part of Project 365.)

For the record, the pen is a Pigma Micron 0.5 by Sakura, and I believe the colour is actually called Sepia.