Muji Album & Water-Based Markers Review

So I was out today in the city (after taking a break from writing a 2000 word essay on ultrasound principles and physics), and after posting away my Olive Personal Metropol to a lucky eBay-er, I found myself back in Melbourne Emporium's Muji store. Again...

My boyfriend's 21st birthday is coming up and I thought, what better way to celebrate his birthday (and our almost-3-year relationship) with an album outlining the moments we've spent together? I'm sure there are other gifts that I can shower him with like clothes and other superficial stuff, but that can come on other birthdays. Let's make his 21st special.

And Muji had just what I needed:

Muji 205 x 180mm album

Refillable by unscrewing those screws!

Self-adhesive albums!

I loved it mostly because of the self-adhesive pages.. and the fact that it was refillable. Scrapbook albums are no fun because it requires exact size pages for the allocated album size, whereas with this, I would be able to put in 6.5x6.5" pages from Kaisercraft and the self-adhesive pages would hold it easily. Not to mention the lack of glue I would need when putting embellishments in! There was an A4 size album as well, but I prefer the square layouts a little more...

So after I picked up the album for him, I picked up 3 water-based double sided marker for myself. Naturally.

Muji water-based markers

I tried it out in my sketching Muji book and I'm actually quite surprised with how well the paper handled it:

Trying out the markers in my Muji notebook

Back page: nothing!

I might head back there and purchase more colours of the Muji markers one day. After all, they only costed 95c each...

But to the real test! I tried drawing this church found on Flinders St, Melbourne using the black Muji felt-tip marker in my dotted Muji notebook and the colour is really nice and vibrant, buuuuut... there were some bleed-through the paper especially for edges of the drawing. And because I had to go over lines to make them darker for contrast, the lines started to have show-through as well. I did expect this though, however, because as it is, it's not drawing paper! It's just normal every day paper with probably an 80gsm weight. I'm not going to give the book up as yet though, because despite these little things, I think I might be able to make this book work in the long-haul...

Here are the pictures to show the show-through and bleed-through:

My rough doodle of Flinders St church using Muji marker

Back page: show through & bleed through at some points

The markers would generally be good for writing (especially the thinner side) and drawing on heavier weighted papers, I guess. But either way, it seems to be lasting quite well for me (for now), so I give the markers a thumbs-up!

Till my next adventure!