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Buying Christmas presents can be tough.

Particularly when you want to purchase something that relates to the recipients hobbies or interests. Rather than merely putting together a ‘gift guide’ of some of my favourite Etsy goodies, I wanted to also give a few hints and tips about things to look out for when purchasing gifts for a stationery lover.

Notebooks

There’s a lot of pretty handmade notebooks out there. However, if you’re purchasing one for someone with a love of stationery keep an out for the gsm of the paper in the notebooks.

Quite a few that I’ve purchased over the years have had a low gsm and been recycled paper. They’ve looked pretty on the outside but on the inside, haven’t been great for me as notebooks. When researching this post I came across this beautiful notebook* from Urban Vintage Affair.

This is a fabric covered A5 notebook, with 100gsm paper. It’s also got a great dot grid on off-white paper. In my opinion, you can’t go wrong with a dot grid as it’s so versatile. This notebook also comes with a large tote bag and is wrapped up beautifully. This basically arrived ready to go as a gift!

If your stationery loving friend is a bullet journaler then how about a cover for their bullet journal? I recently purchased a cover for my Hobonichi Cousin from One Star Leather Goods* and I absolutely love it. 

Notepads

Sticking with the paper theme, there’s also a world of pretty notepads out there. From full weekly desk planners* to cute sticky notes* there’s something for everyone out there. I love a good to do list and so picked up a couple of pads that would be perfect for listing.

I love bees and so I had to have this pad from Just Smile Designs*. This is such a great value product, 50 pages, 120gsm paper and A5 in size. It’s smooth paper so won’t work with all pen types but I’m not really fussy on the paper when it comes to writing out my lists.

I also had to pick up this beautiful pad from Elena Illustration*. The designs and illustrations in this shop are fantastic and I could easily fill up my basket and buy everything!

Pencil case

This is probably a good time to talk pencil cases as I love the ones from Elena*. When it comes to pencil cases you can go simple, or you can go down the route of pouches or pen rolls with millions of pockets for all their supplies. Delfonics pouches are my absolute favourite and I currently have two, a small and a medium.

These are Japanese and tricky to get hold of, but there’s usually quite a few to be found on Etsy. You can find a decently priced small one here* and the medium one here.

I also can’t talk pencil cases without mentioning bags. I was so excited to find this stationery themed tote bag!*

This is the work of another fantastic illustrator and I can’t wait to proudly carry this around!

Pens

This is tricky one as it’ll vary from person to person. However, you really can’t go wrong with some Japanese pens. I love Etsy for picking up supplies like pens that are harder to get hold of over here. Top of the list is the Pilot Kakuno fountain pen.

This is an inexpensive fountain pen that writes beautifully. They’re available in a range of colours* and there’s sometimes limited edition designs available.

If you want some cute stationery but don’t want to wait for overseas shipping, I found this UK based shop* that has lots of hard to find stationery. I highly recommend the Zebra pens*.

Other gifts

When researching this post I also thought about non-stationery gifts that would appeal to stationery lovers and stumbled across enamel pins. I’ve been seeing these everywhere recently and realised that my Delfonics pouch would make a perfect home for them. First up, I purchased a bee pin from Katnipp Illustrations*.

It was pretty tough to choose just one design from here. This shop is full of so many goodies including planner stickers all featuring hand drawn designs.

I also decided to finally make a purchase from Katie Abey*. I’ve been following her shop for so long but never got around to making a purchase, until now.

This pin won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but I love it! While in the shop, I also had to purchase this mug.

Whether it serves as a funky pen pot, or a coffee mug this is a fantastic gift idea. I was going to gift it to someone, but I decided to keep it for myself!

Hopefully this gives you an idea of what to buy the stationery lover in your life!

I’d love to add to this – if you have any further ideas, please drop them in the comments below!