The Best Pens for Single Line Font Pen Drawing
Pen Roundup
As any paper crafter will tell you, we all have our absolute favorite pens to use while scrapbooking, cardmaking and crafting. I have gobs of colored pens from many companies, but I have a few that are hands-down my favorites to use in my machines with my pen tools.
In no certain order, here are all the details on the top pens currently in my arsenal:
Shuttle Art Colored Retractable Gel Pens – These come in a pack of 11 vintage colors. They are my favorite to work with while using type above about 25 points. They are .7, so a nice medium size, and mine don’t have issues with skipping. They are a great value and they last for a long time. My set was purchased about 8 months ago.
Parkoo Retractable Gel Pens (.7) – These are very similar to the Shuttle Art ones above, and they come in a pack of 20 colors that included brights and basics. As advertised, they do dry quickly and don’t smear easily. I’ve not had a bad pen from these, but some are a bit hard to get the ink flow going at first.
Uniball Vision Elite Rollerball (.5) – These pens come in a pack of 8 vibrant colors. This is a fine tip pen that is useful for card creations, envelopes, and other places where small text is needed. I love these for their brightness and vibrancy, and reach for them when doing flowers and other detailed pen work.
Writech Dual-Color Gel Pens (.5) – These vintage-colored pens are also fine-tip, and are ideal for small text projects such as envelopes and cards. Each pen has two color shades as well as black. I find these to have extremely smooth gel flow.
Writech Gel Ink Retractable Pens (.7) – These pens write out very smooth and pretty. The only downside is that the color selection is not very wide. The basic colors they have are an excellent addition to my other pens, however, and the grey is a hard-to-find shade.
Uniball Signo 207 Retractable Gel Ink Pens (.7) – These have vibrant, easy to read colors and they don’t skip. The ink lasts a very long time; they have outlasted most of my others and they just keep on writing. I have not replaced one yet, and they were purchased over three years ago.
Zebra Pen Sarasa Clip Retractable Pens (.5) – These pens come in an outstanding array of color options and write super-smoothly. I have colors in these pens that I don’t have in any others, and so I reach for them often.
Tips about pens in general:
- Be sure to store gel and ballpoint pens pointing down, with the lids on or the pens retracted. Gel makes more of a mess than ballpoints on the bottoms of cups and containers. This can all get messy quickly. Storing them with their tops closed or lids on also helps keep the ink from drying out.
- To further keep your pens flowing well, take them out occasionally and do some doodling with them. For the ones that are not writing well, try getting the flow going. If they are dry, toss them.
- Don't go for cheap when buying pens for your machine projects. It's frustrating, time-consuming, and expensive when they skip in the middle of writing a text block. Ask me how I know. That being said, I have cheap ball point pens that I use frequently on smaller projects.
- Even though they write beautifully, felt tips and other "nib" type pens will get ruined in a machine. It's better to stay away from these.
Shop your favorite single line font styles:
I hope that you've found some new pens to add to your own stashes, and I would love to know if you have any other favorites as well!
Thank you so much for posting this information. I have been using whatever I have on hand and what ever fits in the pen holder for my machine. I will keep your information for my next pen purchase. Using good pens with your spectacular fonts will be a welcome change from my usual endeavors. On a side note, I use your fonts to fill out my deposit slips, the tellers at the bank always remark about my beautiful handwriting, I can’t explain to them how I do it, so I just say “Thank you”.
Thank you for this info. yes your right, heaps of pens in my collection too – keep trying different ones that I see when
in various shops, but yes I find Signo are great and the Cricut pens in my cricut machine too. but must try some of your
suggestions above tooo. haven’t seen those specific signo ones as yet.
Sue
Hello, thanks so much for this info, I do alot of drawing with pens in my Brother Scan n Cut, I found a very good pen “Uniball Vision Needle fine” and also “Unibal Eye ball point fine” I’m always looking for good pens, will definitely look into your recommendations.