Thanks to the wonderful Lily at Jetpens.com, I have the opportunity to review these great craft pens from Pilot Japan. They’re Latte Gel Pens and I got two from the Sweets series – Grape Purple and Strawberry Pink.

My first observation while getting them out of the package was how small they were – tiny pens measuring 4″ long capped and just an inch longer when the cap is on the other end. I couldn’t wait to try them since they’re touted as being able to write on just about any surface.

I first tried them on plain old moleskine paper. The pink pen needed a little coaxing to get the ink flowing but when I started writing, they reminded me of the Sakura Gelly Roll Glaze pens in the way that pushing down on the nib released more ink and I couldn’t go back over an area I already wrote on. The ink would start gobbing up and it wasn’t pretty.

Then I rummaged through my drawers for various shiny/non-porous surfaces to test the pens. I grabbed an old moleskine volant, an empty tin of Starbucks Dark Chocolate Mini Beans and a photograph. Again the pink needed a little scribble on plain paper before it would write smoothly, but pushing down on the nib encourages ink flow and I got great coverage on all my surfaces, even the metal! The ink looks dark when first applied to a non-porous surface, but soon dries and brightens up a lot. You can sort of see this on the photo below. The star at the top of the photo is half-dry.

I also took a quick little video of testing the pens on the back of a moleskine volant:

One helpful tip: if you make a mistake on a non-porous surface, wet the mistake right away (I just licked my finger) and wipe it off. And your marks with the Latte pens will scrape off eventually, so try not to use them on things that get jostled around a lot.