I was just at a creative memories party last night and I bought both the silver and the gold pens and I have to say they seem to work great and also the price was better than a hobby store. They were only $1.30 each. I hope I will enjoy them.

Hi Angie, Would it help if we all posted what we do and don't like to use? ~mar~

I'm not a big CM fan. Their paper cutter is too small and doesn't cut the 12 by 12 pages. Mine also cuts a ragged edge from the start it never did cut well. Their circle and oval cutters are the best that I have ever found. Why anyone would spend mega bucks on things like their square punches is beyond me when it is so simple to take an ordinary cutter and cut a square. I love the Friskars type cutter because it is a cinch to make a frame using this type of cutter. Many of the girls at our local scrapbooking store started with the CM albums and are getting very bored with the white pages and end up covering them with the fancy papers. Their albums are expensive but the quality is better than some of the cheaper albums out there. The best albums I have found are from a company called Fraser-Grimm. It's a small company that I believe operates out of Windsor Ontario but my local scrapbooking store sells their albums. They are durably made and covered with fabric and they have quite a selection. I bought some special fabric and had them make me an individual album and they did a beautiful job. I'm not big on stickers. I make most of my own embellishments so I can't comment on those since I don't use them.

Did a little Googling. Seems first ball point pens were invented in the 1880-90s. First patent was during/before/after WWII. I still have quite a few years to go before being officially an "antique" but remember wooden desks in elementary school with hole at one corner to hold an ink jar/bottle. We practiced our CURSIVE writing with nib pens... not George Washington style quill pens, so stop laughing. Point like a fountain pen but had to be dipped in ink bottle whenever it ran dry... same thing you'd use for pen & ink drawings or calligraphy. I'm sure part of the reason for that was cost of fountain pens, even the cheapest, would have been prohibitive... WAY before days when parents got a list of supplies they HAD to provide for their kids. By the time I got to HS, pretty sure BIC had cornered the market on inexpensive, disposable pens. I remember a boy in my class whose Dad was a big shot "businessman" who frequently went to NYC. This kid made a killing selling felt tip pens that weren't readily available in the burbs. I vividly remember elementary teachers with probably the first "magic markers". They were little glass jars that could be refilled, and screw on lid with wick-like thing coming out of a metal tube to write with. They were an absolute "teacher only" tool.