Writing Up Black Album Pages

Hoping for some tips - I am just getting hold of an all-black album (black binder, black leaves). I want to fill it with a collection of Christmas, Easter and stained glass window stamps - so lots of colours against the black. The question is, how best to write it up, considering the black paper?

My current thoughts are to get a white roller-ball pen and hand-write each page. It will have glassine inter-leaving so it wouldn't be a complete disaster if some of the white imprinted on the facing sheet (although I hope it won't happen). Does anyone have any ideas/experience with this conundrum?

Sharpie makes a fine point marker that writes on dark colors. On black, the writing will look silver though.


-IBFS

Ringo, Greetings:

My appalling handwriting has led me to a life of ... Avery labels.

I've developed a large collection of spreadsheets formatted to various purposes; for example, 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 lines of text on a 1x2.5" or 2x4" label for addressing envelopes & postcards.

Similarly, I have various formats to label the dividers between different postal cards & postcards ... these can get elaborate.

Black text on a white label on a black page would work for me.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Takes me back to circa 1965 and the acquisition of a SG Nubian stamp album. In those days, the only method was a dip pen and white ink, which is probably still the best. How's your calligraphy?

Pencil (HB or softer) shows in the black album pages. And, its erasable.... although a bit messy.

Thanks for the suggestions. My handwriting's not brilliant, but passable, so I may end up using a pen - silver might look better than white.

Avery labels are interesting - but I'm guessing it's going to be difficult to get text properly centred on the individual labels?

How much writing do you plan on doing? If not a lot, you might consider a label maker. I imagine there are kinds for making all sorts of labels (and they would handle the centering you are concerned about), but I use a "brother PT-H100." Now this model is only suited for one (or a most two) lines of text. In my case, I just use it to create a label with the Scott Number for placing next to the stamp in an album. I also use it for labels on the plastic covers of First Day Covers noting catalog information. Very useful, but only for small bits of text per each label. But I'm sure there are label makers that would make larger labels, if that interests you.

Ringo, I have tried the same thing in one of my albums, an oversized "SAFE" album for long coil strips. It is black and sure looks good, but I had the same problem. Tried the Sharpie; silver looks awful in the album. The white pen I found is a "Uni-ball Signo broad". It is actually white and covers the black paper better than the silver which seems to look mottled!
Sorry, forgo to mention that I found mine at Target. I just checked, and they are available from Amazon as well!

Peter

Thanks everyone, these are all great comments and ideas. Still not certain how to play it - silver pen seems like a bad idea, so it's labels or white pen I guess. I'm not planning much annotation - just country heading and then a caption relating to the reason (eg Christmas, 1968) and where appropriate, some extra remark (complete set, low values - etc).

I think I'll try and find some examples to look at from other people's collections. The label idea might allow for coloured text too. Not something I've considered before, but with the colours of the stamps standing out against the black paper, that might look good.

Ringo, Let us see what you come up with!

Peter

Ringo

You could go with good quality artists pencils.

a slightly different approach I used to "print" on a hockey puck, that also could be used here:

1) In a word processing or graphics layout program (I use PowerPoint, but Word or Excel would likely work), make a rectangle using the graphics tool and fill it with black color (or fill in the cel in Excel)
2) Add text to the rectangle - you can center it, pick the size and pick the font.
3) color the text white (so you have white text on a black background)
4) print on gummed label stock
5) cut out the text - you don't have to be precise - leave some black around the text
6) paste on the page. If you pick the "right" shade of black, it will just about disappear on the page, leaving printed white text

Attached is a photo of the puck (done 10 years ago, as I see now). Your label won't be as big, so it probably will look better. Give it a try and let us know how it works.

Chip