You can get great paper products at many art stores and gift shops around the city, but for this list I’m focusing on places that specialize in stationery.
Kinokuniya
📚 I feel like everyone would get mad at me if this bookstore inside Uwajimaya wasn’t on this list. Kinokuniya is mostly a place to buy manga (in Japanese and English) along with manga-related merch, but if you head upstairs, you’ll find a cornucopia of pens and notebooks. When you’ve read so much manga you want to draw your own, this is where you go.
Know before you go: You can get up to two hours of parking in the Uwajimaya lot provided you spend at least $20 at Uwajimaya, Kinokuniya, or another Uwajimaya Village merchant. Alternatively, the light rail is right next door.
Grapheme
✒️ This Central District space serves as a printmaking studio for owner Mandolin Brassaw. But it also sells a curated selection of notebooks, pens, scissors, and stamps. It feels like a temple devoted to the arts and crafts of a previous age.
Know before you go: This weekend (Friday to Sunday), Grapheme is hosting an event for the Kaweco DIY Sport, a fountain pen that you can’t buy online but instead assemble yourself at participating stationery stores. It’s walk-in only, but you can let the shop know you’re coming by RSVPing here.
Lucca Great Finds
🐦⬛ Lucca is one of a half-dozen shops along Ballard Avenue that defy categorization and just sell cool stuff. Lucca’s cool stuff is sort of woodland creature-coded, by which I mean that if we lived in a children’s book where all the people were bunnies, mice, etc., the most stylish mice would shop here. The back room is where you’ll find Lucca’s line of greeting cards alongside a ton of paper products and pencils, the ideal place to find a gift for the bookish mouse in your life.
Know before you go: You can buy Lucca’s cards online, but everything else has to be purchased in-person. This is the kind of place where you want to go there yourself anyway.
MochiThings
😸 This small shop near Pike Place Market is “all about the cute and functional.” Beyond paper and pens, it sells a ton of pouches, containers, and photo albums — anyone who loves organizational projects, this is your jam.
Know before you go: MochiThings gives away a little paper fan to every customer, and if you spend more than $50 right now, you’ll get a free planner (while supplies last).
