Stationery Shopping in San Francisco
🌁 A shopping guide for Bay Area stationery lovers.
You can learn a lot about a person from the way they talk about San Francisco1.
This is the city where I started Bullet Journaling and sharing my work on Instagram. It’s where I visited my very first Japanese stationery shop and became obsessed with everything inside. It’s where I took my first watercolor classes2 after work in Civic Center. It’s where I took long aimless walks from The Mission, through the Castro, up to the Fillmore District, the Japantown Mall, Pac Heights, and then through Nob Hill down to Chinatown just because it was Saturday. Along the way I would find little shops I liked, and visited them again and again.
I lived in San Francisco for a year, before I got into grad school and moved to the East Coast, and before that, it was “the city” while I was growing up in Northern California. My family road-tripped to SF every other month or so for some kind of cultural experience that was lacking in our rural hometown: a musical at the Orpheum, a family matinee at the Davies Symphony Hall3, a meal at a real4 Peruvian restaurant, or afternoons at the Exploratorium (Palace of Fine Arts Location).
It is one of the few, truly walkable cities in the United States, and one of the most beautiful5. I just came back from a week in the city for my birthday, and revisited some of my favorite places. Here’s my updated list of local, independent, stationery shops in a city I love, San Francisco:
I want to visit cool, independent, stationery shops but I don’t live in the Bay Area!
I’m constantly updating my world map of independent stationery shops, which is always accessible via my website: journalingdan.com.
This post is the third in the series: Stationery Shopping in _____, a city-by-city guide. Previous installments:
Stationery Shopping in New York City
Typically, I paywall the last section the newsletters in this series (The Google Map, bonus shops, walking tour, and master list), but because I love SF and this is my birthday month, this edition is free!
Maido
Japantown - (Inside the Japantown Mall) 1581 Webster St Ste 180 & 218
San Francisco’s Japantown is the largest and oldest of three remaining Japantowns in the United States.6 Nestled between the Fillmore District and Pacific Heights7 in the Western Addition, the neighborhood’s centerpiece is the Peace Plaza (currently under renovation, eta 2026), featuring a towering Pagoda sculpture, with entrances to the Japantown Malls (East, West) on either side.
The doors of the Japantown mall are the unofficial gates of the neighborhood, step inside and you’ll be transported8. Every shop in the complex sells goods imported directly from Japan. There are Japanese video stores, and shops selling Japanese home goods, cookware, and beauty products. You’ll also find a mochi shop, restaurants and bars playing Ghibli movies, and Uji Time Dessert’s matcha soft-serve in Taiyaki cones. Japanese bookstore Kinokuniya can be found here, the first location to open in the US (now open for over 55 years).
You’ll find Maido in Japan Center West, 2nd floor, directly across the main entrance from Kinokuniya books, its parent company! Kinokuniya’s Maido shops (of which there are 4, all in California) specialize in stationery from Japan. This is the shop that got me really into stationery in 2017, and the selection is so impressive, even to the seasoned stationery shopper.
The enormity of the washi tape display can barely be captured, lest you back into the brush pen display. This shop has many aisles for its size, all filled to the brim with imported stationery goods. If you’ve ever asked where I’ve purchased super cute sticky notes, or a very unique washi tape, it’s likely from the well-stocked shelves of Maido! The curation of Japanese stamps here is excellent, and extensive. Gansai watercolors are sold by the pan, (which I’ve never seen, only sets)! and Hobonichi planners, Travelers Company notebooks, Studio Ghibli sketchbooks, and leather-bound journals in every color abound.
Directly downstairs is Maido - first floor edition. This locale sells gifts and stationery, along with greeting cards and Miffy prints! The stationery selection here is smaller and trendier. No straight laced school supplies to be found here, but rather, colorful washi tapes and maximalist Unicorn Eclipse memo pads. There’s a small section of San Francisco specific merch, and displays of large vinyl stickers to peruse here as well. The perfect place to pick up a souvenir for yourself or a friend. Maido does not have an online shop, but this stationery wonderland is best experienced irl.
*South Bay residents: Maido also has a San Jose location!
**Southern California: there is one more Maido in Costa Mesa!
Case for Making
Outer Sunset - 4037 Judah St.
This shop is deeeeep in the Outer Sunset, (Muni stop: Judah St. and 46th Avenue), but well worth the trek, and a must-visit for any watercolorist. Case For Making (CFM) headquarters is a combination storefront, workshop, and studio offering in-person classes. The signature product, (high quality, handmade watercolor paints sold by the pan), is manufactured, packaged, and hand-labeled on site. Custom CFM color blends bear charming names like Lavender Blue Lake (a milky cornflower blue) and Egg Yolk Yellow (a rich, warm, primary). Like any great farm-to-table business, CFM is transparent about ingredients and practices, boasting a natural binding medium of honey, gum arabic, clove oil, glycerin + the highest quality pigments at high concentrations for lush, saturated, brushstrokes. To avoid offering any toxic products, CFM does not offer cobalt, chromium, or cadmium shades. Prices range from $10-$14 per pan, or more for paints with pricier pigments like genuine Carmine or Lapis Lazuli9.
While researching for my trip, I had preemptively decided I would just visit the shop, as I do not actually need any more paints, but alas, it was my birthday, and the more I researched the shop, the more I decided I had to try CFM watercolors. The build-your-own palette station in the shop is irresistible. Each individually wrapped pan is like a saltwater taffy ripe for the picking from its wooden barrel, lovingly wrapped with a hand-swatched, handwritten label.
My custom palette:
Without doing any prior color research, or having a plan (highly unusual), I purchased 13 pans at CFM, intuitively choosing unusual colors I did not already have, while maintaining a well balanced selection of primaries for mixing. For those seeking guidance, the staff is very helpful and knowledgeable, and there are swatch cards with suggestions on pre-set palette builds with names like California Coastal, Outer Sunset, or Dusk.
My intention was to fill my palette (a basic one I brought from Blick, but palette tins are also offered in store) with 14 colors total. One space was saved to be occupied by a color I’m calling “SF ochre,” as it is a custom color I handmade in my watercolor class while I was living in San Francisco in 2018! This loose pan has been living in my desk drawer for 8 years so I am very happy to give it a permanent home with all of its other SF buddies. One space on the palette remains to be filled because….I accidentally bought 2 identical pans while in-person at the shop. I’ve since returned the duplicate by mail, and I’m still deliberating on a color to replace it with…but I’m thinking a loud pink!
I have been using a plastic 10 well paint tray for my tube paints and my watercolor classes10, but after this CFM palette building experience, I’m tempted to build another custom palette to fill with the tube paints I already have!
The shop is also stocked with watercolor accessories. I took home a travel brush for my new palette, branded with the shop name + San Francisco. Store branded, 100% cotton watercolor paper blocks are also offered. If you’re not a watercolorist, tons of hearty stationery fare is available, the selection of pens, pencils, markers, scissors, Toyo Toolboxes (seriously these are in every shop I visit now), sketchbooks, and craft kits is more than satisfactory.
I haven’t made any paintings with my new set yet, but I’ve swatched the paints and I’m obsessed with the richness of the colors. The Egg Yolk pan is a favorite, and what I consider to be my perfect yellow. Flourescent Violet leaps off of the page, and the metallics (Sun Gold and Silver) are so fun to have in a travel palette. I’ve saved all of the labels from my purchase in my travel journal*:
*my travel journal is not watercolor paper, so please do not judge the mixing of primaries11, which I did on the page, and pilled + did not blend very well!!
Nest
Pacific Heights - 2300 Fillmore St.
Self-described as “part boutique, part wonderland,” Nest is a longstanding jewelry box of a home-decor shop in Pacific Heights. To paint a picture of the neighborhood, this stretch of Fillmore is home to locations of Le Labo, Rag & Bone, Dipthyque and the like, and Nest is a family-run business that’s been offering carefully curated antiques on the same corner since 1995.
This is not a stationery shop per-se, but the type of shop I want to live inside of, that incidentally sells some exquisite art supplies. The best shops master the art of world-building. Here, chandeliers are adorned with bows, and the light fixtures resemble little nests with birds, each bulb a glowing egg.
The merchandise at Nest is French-flea-market meets modern-art-museum-gift-shop. Fine jewelry, scarves, and gifts are sold here, in addition to smart gifts for the moneyed Pac Heights crowd. The new and whimsical, and the old and storied are found side by side. A contemporary Snoopy mug collection can be found near an early edition of Ludwig Bemelmans’ Madeline in a glass case. Beautiful paintings of Parisian streets are on display next to a vintage school desk stacked with art supplies. High end watercolors, Caran d’Ache pastels, Viviva colorsheets and Emily Lex studio workbooks are arranged among tulip vases and ornate pairs of scissors, each item carefully chosen to amuse and delight.
Paper Tree
Japantown - 1743 Buchanan St.
Paper Tree is a family-run shop just across from the Peace Plaza (by the Japantown gate), that’s been in operation for over 50 years. Stocking hundreds of origami paper packs, handmade sheets of paper, and Japanese prints and gifts, this store is a paper lovers paradise. Origami art from around the world is on display, and paper-folding classes are offered on site. A true pillar of the community, Paper Tree’s Instagram is kept up-to-date with class offerings and events (the Origami-palooza 2025 Save the Date just dropped).
Russian Hill Bookstore
Russian Hill - 2162 Polk St.
Russian Hill Bookstore has also recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, having been in operation as an independent bookstore since 1974. Recognized as a legacy business by the city of San Francisco, this shop juxtaposes the old and the new. Used hardcovers occupy the top shelves with new hardcovers down below. A glass case of rare and vintage books at the front of the store is topped by a display of novelty items you might see at an art museum gift shop, like funny little vases or trinket dishes.
Behind this display lay tables of stationery supplies: interesting journals, notepads, and pens. But of note in this shop is the extensive selection of greeting cards, taking up about a quarter of bookstore floor space.
The card displays are divided by category, and you’ll find the usual: birthday, wedding, thank you, love, sympathy…but you’ll also find hyper-specific categories of cards, divided by themes like transportation, foodie, outer space, dance, fashion or my favorite, art. The art card shelf is extensive, branching off into subcategories like famous paintings, color wheels, to my specific taste: stationery, art supplies, and mail-service themed cards, of which I picked up a few along with some stickers before checking out.
Russian Hill Bookstore does have a website, where they inform visitors that they do not have their own online shop, but rather, sell through third party websites. When it comes to independent bookshops though, nothing’s better than browsing IRL.
Post.Script
Pacific Heights - 2413 California St.
In my stationery shopping/birthdaypalooza delirium, I completely forgot to stop by Post.Script on this trip, which is a shop I know and love! A stationery and gift shop: cards, prints, and stickers from local artists are available, as well as host gifts! As I don’t have any recent pictures, be sure to check out their Instagram account to see the satisfying displays of paper and home goods. I picked up this Victorian sticker last time, which now lives on the inside cover of my journal.
The Map:
This is San Francisco for stationery lovers! Click the picture or here to explore. Enable the “Walking Tour” layer for a recommended walking route to visit a most of the shops on the list efficiently! (Not including CFM, which is wayyyy out there). Explore the other layers for more recs. ❤️
Want to visit cool shops but aren’t in San Francisco? Click here to view my world map of independent stationery shops.
The Master List:
An easy, streamlined, list to copy + paste to your notes app.
📍 Maido (Japantown) - (Inside the Japantown Mall) 1581 Webster St Ste 180 & 218
📍 Paper Tree (Japantown) - 1743 Buchanan St.
📍 Post.Script (Pacific Heights) - 2413 California St.
📍 Nest (Pacific Heights) - 2300 Fillmore St.
📍 Russian Hill Bookstore (Russian Hill) - 2162 Polk St.
📍 Case for Making (Outer Sunset) - 4037 Judah St.
Bonus Shoppy Shops!!
📍 KinoKuniya (Japantown) - (Inside the Japantown Mall) 1581 Webster St.
📍 3 Pillars (Japantown)
📍 City Lights Bookshop (North Beach)
📍 Oriental Art Gallery (Inner Sunset)
📍Fog City Flea Trading Post (The Embarcadero) Shop 37 in the Ferry Building
Did I forget a local, independent shop? Leave a comment below!
If you’re here to complain abt the city in the comments section…..don’t!
Shout out Root Division SF! I absolutely loved my watercolor class here.
In the mid 2000s, there was a partnership with Target (I think) and the San Francisco Symphony: a concert series for families. I cannot find any information about it now, but the performances were so enriching! I especially enjoyed performances of the Toy Symphony, Peter and the Wolf, and the conductor who led a “symphony primer” introducing the audience to all the instruments in the orchestra, playing each section individually and bringing them all together at the end. We also attended a dramatic reading of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events accompanied by an orchestra, and The Looney Tunes/Bugs Bunny Classical music revue, complete with a projection of the animations.
We were the only Peruvians in our town, and probably the county, but in SF we were one family of thousands. V refreshing!
On my trip, I revisited my old hobby of walking and admiring the different architectural styles found throughout the city from Queen Anne Victorians resembling frosted cakes, to colorful Storybook homes and Art Deco buildings with big bay windows.
This sentence is a quote from the linked article. The three officially recognized Japantowns in the United States are in San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles. You can read more about the Japantowns of the US in this National Geographic article!
I also wrote about Maido in my Exploring Cities by Stationery Shopping post.
I have never been to Japan. Each paid subscription to JournalingDan helps fund my trip!!
The Lapis Lazuli color is not currently available in the online shop, so I cannot link it!
Watercolor teachers do not like palettes with a zillion custom colors, they will ask you to show up with 3 tubes of primaries, and maybe a sepia or payne’s gray to master your color mixology skills!
I don’t think Lavender Blue Lake is a good “primary blue,” it’s a custom blend, and not a blue-blue. I’m going to try mixing it later on.
Love this roundup! I also enjoy Rare Device, Topdrawer, and Needles & Pens!
Just moved to SF and so excited about this list 🥹