2017 EDC: Bullet Journal, Roterfaden, Hobonichi, Traveler’s Notebook…

 

Happy 2017!

This post took longer than I planned but I wanted to start the first post of the new year with how my stationery “everyday carry” items evolved since when I started this blog last year.

1. Roterfaden Taschenbegleiter A4

Last year, I had a post about custom A4 Roterfaden. The brown cover with grey suede inside material ended up going to my husband, and I decided to stick with an original size A4 (which wasn’t as big as I thought it was once I got used to it) with a black leather cover and “magnolia” felt inside. Main reason for the switch was weight. With A6 or A5, it probably wouldn’t add much, but the A4 size was significantly heavier for me when it has suede material inside compared to the one with wool felt.

2. Bullet Journal

My bullet journal is still going strong. I am thoroughly enjoying its flexibility and comprehensive coverage of all my needs. I upgraded the notebook to Stalogy 365 Notebook. It’s not exactly tomoe river paper but almost as thin. Supposedly it has 365 pages but its thickness is not even 15mm! You can see the notebook in the picture above — the black B6-size notebook just under Hobonichi Techo. I didn’t want to keep changing the journal too often, since I keep a lot of valuable notes that should be useful for a long time.

Very simple monthly view.

Daily notes and tasks. This is what I love the most about bullet journaling — flexibility. There is no confinement of the space; you write as much or as little as you need to according to each day’s needs. And I love how i can just jot down notes (even lengthy notes) without having to pull out a separate notebook.

3. Hobonichi Techo

Ok, not too proud of this but I had made an impulse purchase of Hobonichi Techo late last year. I was really looking forward to the new year and was ready to put it to a good use. And then…

Bullet journal happened!  >_<

Now that I no longer needed a daily planner, I had to come up with an alternate purpose for it in order to make peace with blowing those precious 33 bucks. So here is the re-purposed Hobonichi:

Is it a sketch book? Is it an art journal? Who cares what it’s called. Basically, I made a commitment to draw something on it each day. (I picked my best ones for the photo shoot here… Many are just simple line sketches. ^^) And because there is nothing more than humans that I enjoy drawing, they’re filled with various faces and poses. Keeping up with this during the week on work days has been challenging. I mean, I practically live at the hospital and come home only to sleep. What makes it work is the realization that I “slack” diligently throughout the work day. Of course no one can work and study non-stop. Of course my days are scattered with “informal” break sessions of browsing the net, reading news, or sometimes staring into empty space… So, if an idea hits, or I come across an interesting photo in the news article, I make a quick sketch. It can be as quick as two minutes.

On weekends or whenever I am off work (as I am this week, woo-hoo!!), I do spend more time on this and love it. For example, the couple of pages shown above are my ink wash practice/experimentation. I had recently developed an (expensive) hobby of fountain pens which then led to inks… I never cared for watercolor paintings, but for some reason, I find ink washes unbelievably beautiful. Thank goodness for ink samples. Otherwise, there would be nothing left of my paycheck. So there they are, my interesting subject of the day, trying out whatever shades of ink that strike my fancy.

4. Traveler’s Notebook

When I first started the blog, I believe I mentioned how I purchased ZLYC leather covers from Amazon rather than going for the original and expensive Midori Traveler’s Notebook. They’re still very useful — the passport size is still doing a great job as my wallet. I decided to splurge on Midori Traveler’s Notebook because I wanted one in black leather and Goulet Pens had a great package deal. I don’t regret my decision; it is truly wonderful. Compared to the cheaper ZLYC brand, the finishing touch really makes a difference. The way the cover folds is different. Finish of the leather is different. If you’re only interested in the functionality, ZLYC is absolutely fine. If you care about the fine details of product design, then be prepared to pay for the superiority. The most obvious difference can be seen on the edge of the leather:

If you can see in the picture above, the edge of the brown leather below (ZLYC) remains as a rough cut piece. The black leather (Traveler’s Notebook) on top, on the other hand, has smoothed, finished edges.

Anyways, this new Traveler’s Notebook can be found in my bag everyday as a companion to the Hobonichi Techo. I have a pouch inside which contains a pencil, a few Copic Multiliner pens, and brush pens — my mobile art supply so I can fill those daily pages in Hobonichi Techo no matter where I am. I also keep a notebook insert with tomoe river paper for more random sketches, and a Field Notes pocket notebook to jot down any quotes or personal notes/journals.

 

I hope you enjoyed the overview and the pictures. I love the format of blogs for in-depth discussions but recently realized Instagram to be a more convenient platform for sharing pictures. For more pictures inside my Hobonichi and other random stuff, look for jottermeow!

 

~meow~

 

Habits, Preferences, and Priorities…

A blog about notes and notebooks! Yay!

Let me introduce myself:

I am a thirty-something year-old nurse in California who also happens to be a student. I’ve always loved notebooks and journals but it became quite an obsession recently. The precipitating factor? — Planners. Specifically, Erin Condren.

Yes, I jumped on the Erin Condren bandwagon and within a few months, managed to accumulate those bright, colorful planners and notebooks, which by now sit in my bookshelf half unused… I honestly don’t know what caused me to fall so hard for the style. It’s probably the novelty of the idea that you could “decorate” your planners. I had fun for a while (I even started buying stickers and tapes, wow…) until the “playfulness” of Erin Condren designs became too much to bear.

I then switched to Plum Paper planners which were lovely. I had been using the Moleskine Weekly Notebook to keep track of my work schedule and projects. The larger, prettier (but in a subdued way) Plum Paper was to keep track of everything personal. This worked for a while until I realized: 1. Carrying two planners didn’t make sense. 2. My bland personal life did not warrant all the space provided by the 7″x9″ size planners.

And then last year, I unexpectedly became a student again — a graduate program run by the Biomedical Sciences department of the hospital where I’ve been employed for the past few years. With my boss’ blessings, thus began my new life of perpetual running — running from classes to meetings, meetings to classes. This new life required a compact system of organization and planning, a simple planner where I could keep track of both work and school. (forget the personal, which I no longer had.)

Enter Traveler’s Notebook! With its slim design and the brilliant system of multiple inserts, it fit my needs perfectly. The beauty of leather cover was an added bonus. I should mention, my choice was not the extremely popular Midori Traveler’s Notebook, but a much cheaper look-alike by a company called ZLYC from Amazon. I had a monthly insert, weekly insert which had a similar layout as my favorite Moleskine weekly notebook, and a grid notebook insert to keep track of work projects, and a fourth insert for school notes and projects.

If you are a pen/paper enthusiast, you probably know traveler’s notebooks have a huge following, with countless Instagram photos and blogs and reviews. I am not exactly sure how it happened but somehow reading about how people used their traveler’s notebook led me to yet another product, Roterfaden Teschenbegleiter.

Roterfaden was a huge price jump for my comfort level, but here are the reasons I decided to splurge:

• Leather is beautiful. I became addicted to the smell and feel of it since I started using the traveler’s notebook.
• Roterfaden holds regular A5 size notebooks. In it, I still use the same weekly insert I previously had, but also put in several A5 notebooks for my classes.
• Pockets, pockets, pockets! One of the big pockets holds my iPad mini which I extensively use for reading pdf documents.

My notebook preferences have changed drastically — I won’t go into details since I’ve spent too many words describing my planner changes… But simply put, I’ve grown to love these compact, thin, and extremely portable A5 size books for my notes. This was unthinkable even only last year when my go-to notebook used to be an Extra Large Soft Moleskine notebook (pictured in the beginning.) Nowadays I am even finding myself constantly jotting things down in those tiny Field Notes.

I suppose more on notebooks will have to wait for the next time. This became way longer than I planned for my first post. Well, thank you for visiting and let’s see how this goes!