And so the bullet journalling continues, some of you may remember the August post of my exploits into the world of bullet journaling.  Now I am some six months on and as always there have been new to me buying opportunities. I love my Leuchtturm 1917 with a passion, but its too big to carry around, as is my colourful, love all the stickers Erin Condren.  I still use them both daily, but wanted something a little smaller.  I tried a passport sized Stamford travellers journal, but found it too small on some occasions and the way it fastens irritates as it makes the notebooks crease at the edges, which I don’t like. It’s fine for days when I want something super light as I am carrying other things but it wasn’t my unicorn. 

And then I heard about the Midori, Oh the Midori Traveler’s (yes it really is one l) Notebook is a thing of utter beauty.  It is so simple yet so adaptable and the paper that Midori use is fountain pen friendly and super smooth, it is just gorgeous.  Eventually after much consideration and googling I ordered the camel in standard size. I thought the colour was quite a feminine choice. I put a couple of gold beads on the elastic and a couple of beads on the bookmark and was a happy camper, setting it up with two graph paper books, one for bullet journaling and one for journaling in a more private way.And a craft file  to store a few bits and bobs with cat paperclips.And a free (meaning unmarked) weekly diary. I decided against the plastic pouch as most of the time it will be living in a handbag anyway, so I felt that was unnecessary and the same reason to forgo a pen holder, preferring to place my fountain pen upright in my hand bag to lessen the likely hood of a mini disaster.  I also didn’t want to overload it, preferring to keep the aesthetic of the Japanese clean lines.

And while this was going on we have been sorting out the house, getting rid of piles and piles of unnecessary tat, when I came across a couple of twenty year old but very beautiful atlas, as well as a complete set of Encyclopaedia Britannica all sat unused by our boys, the internet had really taken off by the time they needed to research information for homework, I think they looked at the books once or twice, that was all.  Now even I won’t start cutting up a set of Britannica’s, well not unless I can think of a crafting project worthy enough to do so, but felt the atlas were fair game. So while hubby was out this evening, he gets a little sensitive to things like this.. I thought I would cover my notebooks.

First choose your page, and then cover the outside of your notebook in glue, I chose a pritstick as my weapon of choice. Place your notebook on the reverse of the picture that you want, press down, and then roughly cut the page out and then trim down the edges until they are flush with the original cover. Like so. And I must say it worked really well. I repeated this twice more, the first was a page on Antartica, perfect for winter I thought, the second was part of the country I travel through most often and I actually managed to squeeze my home town on and can see the route to London as well as lots more of course. It will give me something to look at during the long car journeys we so regularly seem to do.  The third was the southwest of the country, so I can while away the hours on said travelling trips trying to pronounce the villages in Cornwall and wondering which ones would be lovely to visit.

Isn’t it just perfect for a travellers notebook and would make lovely presents for people, you could theme them to the person so easily.  Friends from all corners of the globe could have their very own map covering inexpensive notebooks in their Christmas stockings, and an Atlas can be bought for a couple of quid if one looks carefully enough, as well as their being Bible Atlas’s and Truckers Atlas’s, as well as a myriad of other types I shouldn’t wonder. All finished  and reinserted back into my Midori.

Mission accomplished.