So You Are Starting a New Notebook, Help!

[Misfit]

@taimdala I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post. I absolutely love your doodles. I almost fell into the trap you wisely warned against when I thought I can’t draw like that. 
 

Your love of the MQ notebooks shines throughout your post. And finding a purpose for a cover you’ve had for a decade is magical.  The photos were great too. 
 

One question: do you use fountain pens in your bujo too?

 

edited to add I think I have the same Pilot Coleto multi pen as you do. 

Edited July 31, 2022 by Misfit

[DrDebG]

Wow!  I am so impressed by all of your great ideas and habits!  You are all amazing!  

 

I have been in a bit of a quandary over the last couple of years.  I have used TR journals (Nanami Seven Seas journals with 52 gsm Tomoe River paper) for will over 8 years.  I had a bit of foresight a few years ago to stock up.  

 

With the cessation of TR paper, I have used up most of my stock of journals.  This prompted me to start trying others.  I tried Rhodia and Clairfontaine (again!), Quo Vadis, Michel Ruis, Cosmo Air Light and Air Snow), Graphilo, and dozens of others.  Nothing has come close to TR paper.  Yes, I had tried the "new" TR paper and the Sanzen TR paper.  Some are closer than others, but none have the same feel that old TR paper 52gsm paper does.  

 

After all that,  I did finally find a paper that I like.  I am talking about the paper found in the William Hannah notebooks.  No, the William Hannah people do not manufacture the paper.  They just put this very special paper in their notebooks.  It is a British made paper, about 115 gsm (much heavier than TR 52 gsm), made by a small British paper manufacturer who has been making high quality paper for over a hundred years (or so I have heard).  I can attest that it is wonderful with fountain pen and ink.  The paper is very smooth and shows the lovely quality of the inks that I use without feathering, bleeding or ghosting.  I really love it.  And besides I like the feeling of helping a small manufacturer out.  

 

Many may be asking - is this paper really as good as TR paper?  I am still doing a lot of testing of the paper, but at present I would have to say yes.  Shading and sheen is very nice.  There is a slight bit of tooth to the paper, so it isn't glassy smooth like TR, but it isn't like slogging through a mud puddle  like Cosmo Air Light either.   Lines stay crisp and dry times are more than acceptable.  

 

But, it has meant a major overhaul in how I set up my notebooks.  I used to keep one notebook for everything - work, home, private journaling, etc.  But with the expansion of my business in recent years, it became necessary to have two notebooks - one for work and one for everything else, plus some kind of planner.  That meant at least three notebooks. 

 

The William Hannah notebook system is a disc system - but unlike the others (ARC, Levenger, Atoma, etc.), their notebooks have a fixed disc system so the notebook doesn't flop all over the place (something I hated about disc systems).  This means that I can add and take out pages as I need.  This means that I can combine my work notebook and planner into one, adding pages and taking pages out as I finish months and projects.  And that reduces the weight of my notebook substantially, in spite of the fact that the notebook itself is a gorgeous leather.  

 

My notebook is set up fairly simply.  For the planner section, I have a two-page one month spread, then 60 days of one-page per day sheets following that.  Each one page sheet is dated with a time slot on the left and empty sheet on the right side for notes about the day.  I have just one sheet of a cumulative "to do list" that floats between pages.  After the planner section, I have dividers for each of my active clients.  Within the dividers, I keep current notes from meetings, research, etc. for each project that I am working on.  These are all indexed on the divider by project and date.  When I finish with the project, I scan the pages, and then archive them.  This has worked very well for me and has kept well organized and not having to flip through an entire notebook to find what I need.  

 

What about my personal journal, you ask?  Well, I have decided to use up the last of my TR notebooks for that purpose.  Then I will likely purchase another William Hannah notebook for my personal use.  

 

 

[Runnin_Ute]

How I started the most recent one. A Clairefontaine Neo Deco A5. I happen to keep track of what movies I see in it. I am on the fourth full book, plus August 1,2020 to September 27,2020 in the end of a prior book. I have started all the full ones this way. (945 through today - 8/1/2020-7/31/2022)

 

 

[Misfit]

@DrDebG thank you for telling us about William Hannah notebooks and paper. Also, your experience with the other brands of TR successors was interesting. 
 

@Runnin_Ute  I am so embarrassed by how long it’s been since I’ve written. I will get back to letter writing. I hope I haven’t lost any pen pals from the long delay. 

[Runnin_Ute]

19 minutes ago, Misfit said:

@DrDebG thank you for telling us about William Hannah notebooks and paper. Also, your experience with the other brands of TR successors was interesting. 
 

@Runnin_Ute  I am so embarrassed by how long it’s been since I’ve written. I will get back to letter writing. I hope I haven’t lost any pen pals from the long delay. 

@Misfit Hope to hear from you soon. Life happens sometimes.

[amberleadavis]

When I saw @taimdala's post, I stopped to show it to my kids. I love my MR notebooks, but hers are much better.

 

I thought @taimdala should do those covers as a business because WOW!

 

Also, I think it really helps when we show pictures.

 

Here are some pages from my @GatzBcn journals.

 

[amberleadavis]

Here is how I show do the comparison.

 

[amberleadavis]

I also go through phases where I write my responses and keep them in my notebook. This one is the MR notebook.

 

[amberleadavis]

And here is the cover to one of my MR notebooks courtesy of @Mookli.

 

Having a review notebook has been an easy way to find them.

 

[Misfit]

I wonder if @amberleadavisand @taimdalahave the same MR notebooks. It looks that way, black covers and grid paper. 

[Misfit]

31 minutes ago, amberleadavis said:

And here is the cover to one of my MR notebooks courtesy of @Mookli.

 

Having a review notebook has been an easy way to find them.

 

Do you only use one side of the paper?

[Misfit]

  I found much smaller soft bound grid Milquerius notebooks on Amazon. The graph paper is in a 4.5x6” size with 200 sheets/400 pages. 
  Lined paper comes in the 6x8” size, with 100 sheets/200 pages.  Both are $7.99 plus shipping.  I’d probably get the lined 6x8” size. It has color choices of black, blue and red. 

[amberleadavis]

8 hours ago, Misfit said:

Do you only use one side of the paper?

 

It depends on what I am writing.  If I'm doing my ink lists or comparisons, then one side only.  So that the other side is available for comparisons.  For other things, like responses to FPN posts, then both sides.

[amberleadavis]

8 hours ago, Misfit said:

I wonder if @amberleadavisand @taimdalahave the same MR notebooks. It looks that way, black covers and grid paper. 

 

I bought them in Black and in Red so I'm sure they are the same.

[Sailor Kenshin]

8 hours ago, Misfit said:

  I found much smaller soft bound grid Milquerius notebooks on Amazon. The graph paper is in a 4.5x6” size with 200 sheets/400 pages. 
  Lined paper comes in the 6x8” size, with 100 sheets/200 pages.  Both are $7.99 plus shipping.  I’d probably get the lined 6x8” size. It has color choices of black, blue and red. 

I couldn't find any.  But since I have a lot of their spiral bound notebooks I wonder if the paper's any different in yours.

[inkstainedruth]

19 hours ago, taimdala said:

Waiting for another post in this thread .... ♥

 

 

The suspense is killing me.

 

 

*sigh*

Miquelrius has discontinued the 600 page journals?  Rats.... 

I go through a couple of those a year just doing morning pages.  I never liked the graph paper ones, but used to stock up on the lined paper ones.  I had ordered a dozen or so directly from them at one point, and then they gave me the name of a place to order them (which I lost) and then someone on FPN tipped me off to a place on either Amazon or eBay -- and I bought pretty much every one they had in stock (black, red, and blue (they were sold out of the green ones).

They also no longer seem to have the spiral bound notebooks my husband used to get at B&N, which had a variety of page designs that were color coded -- there were sections that were lined, sections that were graph paper, and sections that had 4 large-is boxes for I guess doing diagrams.  It wasn't until I started looking for better quality paper journals that I ran across Miquelrius and then discovered that B&N used to carry the 400 page grid ones AND that the spiral notebooks my husband liked were also made by them.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[XYZZY]

My "big thing" is actually in ending a notebook:  when I'm getting close to the end of a journal I usually start getting excited about trying the next journal.  After a few days of that I can't resist, and leave a few (or a dozen), pages blank at the end.  That can be handy if, at a later date, I have a new ink that I want to try in an old notebook.  But I will also write a page of parting thoughts about the notebook itself, so that I can look back at old notebooks and be reminded about about paper or the notebook itself, ultimately to answer the question "Should I buy or recommend another?".

 

This isn't "setup" per se, but I have found that I am most comfortable with blank pages and using a lined guidesheet behind the pages that moves from page to page so that I can write straight lines on the blank pages.  Sometimes I'll just transfer the guidesheet from the previous notebook, but usually that has become tattered or stained with ink, so a new notebook may be an opportunity to print a new guidesheet.  Note that the guidesheets also serve as bookmark and blotting sheet.

 

As I have mentioned elsewhere, my only real "start" to a notebook is to put my contact information into the front of the notebook in case I misplace it.  I have never misplaced one.

 

I'm not good at indexing my journals.  It sounds like a good idea, but when I sit down to do it I never feel comfortable with my choices for what goes in the index vs what is just the day's ramblings that don't need to be indexed.  But I like the idea of putting that in the back once the journal is done.  Seems obvious given the name "index", no?  Also, I like the idea of keeping the index online, in google sheets, with the idea being that it should be far easier to search that (as somebody said back in the 70s, "You can't grep a tree").  Ultimately though I have found little need for an index:  my journals turn out to be "write once read rarely", so there's little motivation to create them.

 

For journals a date is, to me, clearly the way to go, not page numbers.  It also frees me from numbering the pages or finding pre-numbered journals.  Whether I index or not, a date is just better.  If you build an index a date is no better/worse than a page number, but if you don't build an index then a date is probably far more helpful in finding something.  So I put a date and the name of the day at the top of each page (e.g. 8/1/2022 Monday).  Occasionally I'll take a class where I'm going to fill a couple of notebooks in a two week period:  in that case page numbers rule.

[inkstainedruth]

I like unlined journals, but have trouble finding them.  So I make do with lined ones (I tend to write small, so I often do two lines of writing per line).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

[taimdala]

17 hours ago, Misfit said:

  I found much smaller soft bound grid Milquerius notebooks on Amazon. The graph paper is in a 4.5x6” size with 200 sheets/400 pages. 
  Lined paper comes in the 6x8” size, with 100 sheets/200 pages.  Both are $7.99 plus shipping.  I’d probably get the lined 6x8” size. It has color choices of black, blue and red. 

 

!!!!@*@!!!!

 

Might I beg the link of you, most kind Misfit? ♥  I confess I would like to get another blue MQ notebook. ♥

 

Thank you!

[taimdala]

11 hours ago, amberleadavis said:

 

I bought them in Black and in Red so I'm sure they are the same.

 

Yours look the same as mine. The more the merrier!