I love the way Valerie Sjodin is using her squared Moleskine to create beautifully decorated journal pages. So much color and texture. And it’s part of a great project– a journal with a page devoted to each letter of the alphabet as a prompt for exploring different aspects of the journaler’s life and personality.
See more at visual blessings: X-Y-Z Moleskine Journal Pages.
This week’s addict was blogging about a list of things she wanted to do before her 31st birthday. Among them:
#14. Join a STATIONERY ADDICTS support group.
Here’s her story about why:
I have come to terms with the fact I have not yet outgrown the childhood nickname “Paper freak” – dubbed so by my loving siblings….
My parents knew they could get my heart racing by tossing me a legal pad or even those blank pads without the cover that serve as quick “phone-message-takers.” Birthdays were easy for them. No need to think about dolls or such (though I got one of those too occasionally), coloring books were fine, but it was the journals that made me so excited I could jump out of my skin. They once told me they caught me sleepwalking and they said I kept stooping to scoop up some imaginary thing and then walk back upstairs to bed and I don’t remember the dream but I can bet good money, I was cradling my paper.
Once, one of my sisters got me a simple one with a brown cover and a lock on my thirteenth birthday and the way I acted, one would think it was lined in gold. Then, another year as an adult, another sister gave me a more grown up version. It was a hand-made hardcover journal with sewn tan pages held together by bamboo! It was an absolute beauty but I knew she got some sick pleasure in watching a grown woman act like a lunatic over a dead tree.
That was when my journal collecting began in earnest….
Read more at Days 3 and 4 – Buy Just ONE LAST Journal (#13) Join A Stationery Addicts Support Group (#14) | 31 Days to Age 31. She also has a post about art journaling, and
you can see more of Wandeka’s artwork at wandekagayle.com.
Happy belated 31st birthday, Wandeka! Welcome to your support group!
Another great compilation of sketchbook art: 50 Beautiful Sketchbook Drawings for Inspiration.
Below are a couple of my favorites.
By Sophie Henson:
This is a cute story:
Earlier this year, Lisa Rao, an editor at Simon & Schuster, saw a segment on Good Morning America moments before she walked into an editorial meeting.
“I had my iPad and pulled up the clip and told them, ‘You have to watch this,’ †Rao recalled about a story that involved a Walmart employee in suburban Sacramento, Calif., who found a spiral-bound notebook that contained 157 rules handwritten in a childlike scrawl. The book had nothing in it to identify the owner; Raymond Flores, a Walmart associate charged with corralling shopping carts, had found it in the parking lot. But he flipped through it and decided it could not have been discarded intentionally after reading rule no. 154: “Protect this rule book.â€
So Flores, 20, posted a photo of the book on his Facebook page, hoping to reunite book and author. No luck. Then he contacted the local Fox TV affiliate. That story got picked up nationally.
By the time Rao and the rest of the S&S editorial team watched the GMA report, one thing was abundantly clear. “Our publisher, Valerie [Garfield], said immediately: ‘We must find the owner!’ †And when Rao did, she offered the – co-authors, it turns out – a contract. And this October Simon & Schuster will publish Isabelle and Isabella’s Book of Rules, a jacketed hardcover in a “gifty†trim size, written by Isabelle Busath, age 10, and Isabella Thordsen, age 8, with illustrations by Priscilla Burris.
Read more at Lost and Bound: A Misplaced Notebook Finds a Publisher.
Below is a sample spread from the book, which comes out in October 2013.
Available for preorder on Amazon: Isabelle and Isabella’s Little Book of Rules
The Tumblr site Things Organized Neatly is often a good place to spot notebooks. When people lay out the stuff that’s in their bag or on their desk, a notebook is often included, though usually they are recognizably Moleskines without any distinguishing wear and tear.
This entry does seem to feature a Moleskine (upper right corner), but it also has a very intriguing notebook in the middle of the page.
With an orange ribbon marker and orange elastic closure, I’m guessing it’s a Rhodia Webnotebook, but the outside of the notebook has either been painted white or there’s some paper glued on. It looks like it might have a student’s weekly class schedule on it.
Whatever it is, I like the looks of it.
This week’s addict was another one found via the wonderful Sharing Our Notebooks site. I just couldn’t resist this photo!
Going through my notebooks, I find a driving force in my life is asking questions. It’s a strategy I’ve returned to across time and genre. Check out these notebooks…see the sticky tabs? They mark the pages where I’m asking questions. Questions are one of the lifelines to keeping my notebooks alive.
About Ruth:
Ruth Ayres’s mission is to change the world through story. Ruth’s story. Your story. His story and her story. She does this in her professional life as a K-12 writing coach for Wawasee School District, a presenter about teaching writers, and a blogger at Two Writing Teachers. She does this as a writer, playing with many writing projects, and on her blog Ruth Ayres Writes. She does this as a person in  ordinary life, collecting words and photos in order to remember the tiny moments that add up to big living. All of this leads to lots of notebooks filling up the spaces of her life.
Read the full post for more of Ruth’s insights about how she uses notebooks as part of her writing process:
Sharing Our Notebooks: Ruth Ayres: Fierce Wonderings.
Check out Ruth’s book too: Day by Day: Refining Writing Workshop Through 180 Days of Reflective Practice
A few quick links from my overflowing email inbox– thank you to all the readers who submit tips and new product news!
Suede-covered notebooks by ORCA.
Leather notepad holders by Tusked Crescent
Make your own Midori Traveler’s Notebook inserts
K&Company Smash Notebooks
Walt Whitman’s Pocket Notebook
Online stationery boutique Inkthistle
First Page Last: 18 Journals. 30 Years. (2013-1983) A Serial Blog.
Good Nature Notes
The kind folks at Pencils.com sent me a couple of samples of their Palomino Luxury Notebooks. I was excited to try these, as they looked like they were adding some interesting tweaks to the typical notebook, and because I had seen that they were being made in collaboration with the Turkish brand Fabio Ricci, one of whose notebooks I picked up in Istanbul and quite liked. The owners of Palomino seem to be following in Moleskine’s marketing footsteps by trying to create a distinctive brand identity, tying the Blackwing pencil brand to a historic legacy. But in the case of these notebooks, they are selling them more on the basis of being a higher-end, better quality notebook than the competition. From the Palomino Brands website:
“Each notebook features 160 pages of acid-free, 90 GSM paper and a hardbound cover.
Tastefully designed to combine modern technology, premium materials and traditional artisanship perfected by generations of Turkish printers and book binders, these notebooks have the look and feel of elegance that has long defined the Palomino brand.”
So let’s take a look…
The Palomino Luxury Notebook stands out at a glance because of the orange spine and the debossed motif along the edge of the front and back covers. As you can see from the comparison below, it is slightly bigger than a pocket Moleskine, though both are supposedly 3.5 x 5.5″. The cover material is slightly smoother and glossier than a Moleskine, a bit more leather-like. The notebook feels very solidly constructed and substantial and the extra details give it a feel of quality. One little thing I noticed is that although the cover is thicker than that of a Moleskine, the rounded corners of the cover are very neatly tucked in– this is something that is frequently sloppy on other brands of notebooks, where they don’t take the time to properly trim the black cover material so it will wrap tightly around the board underneath.
The only downside to the exterior appearance is that the orange spine seems to be painted on with something that starts to show hairline cracks when the cover flexes. Over time, I’m not sure if this paint would start to flake off. (But the spine does bend nicely when the notebook is opened– it seems stronger than a Moleskine spine, and less likely to start tearing at the corners.) You’ll also notice that the cover overhangs the pages by quite a bit, which is a pet peeve of mine.
Inside, there’s a space for your name and other details on the inside front cover– why the name is set apart from the other lines, I don’t know. Inside the back cover is a paper expanding pocket– it’s a bit skimpy in size, and lacks the cloth reinforcement in the sides that many other brands have.
Inside, the paper is smooth, but a bit less so than some other brands. Oddly, a few of my pens seemed to “skid” a little on the surface, not sure why, but it was mainly the fountain pens. The lines go all the way to the edge of each page. All my usual pens worked pretty well with better than average performance on bleedthrough, and about average levels of show-through.
You can buy these journals at Pencils.com or via Amazon
And since I have an extra sample, here’s our exciting giveaway! I will select one lucky winner from entries received in the following ways:
On Twitter, tweet something containing “@pencilscom†and “@NotebookStories, and follow Ҡand “@NotebookStories.â€
On Facebook, “like†the Notebook Stories page and the Pencils.com page, and post something containing the words “Palomino Luxury Notebook†on the Notebook Stories wall.
On your blog, post something containing the words “Palomino Luxury Notebook†and “Notebook Stories†and link back to this blog.
The deadline for entry is Friday May 31 at 11:59PM, EST. Good luck everyone!
And please remember to check my posts on Facebook and Twitter for an announcement of the winner.
From an exhibition at Dartmouth College:
“James R. Crawford’s notebooks. Crawford was a ship’s engineer on the Canadian Arctic Expedition (1913-1918) organized by Vilhjalmur Stefansson.
The notebooks, diaries and logs kept by expedition staff like Crawford provide valuable insight into the weather, ice conditions, and wildlife in the Arctic. Crawford, for example, kept daily detailed weather notes.”
Read more at Polar Connections: Dartmouth and the Earth’s Cold Regions.
This week’s addict is an Australian writer of fantasy fiction, who posted the following on her blog:
Like many writers, I suspect, I have a notebook addiction. (The kind you write in with a pen.) These days there are so many gorgeous ones available — even in common, mass-market, office supply stores. And it’s the inexpensive ones that are the most dangerous… because it seems perfectly acceptable to buy a few more when they’re only $3 each….
Read more at You can never have too many notebooks | Ellen Gregory.
