February 28, 2010

Moleskine Passions: Book Journal

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At the beginning of February I bought a Moleskine Passions Notebook (£16). If you are not already aware, there are several to choose from including recipe journal, film journal, wine journal and the one I chose – the book journal. The choice was a difficult one, and I went with the book journal because it coincided with my new year’s resolution to read more books.

The notebook is 13x21cm in size and has 240 pages. The photos above show the notebook with the paper sleeve still on and then with it off. Personally I love the colour the sleeve brings to it and find the notebook covering a bit boring without – even though the impressions in the cover do make it more interesting than a simple plain cover.

Photographs show a selection of the pages. There is a planning section at the beginning. Then there is the alphabetised section for your books. The space at the back includes blank tabbed pages, an index and blank sheets. The layout is good, the alphabetised pages and index make the book easy to use and find things.

I just wrote in the book (although you can download templates if you prefer to type it up). Information that you enter for each book include:

Title
Author
Nationality
Date read
Publisher
First edition
Year
Original Language
Awards
Notes
Quotes
Opinion

As can be seen in the above picture. I jazzed up the notebook a bit by writing in coloured pens. I think in someways I made a bad choice with books, as there is less you can stick in the book to make it more interesting by way of “scrapbooking” it – unlike films and recipes for example.

As I mentioned before there is space at the book for your own tabbed entries. The stickers the provide you with provide plenty of inspiration to help you decide what to use these pages for:

What do I love about this notebook?

the alphabetised section which is tabbed like an address book
index
the quotes and opinion boxes on the pages about the book instead of just a simple title, author, comments set-up that most book journals seem to follow.
freedom to make up your own sections and loads of stickers and room to be creative

What I don’t like about this notebook?

In many ways there is nothing I couldn’t do myself in a plain notebook
quite expensive for the simplicity of it all
quite boring if you don’t do anything extra to jazz it up
limited number of pages for each letter – I would go over this for some letters.

Anyone been using the book journal? or one of the other passions notebooks? I did have good intentions of getting the film one as well – but now I’m not so sure!

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February 27, 2010

Yay! Internet is Back!!

Sorry about the long absence from the blogging world – internet was messing me around (hopefully for the last time). I received a bunch of Daycraft diaries/notebooks last week, so we’ve got those reviews coming up – in addition to the ones that I mentioned earlier this month. So stay tuned.

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February 7, 2010

The Flora and Fauna Diary

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I know I am late with the Diary Review, but they do have a notebook exactly the same style and just a little thicker and with the same paper which you may be interested in if you’re not in the market for a diary. The notebook (and the paper) is from Cavallini & Co.

I love the brightly coloured front cover, which has a vintage but wacky feel to it. The inside cover, rather than being plain is also highly patterned:

Inside the diary we have all the usual additions: personal details, important dates, international dialling codes, time differences, tube map and national rail map. I love the fact that it has a national rail map – that is actually of use to me, more so that the tube (london underground) map, because I rarely go to London.

Now for the diary pages: They are organised in week view. I like my pocket diary to be week view as I can cart it around in my purse and all I need to do is simply note things I’m doing, or look things up to see if I’m free, my larger diaries are the day view ones.

You get a good amount of space in each day, and of course like most weekly view diaries the weekend space is smaller. The paper is good thick cream paper withstanding the use of ink gel and fountain pens with no show through. Smooth and easy to write on.

Compared to last years diary? Well last year I had a moleskine (weekly view) diary different layout so I’m not going to compare on that front, although I did enjoy the space to do a to-do list. But this year, now that I am no longer a student I do have more of a need for space in each individual day, so it works out well. The paper seems thinner in the moleskine, although I cannot say for sure.

Size wise the moleskine is more pocket friendly, but the Cavallini is slightly more compacted and is thinner (as it lacks a pocket in the back cover).

Cavallini have a wide range of products available in several main themes (one of which is Flora and Fauna featured here).

These products can be bought in Waterstones, The Pod Company and Papernation.

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February 3, 2010

The EcoStapler Review

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Last week I toyed with the idea of using an ecostapler for personal use (as it is obviously not suitable for use at work). So I bought the EcoStapler over the weekend.

First off it is hard enough to get into the eco plastic packaging to get the stapler out (even after attacking it with the scissors). Once I got it opened I started stapling – 2/3 pages are easy to staple. It says in the information about the stapler that 3 is the maximum number of pages that can be stapled. 4 can be stapled just about – but it takes both hands and a lot of force and even then it only works sometimes and other times it ends up being a bit of a hacked up job.

I’ve got to wonder when realistically you’d only be stapling 3 pages – so I’d say you couldn’t rely on this stapler alone. But when it is 3 pages or less it does work well.

But the “staple” itself looks cute, different. It does hold the paper together, but cannot withstand a great deal of force and is easy to pull apart. and you couldn’t use to fold back on itself when looking at the second page (as you ca do with metal staples) as it would break away.

I believe that anyone who received a document from you which had been ecostapled would be likely to reinforce it with a metal staple if they were to work with it. defeating the main purpose of being eco. So I’m sorry to say, hold your horses, don’t go to run out and buy one of these metal staples do a better job and are here to stay.