flamebyrd | (no subject)

(no subject)

An addendum to my last post:

Please, please feel free to evangelise your favourite type of notebook*, brand of pen, intricately crafted bullet journal method, complex note-taking and revision technique, anything that makes life/study easier for you!

*I probably won't be adopting a new notebook for this semester, but there's always next semester ;)

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Felt-tip pens and rollerball pens (because they use liquid ink) can cause showthrough problems with some papers - not to the extent of fountain pens but still.

The most popular bullet journal makers, Leuchtthurm and Moleskine, besides being overpriced, are both a bit unfortunate this way - papers that don't stand up well even to felt-tips. Just... not great paper quality, particularly in light of price, although with gel and ballpoint ink and pencil it shouldn't be an issue.

There's a huge variety of paper that's fine for felt-tips but not quite tough enough for fountain pen use, though. You could probably google it. Because I use fountain pens, I mostly use Rhodia and Clairefontaine paper - both owned by Clairefontaine actually, but the latter a little denser than the former. There are Asian papers and notebooks that are easier to get in North America than here, though, that I haven't tried.

I'm also very attached to the so-called "Traveler's Notebook" system (sometimes referred to as Midori, the brand name of the Japanese leather notebook cover that started the recent fad) since I switched to it after six months or so of bullet journaling - basically it's a cover that holds multiple thinner notebooks inside, usually with the aid of elastic bands, so in that sense a bit like the idea of a Trapper Keeper (or any large binder with internal folders/subject dividers), although there are all kinds of Aesthetic and also practical facets to the movement/market (pockets, folders, etc).

For my purposes, it's a sweet spot in flexibility between a single notebook and a binder where you can individually place each page. The discrete notebooks can be swapped out and saved afterwards easily, but carried around together. Also since the outer cover protects the contents, the inside notebooks are soft/staplebound but don't get as banged up as these smaller notebooks often do, and that makes them fairly cheap and easy to make so there are many small custom makers doing different things with them out there, if you have particular preferences and desires about design, paper, layout, etc. For my purposes, it's much easier and cheaper to get staple-bound composition book style notebooks of fountain pen-friendly high quality paper.

My current method for daily planner stuff is cutting recycle paper with a blank side into roughly 4.25 x 5.5 inch sheets, dating them, then stamping or stenciling checkboxes in 2 or 3 clusters.

Notes, I use a lined pad and I really want a self-inking, self-updating date and time stamp to replicate Notepad's behavior with the F5 key.

In Word, I use the multi level organization headers, especially after I learned that you can drag and drop to shuffle the order.

I take pictures of the paper notes, but that's a vaguely terrible archive system.

cimorene's comment about liquid ink-friendly paper and our discussion about Happy Planner/discbound leads to this paper advice that I had to trial and error when I was making DIY Happy Planner inserts.

I have no idea what MAMBI specifies in paper weight for Happy Planner-branded products, but I haven't had problems with felt tips or fountain pens so it has to be pretty heavy. The Clairefontaine notebook I told you that I've used reliably for school for years has 90-gram weight paper. TBH, the #1 reason I went with that brand of notebook had nothing to do with fountain pens; that was a feature I discovered later. I'm left-handed and it became almost impossible to find a top-bound notebook with normal school-type lines. I paid too much for this at a local, now-closed, bookstore and got hooked.

So, if you're looking to make DIY paper inserts for anything and you don't want ink to soak through, look for 90g paper or heavier. US measurements for paper weight are a pain in the ass to understand. I made my DIY inserts out of 28lb paper. 32lb would be far better but it's hard to find.

(Oddly enough, the Clairefontaine catalog indicates they make discbound notebooks but I am exceptionally unclear if they're available anywhere outside of Europe)

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