Posts filed under Journaling

Reflections on a Year of Journaling

(Kimberly (she/her) took the express train down the fountain pen/stationery rabbit hole and doesn't want to be rescued. She can be found on Instagram @allthehobbies because there really are many, many hobbies!.)

I haven’t done much journaling as an adult, aside from some scrapbooking ages ago or jotting notes from vacations, but I wanted to change that. I met some wonderful folks from the journaling community at the 2022 SF Pen Show and I decided I was going to start. I picked an unused Hobonichi Weeks and tried to use it for the last couple months of the year and realized the format was too small (we all know how long-winded I can be, lol) so I decided to try the Traveler’s Company regular-sized weekly diary inserts for 2023.

*My chonky Traveler’s Notebook (patches from Baum-Kuchen Studio.)*

Here are some things I discovered, realized and learned from this past year’s journaling; I broke it down into Writing, Decorating, Tips/Other:

Writing

I am an event-driven journaler. What on earth does this mean? I generally write about events, and less about emotions, feelings and thoughts. One might say it is more like a diary. It doesn’t mean that I don’t write down how I feel if something happened, more that it isn’t the focus of my journaling. There is nothing wrong with writing those things down, that’s just not where my head is at, and that’s ok.

I don’t write every day. As much as I want to make this a daily habit, it often doesn’t happen. I would beat myself up about having to go back and play “catch-up” but now I try to look at it more from a periodic reflection instead of a must-do daily item. If daily journaling works better for you, that’s awesome, but if you’re finding that difficult to do, maybe a more periodic approach will work better like it does for me.

Thank you, BuJo. I am so glad that I have a pretty good routine with Bullet Journaling because of what I just said above. My BuJo and the to-do lists remind me of what I did or worked on, which in turn, remind me of stories I want to jot down. It makes it so much easier to catch-up. It’s nice to look back - I recently spent part of the holidays backfilling 9 weeks’ worth of entries and after finishing it, it was so rewarding to flip through the past 6 months of entries and relive those memories again.

Decorating Your Journal

Journals don’t need to be decorated at all. But if you want to decorate them, by all means, go for it! Coming from a scrapbooking background from eons ago, I knew that I wanted to decorate my journals.

Decorations don’t have to match the entries. For me, I initially got hung up on trying to find the right stickers/washi/ephemera/whatever to match that week’s entries. This, in turn, made me spend way too much energy trying to find stuff or worse, run out and buy stuff, just so I could find matching things. This was one of the reasons I ended up giving up on scrapbooking - because I spent more time decorating (and being frustrated) than writing, which is the part I enjoy.

Pre-decorating is great. Once I got it out of my head that decorations didn’t have to match the content, it really freed me to decorate my journal ahead of time. It has turned into a relaxing activity that is also helping me be more creative too (I’m slowly learning how to collage and layer with stickers/washi/etc).

*A pre-decorated page from May which I still have yet to fill out, oops.*

Sticker release paper/books are so useful. I had no idea what sticker release paper was or what they were used for. Basically these books are made from the backing of stickers/labels and are used to keep your stickers in a consolidated space. I recently filled the Traveler’s Notebook Sticker Release Paper insert with a variety of stickers, which makes it easy to decorate on the go. Peeling stickers off their backing and putting them into the insert is the first step in using those stickers. Once you remove one sticker from a sheet, it gets so much easier to use the rest of them. Not to mention, it was so satisfying to fill up an entire insert not only because I now have an insert full of stickers ready to go but it felt so good to know I’m using my stuff and not just hoarding them!

*I tried to cram as many stickers in many different styles as I could in this insert so I don’t have an excuse that I can’t decorate my journal.*

Photos are awesome. Pictures are worth a thousand words, so putting pictures in my journal means I don’t have to write as much, lol! I didn’t put a single photo in the first half year’s insert, but definitely remedied that in the second half! You don’t have to have a photo printer - you can print on regular paper and use tape or glue stick. I got a Canon Ivy Cliq+ for my birthday a couple years ago which prints photo stickers. I print 4 photos to a page since I have limited space.

*I love seeing these photos and remembering the friends and stories, like these from the Fountain Pen Day trip to Chicago.*

Tips & Tricks & Other

It’s ok to skip entries or write over them - When I was backfilling my TN, I knew that one of the weeks would be about the SF Pen Show and there was no way that one page would be enough. So when there were weeks that didn’t have anything I really wanted to say about them, I left the page blank, so that I could use it for overflow SF Pen Show journaling. It made me feel good that (1) I didn’t force myself to write something when I didn’t really have anything I wanted to say and (2) that it gave me room for other entries.

*I wrote “cont’d on x page” at the bottom so I could easily find the next entry (this was written on the week after the pen show.)*

Make it work - Before I realized the above hack, there was one week’s worth of memories and events that wouldn’t fit on one page and I had already written on the following week’s page. So I cut out the last blank page of the insert, trimmed it a little and then taped it into the week’s entry so I had an additional sheet to use. Worked out great and I didn’t feel bad not using the last page, which would be for the first week of January anyway (and therefore in next year’s insert). Win-win! You can also use leftover pages from other notebooks, cute sticky notes to cover a mistake or ink blob or washi tape to cover up the dates.

*You can see that this inserted page is a little smaller (so it wouldn’t stick out) and just taped onto the insert.*

*The stamp that I used on the back of this page had bled through, so I used one of the sticky notes from* *eric small things* *to cover it up and put a Rickshaw SF Pen Show sticker in the middle. Problem solved!*

The last page of the 2023 insert was for the first week of January, but I didn’t want to do any January writing, so I covered up the dates with a strip of washi tape and finished up my year end writing! Also, Bungee says Happy New Year!

Keep it together. The Traveler’s Notebook system is great for multiple inserts and such, but even if you don’t use a TN, it’s really useful to keep your journaling items together. Whether it’s a pouch to store stickers, markers or small envelopes to hold ephemera, having a small kit where everything is in easy reach makes it more likely that you can get to journaling wherever you are.

Separate your journal. Ok, I just said keep it together and now I am telling you to separate it? I realized that sometimes I just want to jot something down, without needing to “make a big production” of journaling. Pre-decorating the journal has made it easier for me to just have the insert loose (not in the elastic straps) so I can take it on the go, without bringing the rest of the TN.

Get good tools, portable ones if you can. Sticker tweezers, worth it. Seriously? Tweezers just for stickers? Yes, it’s a life-changer, especially if you have teeny tiny stickers you want to use. They’re either sticking to our finger and not to the paper, or it gets less sticky cuz they’ve gotten your finger oils on them, or you can’t put them exactly where you want. The tweezers help you remove the sticker from the backing without affecting its stickiness and also helps you affix them where you want them. Ditto for nonstick scissors that aren’t going to get gummy from cutting up stickers, PET tape etc. I have tweezers and scissors for home use and smaller ones that I keep in my journaling kit. Here are some of my most used tools and accessories:

-- Sticker tweezers

-- Scissors

-- Brass Clips - I use these to hold my TNs open when I’m decorating or writing.

-- Plastic bookmarks/cards to wrap washi samples around.

-- Hotel room key - for cutting washi tape.

-- Sticker Release Insert - already mentioned above, but you can make your own if you have label or sticker backing paper. You can also buy sticker backing paper separately. Folks like Inkyconverters also make sticker books.

-- Pouches - I have several pouches in my TN but I also use pouches from Delphonics and Rickshaw that function as journaling kits to carry additional sticker books, washi rolls, stamps, envelopes, ephemera, etc.

*I have several bookmarks of washi tape samples in my pouch.*

*Stickers, postcards, ephemera go in this clear pouch.*

*I use this card insert to store some of the stickers that I don’t want to put in the sticker book (usually because they are kind of big.)*

Moving Forward

I have decided to stick with the Weekly Traveler’s Notebook inserts for 2024 because it’s the right size for quick daily jots on the left and a weekly highlight or two on the right. I’m still not aiming for daily journaling but would like to do it weekly (so far I’m 0 for 2, but I plan on doing some catchup next week). I have not only enjoyed jotting down the week’s highlights (and sometimes lowlights) but I have REALLY enjoyed using my stickers and ephemera.

*It is interesting to see how different the first and second insert covers are. All because I was getting more used to trying new things and forcing myself to “use my sh*t”, as my friend Judy of* *Tokubetsumemori* *would say.*

But my biggest takeaway from the 2023 journaling journey is to be kind to yourself. Even if sticker placement isn’t the best, or your pen burps on the page, or you spill something on it, you’re taking time to do something for yourself, and if you take a deep breath and focus on that and not on the mistake, you’ll realize it’s gonna be okay. May your 2024 journaling days be kind to all of us.

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Posted on January 12, 2024 by Kimberly Lau and filed under Journaling.

It’s a Conference not a Show - 2023 Chicago Planner Conference

When I decided to make the trip out to Chicago for Fountain Pen Day, I had no idea that, at the same time, the Chicago Planner Conference was also taking place. I knew about the conference, but since it was long sold out (I think it was sold out in a day!), I hadn’t really given it much thought. At the FPD event at Atlas Stationers, I ran into Francisco Lopez from Hinze Pens who asked if I would be interested in helping him teach a Fountain Pens 101 or 201 class at the Chicago Planner Conference (CPC), and of course, I jumped at the opportunity!

Hello, Chicago Planner Conference!

The lobby was a popular gathering spot.

Unlike a pen show, planner conferences (or “plannercons”) are less about selling products (though there was a marketplace for shopping too) and more about the planning community coming together to meet each other, listen to speakers, attend workshops and even exercise their creative muscles at “Make & Take” events. All of those events and workshops are included in the $375 CPC ticket price, which is quite a bit more than for a pen show, where an average weekend pass runs $40-$60. I had a bit of sticker shock initially, but once I saw the list of classes that were available, it totally made sense. Pen show classes typically cost around $75 per class and if you were to fill your weekend with multiple classes, it could definitely approach or surpass that number. Some of the conference’s topics included “Inbox/Outbox: Organizational Planning”, “Rock your digital planner”, Surviving the Hustle: Entrepreneurial Panel” and of course, “Fountain Pens 101”, and this is where I come in 🙂

Francisco and I spent an hour talking about fountain pens with a group of 50 attendees. Most of them weren’t fountain pen users; in fact, some had never touched one before, while others may have used one when they were kids, or were told that they couldn’t use them either because they were lefties or had a weird grip - that made me sad and angry because that can’t be further from the truth!

Francisco kicking off the class with a brief history of fountain pens.

Without boring everyone with too many details, we covered why fountain pens are great (no need to dip, writes without added pressure, ink options galore), parts of the FP/nib/feed, what is a converter and how to use it, how to write with a FP (which side is up, both tines should touch the paper, etc.) and then we inked up the fountain pens provided by Retro 51 and put pen to paper! It was great to have Francisco there because we could both walk around the room to answer questions and demonstrate things at the tables.

Francisco walked around and did demos for half the class, while I taught and demo’d for the other half.

Someone asked “So what do you do if you want to have more than one color to write with?” and this was my response: “ink up more than one pen!” 😃 60 minutes flew by and I wish we had at least another 30 minutes because we barely had time to answer questions. Everyone seemed to be excited to have learned and tried something new and had a new writing tool to play with.

All smiles with their new Retro 51 fountain pens!

After the class, one of the attendees gave me this awesome cookie!

Unlike pen shows which are open during show hours, CPC closes down the marketplace during the various sessions/workshops. Vendors get to take a break as well as attending or leading sessions too. I had maybe 10 minutes in the marketplace before the class,, but I made sure to take some pictures!

Jenny Galfi (IG:extrafinepennerd) watched the Hinze Pens table while Francisco Lopez was teaching the classes. Their table was in the hallway right outside the ballroom.

There were a few other vendors in the hallways. There were also some cute picture booth setups with props too. None of my hallway pictures turned out well, oops.

This is the entry to the ballroom.

View of the right side.

View of the rest of the ballroom.

As you can see from the pictures above, it is not a particularly large ballroom and there are wide aisles and lots of space. I would guess that there were roughly 30 vendors. I was in the marketplace very briefly before the class and I think that many of the attendees had already made their way to the second floor to head to their classes, which was why the aisles weren’t jam packed.

Cheryl Ball was representing Rickshaw Bagworks at CPC. They made special pouches and pen sleeves for the event. (PC:Marty Henderson.)

Marty and Kimberly Henderson (and their 3 daughters) were showcasing Retro 51 pens. It was great to see some familiar faces!

Coralie (right) with one of her helpers at the CoraCreaCrafts table.

OMG, look at all these awesome cat stickers from An Actor Plans. They are based on Mabel, the cat!

The actor behind “An Actor Plans” is Melissa M. Crabtree (not pictured, but her helper is!) makes Broadway-themed stickers, washi and other goodies.

JoJo of JoJo’s Pretty Paper Shop sells stickers, cards and notebooks - all made from her own original art.

Raspberyl Designs had all sorts of fun sticker sheets for decorating your Hobonichis, journals and planners.

I want to thank Francisco Lopez for giving me the opportunity to share my love of fountain pens with 50 enthusiastic planner folks. I had an absolute blast and wished I could have spent more time talking with folks, getting to know how they use their planners and answering any FP questions they may have. And of course, to do some shopping too, lol.