Filofancy | Life On Paper

Who needs the original Midori Traveler's Notebook zipper pocket refill when you can just go to your favourite stationery store and find exciting alternatives?

I think I must have just got lucky though. I was browsing the sale section in the flagship Paperchase store in London the other day, and I came across these fabulous traveler's notebooks with plastic zipper pocket covers. I think I paid something like £3 – can you believe it? Maybe I should go back and get more! Who wants one?

What's so great about them?

Well, they fit in my Midori Traveler's Notebook for starters!

They're not a perfect fit, but it definitely works. The zipper pocket bit is slightly wider than the rest of the notebook so it sticks out the side of my Midori slightly.

But that doesn't bother me, especially when I put the insert into the middle of my Midori so that it doesn't interfere with my pen loop which is stuck to the inside of the back leather cover.

The front inside-left has two long full-length slots and a cool card slot that flips out to the side.

I suppose now that I think about it, you could actually use it like a page marker to mark where you are at in the notebook!

The back-right has the full length zipper pocket (see picture with ruler below), and on the inside it has various card slots and sticky label slots, plus one full-length slot which I have shown with my ruler again further down.

The whole plastic cover can be used by itself or you can use it like a notebook cover protector.

Unfortunately the Midori Traveler's Notebook refills are ever so slightly too long height-wise to slip into the cover without the card warping, but only by about a millimetre, so you could just trim the refill cover and then it would slip in easily.

In all honesty though, you don't need to slip the refill covers into the actual plastic because the notebook is held in place with the Midori elastics anyway.

The cover is a clear and shiny plastic, which means it is fairly sturdy and not floppy. It has a cloud pattern printed on it which I think is rather cute. This means that the colour or design on your refill notebook cover will show through.

The notebook it comes with has mint green vertical stripes and then coloured stripes going across horizontally with an aeroplane design to show it is intended as a travel journal.

Here is a picture of my beloved brown Midori Traveler's Notebook with the new zipper pocket notebook inserted.

You can see it does show a little bit at the side, but if you like your Midori stuffed and groaning with goodies then you probably won't mind things sticking out.

I'm currently using the inside front slots to house my favourite stickers for quick and easy access, and I will probably use the zipper pocket at the back to store loose bits of paper, receipts... you know, that sort of thing :)

See you in the next post!

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My Midori Traveler's Notebook setup

Swapping my Filofax for a TN

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The appeal of a Midori Traveler's Notebook is the raw and rustic, non-pretentious, gritty realness of it. There's something incredibly honest and humble about a traditional leather notebook cover – it kind of feels like another limb, another part of me – and the more I use it, the more battered and beautiful it becomes.

There's something about a tatty old journal that has lived with you through the good times and the tears that makes them really personal.

My old journals are all dog-eared and warped having acquired that 'used' look over time. So I knew I was going to fall for a Midori Traveler's Notebook the moment I discovered them.

The thing I love about the Midori is that you can refill it. This means you can have the joy of watching a leather journal age with you, but also enjoy a brand new notebook refill every other month or however often you use it.

This is perfect because I love old and tatty but I also get excited by a crisp new notebook.

My dilemma is that I am a dedicated Filofax Lover, and I have a blog all about Filofaxes!

How I use a Midori and an A5 Filofax together

Surely there's no need to give up my Filofax system completely though?

My beautiful A5 Aqua Chameleon Filofax can remain as my 'work' organiser. It's already set up and works well. Plus, because it's big and heavy I keep it at home where I work.

My new TN has more portability so I have decided to use it as my everyday non-work-related planner, journal and sketchbook all rolled into one.

The one ongoing issue I've felt when using a Filofax is the feeling that nothing is fully permanent.

I think this is because I know that anything can be taken out, replaced, re-ordered etc. While that obviously has its benefits, I've always missed the more permanent nature of a bound notebook, which is why I usually have a separate notebook as my personal journal for thoughts and reflections.

It's is something I can bend on its spine, snuggle up in a chair and get comfortable with, and secretly share all of the thoughts inside my head.

In a similar way to the Flex by Filofax, the Midori Traveler's Notebook gives me the opportunity to use bound notebook refills and go back to taking a pride in the marks I make on the page because I know they'll be kept forever. And because there is the capacity to use more than one notebook in the same cover it'll be easy to have a journal, a diary and a sketchbook together.

I love seeing how other people personalise the diary pages of their Filofaxes, but I have never really enjoyed decorating pages in a Filofax in the same way that I have enjoyed expressing myself creatively on the bound pages of a notebook ...

...so I'm looking forward to seeing how my everyday personal planner evolves creatively into something that I can enjoy looking back on over the years to remember what was going on in my life at different times.

My Midori Traveler's Notebook setup

Don't ask me how I did it but I managed to fit FOUR refill notebooks into my new leather Midori binder. Yes it's fat n' gorgeous, but still easy to carry around with me.

I love the Midori refill system, it's so simple and clever. The Leather binder comes with a doubled piece of elastic attached to its spine so that you have two pieces of elastic to slip two notebooks through and carry in the leather binder - but you also have the option of doubling-up!

To do this you get two notebook refills and attach them together by fitting an elastic band down the spine in the centre of the two notebooks so that they are held together. You could just fit the covers of each notebook together with the elastic, but if you do it down the centre they stay together better.

Then you open them up so that you have one notebook on each side, held together in the middle by the elastic and slip them through one of the elastics attached to the Leather binder. So now you have two notebooks in the binder and part of the doubled-up elastic for two more to be fitted in the same way.

There are different ways to do it though, that's just mine. I don't know if it makes any sense... I should have included a diagram.

Anyway... of the four notebook refills in my Midori, one is my personal journal...

As you can see I have many thoughts and I am already into a second refill!

I like to decorate my journal refills with lots of cuttings from magazines and stickers. I like personalise each one for they all feel different with their own personality. They are like a reflection of who I was at different times in my life.

It'll be interesting in years to come to look back through my Midori refills to see how much I have changed. I love looking back through old journals.

In the front of the journal refill I made my own little slip-pocket for my stickers ...

In the back of the journal I stuck an envelope, which is really useful for slipping loose bits of papers in and receipts.

Also I do this cool thing now when I come to the end of a journal – I like to write myself a little letter as a sort of reflection on the past few weeks. I write about what I think I've learnt, things I want to remember and thoughts or prompts for the future. Just a few things I might find interesting to read back over one day.

I also like to create lots of secret pockets, because they're useful and they make things feel even more personal. So when I tape the envelope to the back of the refill, I only tape the top and bottom, so that I have an extra secret pocket behind the envelope - cool huh?

You can pretty much do this to all your refills and have secret pockets all over the place.

I decided to make my own diary because I like the layout of the Moleskine Diary with a week-on-one-page and the opposite side blank for notes.

Yes it took a while to draw it all up, but I managed to fit six months in, so I'm sorted until Christmas just about. I filled in each page of the TN refill by hand with a ruler and pen.

I use this refill book as my daily planner in the same way I'd normally have used my everyday Personal Filofax. I love the scrapbook-feel of it. I know that I can't move things around like in my Filofax, but I like the fact that I can stick things in and clip notes here and there with paper-clips to create a kind of organised chaos that only I can decipher.

I also have an artist's sketchbook refill with thicker cartridge paper for sketching and using my watercolours, and an extra home-made refill book at the very back that I just use for scribbling and doodling in.

I find it very easy to section the Midori as a whole. I have a silver leaf pendant attached to the original Midori string page-marker which I use to mark my place in my personal journal section, and a pink metal bookmark clip from Paperchase that I use to get to my 'Today' page in the planner section.

That's all I really need, but I do use little silver petal page-marker clips from Waterstones to mark out sections I use regularly like my Artist's sketchbook and general notes section.

I have to say that my Midori has a wonderful way of opening up onto the page I need when I need it.