Transcript
Hello all my buddies, it’s Carmen! I’m back with another flip-thru, this time with my little pocket notebook! Starting at the end of 2019 and throughout all of 2020, I actually used these little pocket notebooks instead of a large A5.
Honestly, I get bored of using the same notebook all the time, and I love the satisfaction of finishing a notebook, so I think these little pocket notebooks are the perfect solution.
During the pandemic, it was just more memory keeping than planning; I would write down one or two things down a day.
This specific notebook is the Elemental Paper Proton Notebook. Elemental Paper was a small notebook company that started on Kickstarter and produced, obviously, periodic table or scientist themed notebooks. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, they had to close. I had always wanted to try one of their notebooks, and since it was my last chance, I bought a back of these Proton notebooks. These have a faux leather cover, which looks and feels great, by the way, and Tomoe River paper on the inside, I think this is the 68gsm one, but don’t quote me on that.
If you don’t know, Tomoe River is a popular paper with fountain pen people, because it’s thin, but keeps ink very well and doesn’t bleed on the back. I had never tried it before buying this notebook, so it was another good reason for me to get a set.
Anyway, here are the notebook scans. Apologies in advance: they’re a little blurrier than my other scans; I scan my Cloth & Paper planner at work since it’s only 6 or 7 scans, but since this one has so many pages, I did it at home, and my scanner is super old! It took forever!
This little notebook started December 2020, when I didn’t know I had a planner yet, so you can see I’m using this as a mini planner as well. The first couple of pages are just little lists, I’m going to skip over them, they’re not super interesting.
Onto December! This is the first time I decided to do something resembling a “cover” page; I don’t usually do those. I wanted to get serious about using up my stickers, so every page has a bunch of stickers. I used up some stamps to do a little yeti scene, and of course some washi to denote the first page of the month. This washi tape is from Daiso. Again, since it was still a mini planner, I wrote some goals I had for December. I had intended this page to be both a place for goals and a place to reflect on those goals and how I could’ve done better.
Next, the first week of December. On the left is my mini memory journaling, I have there one thing that happened, one podcast episode I listened to that stood out to me, and on the bottom of some of those days, I have my daily tarot reading. I started doing a daily morning reading in December, in an effort to write more in my journal, and it definitely helped! I won’t go into my beliefs about tarot readings here, but I like putting my daily reading in my journals. on the right-hand side is one layout of the Alastair method. I will link a video that Boho Berry did on this method (check the “I” in the corner there), I think it was very informative. The Alastair Method helps me a lot, and I use it still in my weekly Post-Its that I have in my planner.
Week 2 of December, I changed around my week so that there was more room to write. I like the one line, but somedays I want to add more information, so this was a nice change. On the top left is my second layout for the Alastair method. I made it side-ways because I thought it would look cool (and it totally does).
Week 3 of December, I used the same layout as before, but here I changed the Alastair layout to make it upright again. As you can see, I like incorporating the white and teal striped sticky note, I think it adds some nice color to the page. It also worked out well because the stripes work with the dot grid; each stripe equals about 3 squares.
Week 4 of December, I kind of changed the layout so that the weekend was on top of the Alastair list. I did this because I thought it would make more sense for the week to continue from the top there. But then, I didn’t want to put the Alastair to-do list right underneath the line for Sunday, so I ended up with just not enough space for the striped sticky note… a little sad…
This next spread is my Habitica spread! I haven’t shared this before, I don’t think, but I use Habitica, an online website and app that makes your daily routine into sort of an RPG. The line chart is my climb up the levels, and the sidebars are my quests; two of the larger ones are boss battles, and the small, thin one is an item gathering quest. Let me know if you also use Habitica! I’ve never actually met anyone in real life who also uses it.
Next spread is for my vacation week; nice and boring week off between Christmas and New Year’s. Up there, there’s a short Alastair list; I wrote down all the things I wanted to do during my week off and I’m glad I had the time to do them all!
This next spread I made before my vacation, it was all the things I had wanted to do or try over vacation. I didn’t cross any off, I guess it’s just a continual list that will never end!
Here we go, my first spread of 2021! I wanted to make an effort to use more washi tape this year, especially since my friend Sowmya and I exchange washi tape in our letters now! I wanted to use more stamps as well, so the number stamps at the top are some stamps my mom owns. The cat sticky notes, and the washi tape underneath are all from Muji. Sowmya and I made an order because their physical US stores were all closing! On the right are some washi tapes Sowmya gifted me, they’re from Ali Express.
Next up is my monthly overview from January; I was using my new Cloth & Paper planner now, so this is just a fun, creative exercise. This month I wanted to use more stamps, so I didn’t do a sticker page. I also did a goals page here, but only because I had a goals page for December. The washi tape on the side is from Michael’s, I think.
First week of January, I already messed up on the title (see the extra zero in front of the 10?) and I messed up on the dates (on the bottom left page). This week was also the week of the attempted coup; I thought the red exclamation bubble was a perfect representation of my confusion and outrage. This week I also made each day a little bigger and put Friday on the right with the weekend.
Second week of January I moved Friday back to the left-hand side. January was a lot of experimenting with the sizes of each day! Here, the bottom dates are all 6 squares high; making for larger room on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. This was ideal because I usually do things on those days.
Here’s the third week of January, here I made each day only 5 squares high, making all the days an equal size and leaving me enough room to write the header at the top of the left-hand page. It also left me enough room to fit the striped sticky note with the Alastair header at the top.
And here’s the fourth week of January; I liked the look of the previous week, so I kept it again for this week.
And again here’s my Habitica spread for January; as you can see, I lose steam on this sometimes, I didn’t use Habitica for about 10 days.
Moving on, here’s my February spread! The washi tape on the side, as well as all the heart stickers and the hamster sticker are from Sowmya! The hamster stickers are from Ali Express, the heart stickers are from Daiso, I believe, and the washi tape is from someone she follows on Instagram and Etsy; I wrote it down in my washi tape collection notebook, but I can’t seem to find that notebook since the move. On the left are my goals for February. I started my moving process this month!
Here’s my first week of February. In February, I took out the Alastair method in this notebook and printed it out on Post-Its for my planner. That way, this notebook was just dedicated to memory keeping. Each day now has room for about 4 different things, which is perfect.
Here’s my second week of February, I just realized I haven’t been talking about my stickers! Well, the white, half-inch stickers you see here are ones I printed out. I found these cute little PNGs and I had a sticker sheet of these half-inch rounded squares so I took advantage and printed out my own little stickers.
Here’s my third week of February, as you can see, I’m trying to use up as many stickers as I can; I have some “Day Off School” stickers that I will never use because I’ll never be in school again, so I just crossed it off to write “Work” on them. Easy peasy!
My last week of February: a lot of moving, and I bought Ring Fit Adventure and Fitness Boxing, both for the Switch, so I can finally say I worked out! It’s been fun playing those games!
My March spread! Again, all the stickers and washi tape on this page are from Sowmya. The stickers are all from Daiso, I believe, and the washi tape are all from Ali Express. My goals page for March… Well… If you watched my Planner Flip Thru for March, you already know, but my March sucked a lot.
Like I said before, I get sick of notebooks quickly, and I was already sick of this notebook, 3 months in. So, I expanded each day to take up half a page. I wanted to be a little quirky with this notebook, so I flipped the top numbers upside down. This was just straight up memory keeping, so there’s some podcasts, and this week was moving week, so I wrote down what we concentrated on moving that day.
This next spread, March 5-8th, more moving and the weekend. I realized after this spread that I didn’t like the continual spread, that I had to make it clear which days were the start of the week and which days were weekends. Unfortunately, I had already drawn in all the dates, so…. I quickly started to hate my March spreads….
My next spread, March 9-12, as you can see, I got quite busy, I ended up with five or six thing to record some days.
My next spread, March 13-16, a lot of crochet and Switch playing, including Animal Crossing, Ring Fit, and Fitness Boxing.
Next spread, March 17-20, someone hit my car on the 20th, and I’m still carless y’all. It’s mid-May!!! Ugh.
Next spread, March 21-24, more Animal Crossing and Ring Fit. My car was towed and I crocheted a little.
Next, March 25-28, a crap ton of Animal Crossing. I tried to look for Carmen all day on the 28th, which was a Sunday, but I couldn’t find her 🙁 I used 100 tickets!
Next, March 29-April 1, it was my birthday March 29th. I was still very upset about my car, I crocheted a lot.
Last weekly spread, Apr 2-4, I did some family things, socially distanced.
Here’s a spread I tried to do, I did this at the beginning of March with my March Spread; I worked to time block my days and break them down to figure out what I needed to be doing. A lot of it was work and sleep. Mon Tue Thu are the same because those are my days on my own, Taylor and I do our own things on these days. Wednesday is my mid-week Animal crossing break, and Fridays are our date nights!
Here’s the next spread, one for Saturday and one for Sunday. Each day is different because I have different events each day. Saturdays I walk with my mom in the mornings, and Sundays I have a virtual journaling date with Sowmya, though it’s mostly been a virtual catch-up date now that we’ve both been busier.
Next, on the left, I have a generic “weekday” time-blocking spread, but I didn’t use this as much (or at all); and on the right I have a package tracking spread, to make sure what I ordered had arrived. It was more of a fun tracking spread than a serious tracking spread it that makes any sense.
And last, of course, is my pen test page! If I inked a fountain pen with a new ink, I was supposed to try it out on this page, but it looks like that didn’t happen all the time…
Please let me know what you thought of this video and if you like these types of deep dives into my notebooks. Thanks for watching everyone! Bye!