Transcript
Hello all my buddies, this is Carmen, and I’m back with another flip-thru of one of my mini pocket notebooks. This one was the Muji Passport Memo Dot Grid Navy. It says it’s navy, but if it’s blue, then it’s the darkest blue ever, because it’s totally black. On the cover is a Goulet Pens sticker that I got in my order with my Monteverde Ritma, and the hamster sticker was a gift from Sowmya.
I’ll start with my pen test page, as I always start with this page when starting a new planner or notebook. I go to the very, very back of the notebook and try out the pens I have inked. And then if I change inks or pens during the lifespan of the notebook, I write it down. Some of the fountain pens and ink are feathering, which means they get a little soft on the edges and don’t keep a sharp line. Sad. On the left you can see a sticker from my Tranya headphones, they’re my noise-cancelling headphones that are amazing.
Now, the back of the pen test page, I don’t know if you can see in the scan, but there’s a lot of ghosting on all the inks, which I do not like. I really loved my other Muji notebook, but I can’t remember if I used a lot of fountain pens and graphic liners in that one, so I don’t know if this paper has always been like this. I remember using my Muji gel pens and Uni Jetstream though, so I know those are good.
That being said, since I didn’t love this paper, I wanted to finish this notebook as quickly as possible, so that led me to a lot of experimenting. And now we’ll go back to the first page. You can see some Post-Its on the left, stuck to the inside front cover, that will be a theme to the notebook because I deliberately kept Post-Its for this notebook. On the right, my index. Let’s start with the stickers and washi tape, they’re all from Sowmya, I believe the stickers are from Daiso, and the washi tape is from Etsy. I color-coded my index with highlighters, one for each of the days. Luckily, I had enough lines on the page, and pages in the book for this to work out, but I put three full weeks into this notebook, with each day taking up a spread instead of a page.
And this is again another memory keeping notebook. So, let’s go first to Apr 5th. On the left are post-its that I used for that day. Here, a checklist for groceries, and then a checklist for myself sideways on the bottom. Both of these Post-its were used the way Post-its are usually used, with temporary adhesive, but I glued them in with a permanent tape runner after their use was done. On the right is what I did that day, with a sticker representing that item or section of items. This is going to be one type of spread in the book: where I have multiple Post-its on the left, and then my day for memory keeping on the right.
Next spread is Apr 6th. This is another type of spread for the book. In early 2020 Sowmya and I went to a closing stationery shop and bought a whole bunch of items, one of which we thought was an A6 Midori Notebook, and actually turned out to be huge A6 Midori sticky notes! I used one or two the past couple of years, and in an effort to use more, I wanted to make these geometric doodles. I didn’t want to put them on the actual page, since the Muji pages would just make the fountain pen ink bleed through the back, so I drew the doodles on the Midori sticky notes instead. Midori paper is supposed to be great for fountain pen inks, and it clearly shows.
I’ve been wanting to do these types of doodles for a while; I keep seeing these types of doodles on the r/fountainpens subreddit, and I just never got around to doing it for some reason. So, I made it a priority to fill empty space with these doodles in this notebook. And again, on the right, is my day. Usually I write out in pencil or on a different Post-It note what I did, and then rewrite it in fountain pen later, maybe on the weekend or even a couple weeks later.
Next spread is Apr 7th. I started with drawing dots in for the doodles on the sticky notes, using a stencil I made myself, but then I didn’t feel like erasing the pencil, so I kept them in.
Next spread is Apr 8th. And here is another type of spread in my notebook. Some days I only had one thin checklist Post-it, so I had a thin doodle! These were actually harder to do, because in my head, I had these more elaborate designs, and these thinner Midori sticky notes were too thin, so I had to make them more simple. You’ll see some samples later on.
Next spread is Apr 9th. Here’s an example of my larger doodle cut short. Though this crop does look cool, I think.
Next spread is Apr 10th. Here’s a Post-it of my time-blocking. I usually try two hour intervals, but things like dinner are usually just 1hr. Sometimes I cross things off and sometimes I don’t, I usually cross the things off that I finished, but sometimes I also get lazy and don’t cross things off.
Next spread is Apr 11th. Here, the Post-it on the side is my printed version of the Alastair method. I have some changes for the next batch that I print out, as I don’t have time for “game” which was my shorthand term for video game, because at the beginning of the year, I wanted to try to slog through my video game backlog. I still want to do it, but now I don’t have time!
Next spread is Apr 12th. Ugh, this doodle started out as curves, but then I got annoyed because the ink was drying so slowly, so I just made them all straight lines instead. It ends up like of looking like fishnet stockings, which makes me like it more.
Next spread is Apr 13th. This doodle is another example of a larger doodle in my head and badly interpreting it on a thinner sticky note. I tried to put in Tetris shapes in the doodle, can you see them?
Next spread is Apr 14th. This doodle was the first doodle with my new-ish Pilot Pluxmix with the 1mm nib, the ink is the cartridge it came with. I think it came out really cool, with diamonds and waves. On the right, I got my first shot, and I celebrated by writing out the lyrics of “Vindicated” by Dashboard Confessional, but they were remixed by Mattstagraham (on Instagram) to be “Vaccinated” too. I love this song, and I love the remix! The personal irony in my life, is that the person who loved this song with me in high school is an anti-vaxxer :/
Next spread is Apr 15th. The doodle on the left was inspired by a post on r/fountainpens. This one, like all the other ones inspired by posts on Reddit, will be linked in the description below. Be sure to look out for the time stamp and the date!
Next spread is Apr 16th. For this doodle, the original looks truly beautiful, and this one looks okay, but you should really check out the original! Again, linked below.
Next spread is Apr 17th. Here’s another time-blocking day. I usually do these on Saturdays because they’re the days I need to stay focused, and time blocking definitely helps. You can see I have a huge chunk of five hours that just says “work on projects” and the project Post-it is on the bottom. I tried to focus 40 mins on each like the time-blocking allowed for, but I ended up spending about 60 mins on each, so I could only get the top 5 things that needed to be done.
Next spread is Apr 18th. Here’s the last type of spread in the book. The Alastair post-it is on the left, but the right spread is my version of a gratitude list, called My Recencies, listing about 5 things that made me happy over the course of the week. I tried to give myself Sundays as a rest/relaxing day.
Next spread is Apr 19th. I love the look of the wave doodle! I find it very relaxing to look at, I only wish it had more consistency and flow.
Next spread is Apr 20th. I had a really hard time trying to plan out this doodle, you’re probably able to see the pencil marks, and even with the pencil marks, I made a huge mistake, let me know if you caught it!
Next spread is Apr 21st. I love this spread because it reminds me of Qbert! This was such a nice and relaxing doodle to complete.
Next spread is Apr 22nd. Another kind of complicated doodle, the last half of the larger Midori sticky notes I printed on with light grey dots, so I wasn’t drawing out the dots any more, and that gives this one a weird pajama look. I love chevrons though!
Next spread is Apr 23rd. This doodle is another kind of Qbert feel, if Qbert was on acid. Each one of the faces has arrows that go in different directions, giving this doodle kind of movement.
Next spread is Apr 24th. I love this doodle! I messed up a couple of times, and maybe I should’ve just leaned into it, but I love the look of the lined triangles with dotted triangles and the blank triangles. This is the only one where I wish I could erase the dot grid, because I bet the blank triangles would look especially striking!
Next spread is Apr 25th. My last text spread of the notebook.
The rest of the book is washi tape because I was bored and I just got my washi tape back from my mom’s house after the move. All of these washi tapes are from Daiso. Man, I miss browsing at Daiso. I took a break before the pandemic, and have only gone once during the pandemic.
And that’s it! Let me know what you thought of this experimental notebook. I’m glad I finished this book so quickly, and I got to do some doodles in the book.
Thanks for watching, everybody!