A nice way to create a little dip into booklet with sheets of paper is to keep covers from old diaries. The nice ones are easily adapted into a scrap paper cover. If you have a habit of not finishing diaries, or get given more than one, it’s ideal. Rip out or cut away the old paper gently, find a nice lining paper to cover the inner, now empty, inside covers and spine and secure with a covering tape. I just wrap a piece of hemp string or leather around the covers to keep them closed. Or a hair elastic band type thingy-me-bob. Those little circular ones in all colours/thicknesses/sizes. They hold a pony tail in place.

Scrap booklet or cheap to posh journal. Which to choose.

Usually holding and using a fountain pen in either playful Mindfulness or with intent, does bring a sense of calm. Whether it is a random writing down of a ‘produce any old thing’ scenario. Or more considered applied thinking. Considering the latter, fountain pen use still allows some strange support of flow to serious thought. Then the former? Opening up a converted diary with a bunch of single ‘cut/ripped to measure’ sheets inside is great to explore and experiment.

Not actually being able to buy quality paper choices because I can ill afford to be an avid stationery collector and then simply write on well made pieces of ‘respected’ expensive paper with inclusions that warrant a throw them away afterwards result. So I cut up thick cream coloured plain lining wallpaper. Or use sheets of handmade paper torn to smaller uses. Lining wallpaper is rolled and means you have to iron it flat sometimes though. I’ve left it for weeks under a tight elastic band in one of these diary covers and it still comes out and says ‘Nice to ‘C’ you!’ The curve can’t be written on easily.

Please tap on individual photographs to enlarge.

Mindful writing.

There is a wonderful satisfaction that results when the flourish of a nib creates lines of glistening ink. This joy in providing the experience of seeing ink simply appearing on paper. No thought re: content or theme. Writing rubbish just to actually write……something! Anything. To create weird letter shapes and watch them morph into random patterns. Not all words and content are creative and earnest. The Mindfulness colouring books come to my mind. As does calligraphy enhancements in the form of surrounding decoration.

A notebook journal is a different story. As it is the receiver of thoughts, plans and…… well, stories, it determines more aim and purpose. Little back page testing experiments happen with journals. Does this ink/pen/nib combination suit the paper within. Will it ‘letter feather’ and bleed spidery web like into surrounding spaces? Will it show an unwanted echo script, a reversed ghostly imagery, through to and on the back of the page? Useless to use. Like putting two negatives, one of them upside down, in the darkroom enlarger and producing two images on the resulting photograph print. David Mitchell, the author, would possibly write ‘A half-filled journal is like a half-finished love affair’. He wrote that ‘a half-read book is like a half-finished love affair’ in Cloud Atlas.

Choice for elongated use of one specific appropriate pen. Or spur of the moment of ‘Oh! Hello old friend. I haven’t seen you for a while’, spasmodic choice. It differs. One is comforting in familiarity. One is ‘Let me introduce you to something you’ve never seen before. If you get along….then enjoy yourself. If you don’t…..sorry you attended the wrong party’.

For example. When writing in the Paperblanks diary, the Rotring Art Pen really suits. A quick change to another Rotring cartridge and off you go again. Routine. A year of routine. A regular meeting of friends down the pub. The Leuchterm, Legami, Moleskine, etc. journals and notebooks are different and serious considerations. You have to try to realise and consider getting the right pen/nib/ink guest invitations to the paper host’s one off dance party. You, the party organiser, do have some responsibility in getting the combinations to suit the paper host best.

So, because of their booklet nature, these little recycled diaries, which house scraps of paper inside, can be put alongside the more serious reflecting journals, yearly diaries, planning bullet journals and those tomes which house precious memories and collected thoughts alongside the various flotsam and jetsam of photos, love letters, recipes, favourite poems, etc.

I have chosen a few pens to use this month because three or four journals are ready to start off the year’s projects again. The Mindful travel journal, a garden bullet planner, a new self written songs with chords/lyrics journal and one for deeper reflections greater than what my diary currently records. The pen choice idea came from another blogger, Chronicles of a Fountain Pen site. His blog site is well worth a visit if you are either new or familiar to the world of fountain pens. Great informative knowledge and insights. Link here below.

https://fountainpenchronicles.blog/2023/04/01/its-a-new-month-whats-in-your-pen-cup-20/

And the choices this month for myself are here in my photographs. They, from past experiences, perform consistently well.