Introduction to my A5 Aqua Malden... with an interesting twist!!

Hi guys!!

If you are part of the Facebook Philofaxy group, or if you've watched my unboxing video on youtube, you will have seen my A5 Aqua Malden! If you haven't, there are lots of juicy photos here!!

I think this one's really special because I believe it's the first Aqua Malden to be released in the UK- read below why!

Since I learned last year that Filofax were going to be making an Aqua Malden, I knew I had to have it! I love the Malden range, and in the past I've had quite a few, although my collection has decreased a lot recently! How would I get my hands on one? :)
    For the last few months I have been in contact with some people from Filofax UK about replacing a couple of faulty Filofaxes. I swapped one for my A5 Wine Holborn I picked up from the Filofax shop in March at the Philofaxy meet-up! I asked for the replacement for the other faulty Filofax to be the Aqua Malden, and they said they would send me one as soon as they are released! The original release date was mid-June, but in the end it was delayed until 24th July. I heard from Margaret Rennie at Write at Home that she would be sending her stock to their new owners (bought through pre-order) on the 24th, so I guessed mine would be sent from Filofax HQ then. Actually, it was sent from Filofax HQ early, even earlier than the retailers were allowed to dispatch theirs, so I guess I was the first person to receive an Aqua Malden! The post man came earlier than I thought, at lunch time on the 24th... the only time that week that no-one had been at home!!
    I had received one of the dreaded "You were out" cards from the post man! My long awaited-for Filofax had been sent to a local Post Office! And, even worse, it said I had to wait 24 hours to pick up my parcel!! Well, I couldn't wait, knowing it was only a few streets away!!! I phoned up the post office, and the lovely lady there said I could pick it up that afternoon!!! I walked there with my dad and my dog, and finally the box was in my hands!!!!
    I knew you guys were as excited as me to see an Aqua Malden, so I filmed an unboxing video...

And loaded lots of photos onto the facebook Philofaxy group!!

I got lots of comments, questions and likes! Most people said it was lovely and they couldn't wait to get theirs, some people said they actually didn't like it now they've seen one, lots of people saying the creases are too wrinkly, and some comments on the colour!

The colour is very difficult to capture on camera! It looks MUCH bluer on the camera/monitor than it does in person! Actually, I would describe the true colour to be a spearmint or jade green!

Closer to the true colour, although this photo doesn't show the depth of the colour.

We had to bribe Chloe to take this photo, by putting cat biscuits on top on my Filofax!

That evening I set up my Aqua Malden by moving the contents of my A5 Raspberry Chameleon over. Fortunately, the dividers match perfectly!
I was busy at work last week, so I wasn't able to play with it much :( But then on Friday (2 days after I received the Filofax), I got an interesting email from someone at Filofax with whom I have been in contact...

"Further to my recent email I am pleased to advise you that 

we have today sent you an A5 Malden aqua organiser by  

Royal Mail Recorded Signed For delivery."

At first I was confused, and then I laughed... they had accidentally sent me 2!! I had been in contact with 1 person about my replacement Filofaxes, and then I think my case was handed over to a second person, who didn't realise that the first person had already placed an order for an Aqua Malden, so she unknowingly sent a 2nd one!
I knew I would have to reply and send one back, but I realised something... when I received the 2nd one, I could open it up and compare the two Filofaxes, and keep the one I preferred and send the other one back! The leather on Maldens tends to vary between different binders- some are more crinkly, some are smoother- so I was glad I had the opportunity to compare them!

When the 2nd Aqua Malden arrived, I was pleasantly surprised!

1st Malden on the left, 2nd Malden on the right!


The 2nd Aqua Malden is much smoother than the 1st! Everyone on facebook agreed how much better the 2nd Malden looks!!


I'm happily setting up my Aqua Malden, adding new sections and striving to improve my time management and organisation techniques. As soon as I'm happy with the set-up I'll make a video and/or do a blog post!

So what will I do with the Malden I'm not keeping? Well, I was happy to send it back to Filofax, but I thought that I could ask them if they would let me keep it to give away as a prize in a competition on my blog... and they agreed!!! So TOMORROW I'll be launching my competition to win the A5 Aqua Malden!! Stay tuned!!!

On a train to London!!

I'm on my way to the Philofaxy London meet-up!
I'm so excited! We're going to go to some fabulous shops, and I can't wait to see everyone, some people I have met before, and others whose blogs I've been reading for a long time and I talk to on facebook and twitter!

Currently I'm sitting on the train in 1st Class, and I'm the only one onboard this carriage; but don't worry about me, Mr and Mrs Malden and their adopted daughter Maru Midori are keeping me company!

My lovely A5 Malden!

Hellooooo!

Yesterday I spent ages rearranging the set-ups of my Personal and A5 Maldens. I just can't seem to settle on a particular fixed set-up for the Personal; when I think I have finally found the perfect set-up, I read someone's blog and it gives me ideas for my filofax and suddenly I have to rearrange the whole thing! Well, basically I wanted to stop duplicating a lot of the lists etc in both of these filos. At first, my Personal held a section for me/fun stuff. I wanted to keep this in my filofax I have with me all of the time because I am trying to spend more time during term-time doing fun stuff, rather than 24/7 doing uni stuff, or else I'll crash one day because I have just had NO free time. But then when I decided to buy my A5 I wanted to put it all in here too. And recently I realised that I had a lot of the stuff in 2 places. I wanted to make some more space in my personal for the upcoming term's DPP diary (3 months), and while it was so fat with all these duplicated pages I wouldn't be able to fit it in. Also, I wanted to stop using coloured notepaper in my personal, and just use white to make it look more stylish and professional, so I would rewrite the pages and lists on coloured paper. One day I took all of the miscellaneous pages out of my filofax to do all this, which gave me a good excuse to see what I really needed in both filofaxes. Well, long story short, I rearranged both my personal and A5 Maldens. This is an overview of the new set-up of my A5 Vintage Pink Malden.

The first section is Diary. I have the rest of the year's DodoPad (used for forward planning of to-dos), the rest of 2011's WO2P diary (not using this at the moment, don't know what to do with this) and WO2P columned, which I have had to stretch across the next academic year.

Purple sparkly card

I have some lovely dividers for my tabbed section. The first 2 are beautiful sparkly purple card, but it is made of some strange paper, that almost feels like soft, smooth art paper. It is easily creased and damaged, so I am trying to be careful with it. The second 2 are made of some metallic, reflective pink card with raised raised spots.

Pink reflective card

The first section I have behind these dividers is my 'Time Management' section. It holds lots of my rotas, routines and timetables I am going to use to help organise my time etc at uni. They will all contribute to making my overall rota. I used to have these in my personal filo, but I don't really have a need to take them with me everywhere they go, so they can stay at home in my lovely A5.

Then I have my 'To-do Projects section; projects that are made up if a lot of to-dos. For example, the project 'Sorting bedroom' is made up of a list of areas to sort. My main projects (ones that aren't made up of a set of to-dos) e.g. housewarming party, are in the next section.


Lastly I have my 'fun' section: blog planning stuff, books I want to read etc. I put the divider from my personal filo in here because I love it so much!

I have tried to keep my A5 simple because I know I can really overcomplicate it if I think about it too much. I hope that it will work for me; I just can't seem to settle on a set-up for long! But the beauty of filofaxes is that they can adapt to whatever you need them to do. I may use it as my at-home thesis planner when I do my PhD.

My new Filofax!!

I just got my Antique Rose A5 Malden!!!

I decided to buy this as a graduation present for myself, after a little enabling :) I bought it from the Filofax website through the philofaxy link for the Cancer Charity Donation 2011 :), a brilliant idea as Steve, Laurie and Nan are donating the commission they earn from the Filofax website link on their website to a cancer charity. If you are going to buy anything from the Filofax website, PLEASE do it through the link on Philofaxy, it's for a great cause!! I figure the percentage of money earned for charity through this is around 8% because the Malden was £100 and the total had gone up by around £8 after I bought it :) It's worth every penny for a good cause!!

I ordered it on Thursday at around 7pm, so after everyone in Filofax HQ had gone home. I figured, they will send it off on Friday, it will be in transit on Saturday, stationary on Sunday- no post on Sundays :( - and then should arrive on Monday morning! When the postman arrived this morning with a package I got all excited, but it wasn't my filofax!! I was annoyed, but thought it would come tomorrow! But it arrived this afternoon through a courier service! I didn't know Filofax had sent it like this, but I'm really glad they had because now I've got my hands on it and I don't have to wait until tomorrow morning to get it and until after work to open it! Another tick in Filofax's box!!

At first I just wanted to look at it and take it in, and get my first impressions of it. I have the crimson and ochre in other sizes, but I've never seen the A5 in person (I think I was too overwhelmed in the filofax shop to spot it!) and I wanted to see what that was like and whether I actually liked the pink colour or not. I prefer hot pinks, but I think this colour is subtle enough to be quite lovely.

It's very difficult to get the camera to take a picture showing the realistic colour. My advice is go to the filofax shop and see it for yourself!!

As soon as I opened it (once I had decided I was going to keep it, not return it!), I started pulling the inserts apart. "You're mad!!" you might say! But I have a reason.
A few weeks ago, my friend told me she wanted a filofax! Woohoo, I have started my plan of world-wide filofax conversion!! She had already been on the filofax website and decided she loved the aqua Finsbury... which has now stopped being made!! So I'm going to send her my A5 aqua Finsbury- I'm not really using it, and she would use it so much more than me! It cost me only £20 (RRP £75) and I owe her £18, so it's OK. And I really don't need ANOTHER filofax now I've got my new one!
So I started pulling out all the fresh inserts from my new filofax, rather than putting all the battered ones I had taken out. I put in all the standard refills, but I will tell her how to customise it herself :) I also put in a little note to her in the front, and a picture of me and her and our other housemate at graduation last week in the ID card slot :)

My new A5 is going to be for the more fun things, hobbies etc. I'll write a post on the set-up soon :)

London Baby!! part 2

Here's part 2 of my London adventure!!

After I had dragged myself away from the sale section, I happily made my way over to the main wall, where all the new and current filofaxes are! They are all so beautifully positioned on the shelves, in size order and so pretty! On the left-hand side of the shelves are the cheaper, non-leather varieties. I didn't spend much time looking at these.
    Instead, I immediately went for the Osterley! It's a gorgeous filo! I love the plum colour, the pattern on the leather, and how professional and stylish it looks! I found the leather better than the Amazona, but I still didn't like it as much as the buttery leather of the Malden! Being a big fan of the personal size, I picked up the two that looked like personal sizes. I had forgotten the Osterley was available in the Compact size, and when I saw it I really liked it! It would look brilliant with a whole year of day-per-page diary in it, so professional! There is a noticeable difference between the compact and the personal sizes, not only in the thickness of the filofax because of the smaller rings, but the filofax itself is also narrower (see the differences on the filofax website). It would fit very well inside a brief-case! Personally, I didn't like the inside pockets much, but then I am a fan of zipped compartments rather than card sections, but that's just me! I think the design is great, and would suit a range of people- business people, anyone who likes to look well-dressed and wants accessories to match, or anyone really! I would be VERY happy to receive one! I think it's a gorgeous piece of leather!!
    When I dragged myself away from the gorgeous Osterley, my eye immediately found the vintage pink Malden, which I had wanted to look at for ages! I am a huge fan of pink, and LOVE LOVE LOVE the Malden- I have 3 of them (2 personal and 1 pocket)!! I had wanted to see the vintage pink Malden in person since some of the people who went on the Philofaxy London trip described the colour as looking like Pepto Bismol! I had a look at it near the window to try to see the natural colour, and although I don't think it looks like Pepto Bismol, it's not one of the various shades of pink I like. I am quite glad I didn't like it, because a few months ago I was wondering how to justify buying ANOTHER personal-sized Malden, and I really don't think I need to buy another one! I am very happy with my crimson and ochre-coloured ones!
    Speaking of the ochre Malden, I was interested in seeing another one. I had my ochre Malden with me that day, as it is my daily filofax at the moment. I had read that other people had complained about the leather, as it is a bit different than the leather of the black and crimson Maldens (I'll talk more about this when I do my review of my Maldens), and I had also read that because of the nature of the leather, the colour and wear pattern on every ochre Malden is slightly different. I compared my ochre to the one on the shelf, and I think mine is nicer- the colour is more natural-looking, and slightly more worn and antiqued looking (a good thing!)! Mine came from America, I don't know if that made a difference!
    I looked at a few more filofaxes, I can't remember them all now! It was a very busy and stressful day, so I can't remember a lot of the minute details. I wish I had made a list of the ones I looked at in the shop, but I was just so in awe that I couldn't take my eyes off the filofaxes! I think the shop is so brilliant that there is definitely too much to look at in one trip! I wish I had been in London for more than one day! I wish there was a filofax shop in other places- I don't know why they have 2 filofax shops in 1 city! Maybe they should build one in another city, for example Birmingham! That is quite close to a number of other cities and is easier for some people to get to than London. Being in Liverpool for most of the year, I would definitely make an effort to get to Birmingham a few times a year just to go to the filofax shop!
    Now that I think back at it, I can think of a few filofaxes I wish I had looked at more, or looked at at all, as I can't remember if I even saw a few of the newer models! But I'm very glad I got the opportunity to go to a filofax shop and see a lot of the filos I had been longing to see!!
 

Back to the singular, perfect filo...

I've just ordered a personal ochre Malden for my birthday!
They are no longer available in the UK, so I got it from the American website pens and leather :) The actual filofax was very cheap, approx. £45, and the postage was quite a lot to ship to the UK, but I expect that. But then the total price of the whole transaction was cheaper than if I had bought it brand new from the UK filofax website (if it was still available)!
I've seen lots of pictures of it on flikr, and I love the look of it!! I look forward to filling it with everything... I think I am a one-filofax girl, I want my diary and lists and journal in 1 perfect filofax, not two like I have now! But I will still find some uses for my other filofaxes!

But I don't want to have to wait until 9th May to get it, my 22nd birthday... ooh the anticipation!

Can I wait...?

I might be going to London with my family this summer, so will DEFINITELY have to visit the filofax shop (or both... ;b) for a good look. I imagine my mum will be as bored as when I take her around Egyptology museums! But I will be in my element, running around like a little kid in a sweet shop, naming all the filofaxes "Oh look, there's a Finchley, isn't it pretty?! Ooh, a Cuban Zipped, yumm! *Strokes the filofax, knocks the display case over*"
I would like a nice A5 filo, a reeeallly nice one!! I have an A5 Domino in red, but it just not luxury... I've ummed and erred during the past 2 days deciding what to ask for for my birthday... a Finchley? well which colour, red or purple? A cuban? but it doesn't open flat! A chameleon? will I like the pattern?
Finally I think I've settled on a Malden A5! But learning from my past mistake, I will definitely have to see it in person before I ask my mum to buy it, hence the visit to Conduit St!
I like it because a) it lays flat :), b) I know the leather is gorgeous, c) I like the clasp, d) I like the zip pocket on the front, e) thanks to Steve, 30mm rings!!!
and I know I've forgotten a reason, but I think 5 is enough to justify it!
But deciding between the vintage pink and the ochre... hmm... that will take some thinking! And a visit in person, maybe a couple of visits over the course of our city break :)
P.S. what is your opinion, is it better to bite the bullet, decide on the filofax you want then and there in the shop and go home with your new beloved filofax in your bag, but risk making a wrong decision because you haven't slept on it, or spending some time thinking about it, going home and ordering it online but walking out of the filofax shop empty handed?? Dilemma!

Bye bye Malden...

I couldn't keep silent for long!

I'm returning my crimson pocket Malden. I've just never fallen in love with her, and I'm not using her fully. I loved the Malden as soon as I saw it on the filofax website and when I was on a filo buying-binge I decided to buy the pocket, instead of the Amazona I had my eye on. I thought "It will be perfect, it will lay flat and be soft and supple and I can write uni work stuff in it and carry it everywhere because it's smaller than a personal!" Well I was right about it being soft and supple, the leather is gorgeous. But I was wrong about it laying flat- because it's a pocket size it's got the full-length wallet pocket on the back which creates a bump in the leather when open and tips to the left. And I made a mistake buying the pocket size, I should have splashed out £12 extra to buy the personal size which is so much more useful for my needs. And I'm the sort of person who needs to have 1 diary in 1 place and thinking I could use this as a more portable diary separate to my main one is a problem because I would spend ages transporting information between one and the other.
The main purpose of this filofax was to put my day planners in- that is, blank pocket-sized sheets with instructions/to-do lists of what research I have to do in the library on days when I am doing a lot of research for essays etc. Well why can't I put that in my personal? It was a good idea to carry a smaller filo with me to save on space and weight in my bag, but I find that I can't separate myself from my personal sized filo, it's my security blanket!
So she is going back to filofax, to go to a home where someone else will love her as she deserves!
I still love the Malden range, although I would love to see a personal in person before I splash out on the website again! I feel a visit to the London store(s) coming!
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I feel like (after buying 6 filofaxes) I am becoming more and more a 1-filofax girl... which is a problem seeing as how I have a collection now!!

My first post... just a load of waffle really!!

So this is my blog... let's see how long this lasts! Very bad timing, seeing as how I have to finish my dissertation in 3 weeks and I have an essay plus 3 exams before the end of May, but this blog will be a nice distraction from my work... or a bad distraction!!

My blog will mostly be about filofaxes because I am OBSESSED about them at the moment! Also I might throw in some stuff about my life as a student...

I currently have 4 filofaxes, and 2 more are on the way from ebay :)

• My first is a raspberry personal Finsbury, her name is Violet and she's gorgeous, and holds my personal stuff, lists etc, plus my diary, but I will move that soon to another one- I'll talk more about that later
• My second is my red A5 Domino, called Rufus. I plan my uni work in it, with instructions for each essay I have to write in it, progress lists and most importantly my timeplanners, which are custom day to 2 page diary sheets, undated with an appointments and to-dos on one side, and notes and a journal section on the other. It's really useful to plan in, but I've been too busy to do it by the time my essays are looming! But it should be extremely useful during my MA and PhD to keep on top of everything and plan :)
• My third is my pocket crimson Malden, called Ruby, and she is absolutely beautiful and elegant, I can definitely see myself using this when I am older. I think if I ever move permanently to the pocket size for my everyday, on-the-move diary/notebook/list filofax this will be it :) So professional looking, but cute and gorgeous at the same time :) She holds my day planners, which are actually miniature versions of my time planners that I write in Rufus, but small so I can carry it around campus and use in the library when I have tonnes of books to carry. Actually, my time planners aren't on proper filofax paper, or even a structured table printed out onto paper, but blank pocket-sized paper I cut and punched from normal A4 paper!
• My fourth is my caramel Finchley mini, she is for shopping lists and a reference diary so that when I go around town I can write anything down I need to without having to take my personal with me

My new ones should be coming from ebay in a few days. I bought 2 Kendal filos, 1 in personal and 1 in pocket in one transaction, they were being sold together. I've seen an A5 Kendal which I LOVED and now I've seen a pocket, but I haven't yet seen a personal, so I hope it's as great as I imagine! I think I might sell the pocket on, I think having 5 filos is enough! I might use the personal to put my whole year's (day to a page) diary in it, because I can't fit that in my Finsbury at the moment because it has other papers with lists etc on!
But the beauty of filofaxes is that they are completely flexible! I can adapt them as I want!

Soon I'll put pictures on flikr :)

Now, back to dissertation writing!