NatStatWeek- My favourite stationery: Pens!!

It's National Stationery Week in the UK!! I think it should be international really, so everyone around the world, come and join us celebrating!!

 

To celebrate, I am doing a series of blog posts this week, showing you my favourite stationery items!

Today: Pens! 

I really love pens, they are some of the greatest tools for me. Besides paper and my laptop, I really can't think of anything else that I NEED for my working life (university included), hobbies, projects and personal life. 

I really think that pens are some of the best things to invest in. I don't mind using poor quality paper, cheap sticky notes etc, but pens are something I prefer to spend money on to buy quality. If you buy cheap pens which are of poor quality, you could end up with a pot full of pens that don't work well, and feel obliged to use them up. But if you buy quality, those pens will last you ages, won't dry up, won't fade, etc etc. And you will enjoy using them!

My aim is to get rid of all my cheapy pens (I recently gave loads of cheap biros to my mum, who doesn't care about good stationery, she will use anything!!), and only have great quality pens that I actually need!

Some pens I don't really like, e.g. gel pens, which always skip for me :(

My favourites!

Fountain pens:

Lamy Safari Aquamarine, Safari Pink, Al-Star Raspberry, Vista, Safari Apple Green, a Waterman pen, Rosetta Magellan, and Parker Urban Pink. (I also have a Al-Star in Purple, but I can't find it at the moment!)

I LOVE Lamy fountain pens, specifically Lamy Safari, Al-Star and Vista. I have a couple of more expensive fountain pens, and some more on my wishlist, but I love my Lamys more than any of them! They are lightweight, pretty colours, I love the design, and the strong clip! I have to have quite lightweight pens because I only have small hands. The Parker and Rosetta pens are too heavy for me, so they make my hand hurt and my writing poor- but the Lamys are perfect.

My other favourite writing pen:

Uniball Eye Micro in black!
I use this when I'm not using my fountain pens. I love it because it is a great writer, it never skips (ever!), it doesn't tend to bleed through cheap paper (including Filofax paper), it's permanent and it's waterproof, which means you can use a highlighter over it and the ink won't run!

More lovely pens:

A Vera Bradley ballpoint pen from the lovely Kristin; a big chunky resin/glass ballpoint pen I bought years ago from The Works; a pretty Swarovski lilac ballpoint I won from Karina; a Hello Kitty Liberty ballpoint; and an Egyptian Exhibition souvenir ballpoint pen from The British Museum where the mummified body moves through the Book of the Dead's judgement scene to the sarcophagus as you tilt the pen!!

Favourite coloured pens:

Stabilo Point 88s in the pen wrap my mum helped me make!
I love these pens, the colours are so vibrant and they work great for my colour-coding! They bleed through cheaper paper a tiny bit, but it's worth it :)

Multi-coloured pens:

Pilot Coleto Lumio with black, blue, red and pencil inserts (I have a pink Coleto with green, light blue, purple and pink, but I can't find it at the moment!); Muji 3-colour plus pencil multi-pen; Zebra 4-colour pen; Bic Fashion 4-colour pen.

More coloured pens:

This tin pot contains lots of assorted coloured pens, including my favourite felt-tip pens, from Crayola; sparkly gel pens; two more Muji multi-coloured pens, and some more coloured biros :)


Tune in for more posts this week about my other favourite stationery items! 

Filofax hack: Pen loop inside the rings!

Hi everyone!

I have finally finished my last essay of my MA, now I have to do my dissertation and apply for PhD, but for now I have no immediate deadlines, so I have some spare time to write blog posts again!!

On Philofaxy's Free For All Friday yesterday Shanananana asked if anyone had tried to make a pen loop that could fit inside the rings of a Filofax, so a pen could slot in there easily. I thought about this, and it shouldn't be too hard. This morning I had a go at it, and it's quite easy to make. At first I only used sellotape, because it's cheap and I already had some, but when you work out how to make it properly you can use something nicer like washi tape. That's what I used for the pen loop I'm going to show you now. Here's my step-by-step instructions:

1) Choose a pen (or pencil) that's not too thick. I found that a Lamy Safari was too thick and the pages in my filofax couldn't turn properly. However, my Coleto 4-colour multi pen worked, and so any pen around this size, like a Bic multi-pen would fit, and also any pen that's less thick. The easy way to work out if your pen will fit is to slot it inside the ring mechanism and try to turn the pages- if they don't turn easily, it's because the pen is too thick. Also, a pen with a rubber grip on the barrel might not work well because it doesn't slide easily into pen loops. I find that I don't need rubber grips on my pens- so if your favourite pen has a rubber grip, but you still want to slip it into a pen loop, you could use Tracy's trick of putting a piece of washi tape over the rubber.

2) Get a fly leaf, or divider, or today ruler. It needs to be positioned in the middle of the pages in your filofax. So if you have 200ish pages in your filofax, put it at about the position of pg 100. This doesn't have to be exact, but roughly in the middle- this means that the pages shouldn't get stuck on the rings because the pen is in the way.

3) Get some sellotape, washi tape, masking tape or thin duct tape. Sellotape is quite thin, but is clear so is good if don't want the pen loop to look obvious, this is a good material to use. You might have to use quite a few layers to strengthen it. Washi tape is a pretty and colourful alternative, although because it is basically masking tape, you should use a layer of sellotape over the top and bottom to strengthen it.

4) Cut a short piece of tape, about the circumference of your pen barrel plus a few millimetres. Then cut a bigger piece, about 5 cm. It doesn't have to be exact.

5) Lay the small piece of tape around the barrel of your pen, non-sticky side against your pen. Then, while it is still against the barrel, lay the bigger piece of tape over the smaller piece of tape, sticky side down so that they stick together. Then stick the sticky ends of the longer piece together, so that the loop of the tape fits neatly around the barrel of the pen, and the rest of the tape sticks out. Slide the pen in and out of the loop to make sure it fits.

6) Next, take out of the rings the today ruler/fly leaf or whatever you are using and lay the loop between the 1st and 2nd holes and hanging over the edge of the ruler/fly leaf. It is positioned here so that the pen is easy to access from the top of the ring mechanism, and so that the pen fits inside the rings.

7) If the pen loop is wider than the gap between the rings, trim it to fit neatly in between the rings. This is so the pages turn properly, or else the tape will get caught on the rings and the rest of the pages won't move smoothly.

8) Take more tape and secure it to the fly leaf/ruler. Use enough tape to secure it so that the weight of the pen won't accidentally pull it off.

9) Put the fly leaf/ruler in your filofax.

10) Push the loop inside the rings, and close up the rest of the pages on top of it. It should hang neatly within the rings.

11) Slip your pen into the pen loop. Make sure the clasp (if your pen has one) goes outside the loop. This is so that the pen doesn't slip through the pen loop accidentally. Practice taking the pen out of the loop and slipping it back in. Then make sure all the pages in your filo move smoothly with the pen in the rings.

And there you have it!!

My colour-coding and review of Pilot V5 pens

This is an overview of my colour-coding system I use in my daily filofax, and a review of the pens I use :)

Because I use DPP refill in my filofax, I write a lot of things on one page and it can look very busy and cluttered on the page, especially if I don't organise it with colour-coding. So, I decided I needed to sort out my colours once and for all!
My earlier attempt at colour-coding came from the 4-colour pen I have, which is black, blue, red and green. I assigned black to appointments, blue for to-dos, red for uni work and green for recording things.

In my new attempt, I wrote a list of the common type of things I write in my daily diary. Many of these were the same as I used to have, but then there were some new things or new systems for things. Here is a picture of the list I made and the colours I assigned to them, which I will explain further below.

I use black for appointments because they are concrete events that I must do- a hard, black colour, kind of the opposite of "pencilling it in".
I use red for university, either for uni to-dos or daily goals like "FINISH ESSAY" (written at the top of the page in capitals), or just for time-blocking between appointments. The red colour just shouts at me: DO THIS!!
I use green, purple and turquoise for to-dos. I group my main to-dos that I want to do that day by the place where they need to be done- at home (green), on campus (purple) or other places (turquoise), rather than by subject. This is so that when I'm in a particular place, I can see everything I need to do there before I leave, instead of getting home and realising I have forgotten to do something on campus or in town!!
Pink is for fun things because it's my favourite colour- social events, TV programmes to watch, time-blocking for hobbies etc :)


I use Pilot V5 rollerball hi-tecpoint pens for colour-coding in my filofax.

I really like these pens, the ink is very smooth and doesn't run, fine lines at 0.5mm, and works great in my filofax- most importantly, it doesn't bead on the paper!! The pen barrels are thick enough to hold properly (I find it uncomfortable to hold thin pens in my hand when I have long nails), but not too thick- you can actually fit one into the pen loop of my Malden!! They are relatively inexpensive, about £2.50 per pen- which is OK if you are going to use them a lot, but you can buy them in multi-packs (turquoise, pink and purple; black, blue and red) which are about £5.50, saving you £2!

Unfortunately, they don't make a lighter green colour. I wanted to use that for at-home things, and the darker green for recording stuff like a log book, but unfortunately I can't do that and just use the dark green for home things.

Something I don't like about using multiple pens in my filofax (although I don't think I would be as organised if I used just 1) is the fact that when I need to write in a specific colour, I have to fish around in my bag/pencil case for the right pen. I have tried to overcome this by just writing my to-dos in black and underlining them in the corresponding colour when I have my pens out later. But I think I have come up with a solution:

They fit perfectly in the notepad pocket of my Malden!! The clips hold them on really well and they don't slip out! This is good for when I am out and about, and need access to my pens quickly, but not in my pencil-case.

However, this is only a temporary solution as they make my filofax quite fat, as you can see in the photo below. When I finish setting up my filo, I will have loads more stuff on the rings, so I don't think I'll be able to close it properly when the pens are in it! 

Skinny filo! (Minus the pens ;b ) Don't worry, I'll be fattening it up soon!!