My Notebooks - A Love Letter

My favourite stationery addiction

Hi, and welcome (back) to The Stress Less Pencil. I'm Lorena, and I believe art is for everyone - everyone's an artist, including you! Stick around if you want to invite a bit more creativity into your life, no matter whether you think you can draw, or not.

I've spent a long time contemplating what to write about. Something to inspire me, and you, to create. To take out the pencils and paintbrushes, and go at it, no matter what the result looks like.

Often, I'm inspired by nature, by the endless journey to better understand myself and my mental health, or by discovering a new cool thing that I'll obsess about for a while.

But sometimes, it's just the pure joy of geeking out about the supplies that gets me going. I'm a total lost-cause stationery addict, and I have no intention of fixing it.

"Ever since I was a kid, going into art or office supply stores has turned my dopamine levels up to bombdiggity + 100. Seeing coloured pencils, oil pastels, and watercolours, organised like rainbows in their beautiful cases, makes my voice go 5 pitches higher.

But the undisputed master of the stationery universe, the ne plus ultra, the queen of queens—my ride-or-die drug of choice—will always be a beautiful new notebook

So today, I wanted to share this love with you by giving you a little tour through my favourite notebooks.

Note: none of this is sponsored or promoted by anyone. I'm not trying to push any products, but simply want to share some of the joy these notebooks have brought me.

The Pretty Ones

There are some notebooks where it doesn't really matter what's on the inside, because the outside is just so so gorgeous. Much like some people, I guess. 😆

You just want to have them, put them in your shelf, look at them, and get excited about how pretty they are. Sometimes, you want to take them out and touch them.

These two are Paperblanks. The small one, I bought with the idea of using it for my webcomic, the big one I bought when I started an evening University class years ago. They both got used for a bit, but are now mostly shelf-eye-candy. But oh, how sweet they are to look at.

The Ones with the Amazing Paper

A lot of notebooks have relatively flimsy paper. They are great for writing, but as soon as you want to take something more serious to them, like brush pens or watercolours they can't handle it.

I bought these two Archer and Olive notebooks during the height of my Bullet Journalling obsession. I was designing my own journal (see below), and I wanted touch and feel these notebooks that everyone was raving about, so I could use them as a quality benchmark for my own. And seriously, they are amazing. They have 160gsm paper which means you can really live out your creative urges using most mediums.

I also got the green one with kraft paper, which is awesome for coloured pencils (and more) because it'll really make those colours pop.

The Leather Journals

These beauties are from the Vienna-based company Paper Republic. They are leather covers with ribbons that allow you to add and combine different notebooks exactly how you like them. Yes, that's right! A notebook made from multiple notebooks. What a dream!

I got the light brown one first. It currently holds a sketchbook, a planner, and a Rocketbook, which is a notebook you can scan, wipe, and reuse forever, much like a whiteboard. The small green one has a collection of lined, dotted and blank notebooks, which I'm currently using mostly for my webcomic. The big one has two different sketchbooks for random anatomy and comics drawing exercises.

Not pictured is a little yellow one that I'm using to collect random poems in.

The Ones I made from Trash

I love a good upcycling project. Inspired by the leather journals above, I recently made this journal from a fake-leather type paper material and ribbon.

Inside, I've crafted a small notebook from the envelopes of all the bills sent to us on an annoyingly regular basis. I simply folded them in half and used a book stapler to staple them together.

I also previously used old envelopes and an orange juice carton to make this junk journal. There's a full how-to about it here.

The One I Designed Myself

Speaking of making your own journals, here is my pride and joy: the full-year planner I designed myself and launched through a Kickstarter campaign.

I already mentioned my Bullet Journalling phase. I really love this art form / hobby, but it was always hard for me to dedicate the necessary time after work and life. I also always felt that people might be put off by all the picture perfect journals on Instagram. So I decided to design my own pre-made journal, so that people who didn't have the time, or felt like they couldn't draw well enough could pick up this hobby.

I know I said I didn't want to push any products, but I'm going to make an exception for my own. If you're interested in creative journaling, check out the planner here. I'm still really super proud of it.

The Giant One

This no-brand giant notebook is my latest addition to the collection, and I'm using it to live out my recent obsession with gel plate printing.

This was an absolutely essential purchase, because seriously, none of the others I already had were big enough 😅

So there you have it, my notebook collection of joy and happiness. I can't wait for the next addition to the club.

I hope you feel inspired to pick up a notebook, or better make one yourself, and scribble and doodle a little bit on this wonderful day.

Have a fantastic week!

Love, Lorena