Welcome, fellow stationery geeks!


I shall be using this blog to witter on about my stationery finds in general and diaries/planners and Filofaxes in particular. Please feel free to witter along with me!

Tuesday 27 March 2012

My new gorgeous Filofax! But . . .

(Click here to view my new setup with DIY templates . . . )


The moment I'd been waiting for for a long time arrived today . . . my new Filofax arrived!!!  It's a COMPACT Finsbury in raspberry and it's absolutely GORGEOUS!

Here come the pictures:



It's certainly a beautiful colour and the perfect size.





It also has a fully-elasticated pen loop (which fits a 4-coloured Bic pen in just fine).






You will see it's quite a bit slimmer than my personal Domino (which I think is fairly slim anyway).


So, I gave it a quick stroke, put it away and got on with some domestic duties that took priority over setting up my new beauty.  I would have the pleasure of doing that tonight.

However, just as I was about to collect my daughter from school, I thought I'd have one last peak before I left.  And . . . to my horror . . . I realised it was faulty!!!  Can you believe that one of the rings is actually RUSTY?!  I am totally shocked.  This is a brand new Filofax from their brand new range, so how on earth has it had time to get rusty???




Gutted is not the word!  So back to the shop she goes.  It's farewell to my little beauty as I wave her 'goodbye' for now.  (Her 'better-looking' twin sister is already on the way in the post apparently.)  See you again soon my love!  I cannot wait!  :-(




UPDATE: My replacement has arrived today and it appears to be rather perfect!  Many thanks to City Organiser for their fabulous service as ever.






Want to know more about an ingenious (cheap) Kindle cover???  Click here for my Kindle Covers post.  And follow me if you're also into 'All Things Stationery'!

Wednesday 21 March 2012

Kindle covers



For my latest birthday, my lovely husband bought me a Kindle.  Wow!  I absolutely love it.  I’m an avid reader so the ability to have a library of different books in my handbag at any one time is absolute heaven for me.

Because I had some Amazon vouchers to use up, I got my husband to order the Kindle a couple of weeks before my birthday; that way he got £30 off.  Bargain!  So, when it arrived, I just thought I’d charge it up and then put it back in the box.  WRONG!  Once it had charged up, I thought I’d just ‘have a quick play with it’.  Fatal mistake.  Within a day, I had over a dozen books on it and I’d almost read one of them!!!  Oooops . . .

Anyway, I digress.  I was concerned about my Kindle getting scratched in my bag so I spent rather a lot of time looking around for a case that wasn’t too expensive.  Some of them cost an absolute fortune; it’s ridiculous!  Eventually, I ordered this one and in the meantime, I came up with a brilliant solution to a temporary problem, completely by accident.

I had been using a clear 12.5cm X 17cm pencil case (as a pencil case!) that I believe I bought from either Staples or Morrisons quite a while ago.  It wasn't expensive - I reckon about £2, if that.  I put my Kindle inside it, zipped it up and ‘hey presto’ – the perfect temporary Kindle case!  I could still press all the buttons I needed to without taking it out of the case.  Here’s a picture of it:



After not long at all, my new purple Kindle case arrived.  It’s really great!  It fits perfectly inside and it doesn’t make the whole package too bulky, which was something I had worried about.  I’m always hankering after things that reduce the bulk in my handbag!



It has a storage flap on the inside cover which is quite useful.  The material it’s made out of isn’t leather, but so what?  It did smell rather . . . funny . . . at first, but that smell soon disappeared.  It’s a lovely aubergine/plum kind of purple and shuts securely with a magnetic fastener.  The inside is purple velour.



I would thoroughly recommend this product, especially at the bargain price of £5.99 with free postage and packing!  And it also comes with a free screen cover!

The shop also sells these cases for the Kindle with a keyboard at the bottom so check out their shop on Amazon and buy one with confidence.  It’s certainly got my seal of approval!

Friday 16 March 2012

I've had a dotty day!


I’m a secret Tesco stalker . . .

OK.  I feel I must explain.  I drop my daughter off at school at 8:40am and I start work at 9:30am.  The journey from school to work takes me between 10 and 15 minutes (depending on the traffic), so I need to kill some time before I set off.  I could go to work early, but that would be nonsensical and slightly insane.  I could go to the staff canteen and stuff my face with a big breakfast, but that would make me fat.  So, instead, I wander around the shops searching for, (amongst other things), stationery.

This week, I came upon these two little delights: a spotty/dotty storage box and some assorted adhesive coloured dots.  Hence the title of this post.  (Do you see what I did there?  Eh?)




As you can see, the box is very colourful.  I bought this to store all my (eight!) Filofaxes and their inserts because while my inserts and some of my Filofaxes are currently in a wooden Ikea drawer, I’ve run out of room and the rest are scattered around the house.  The storage box came at the bargain price of £2.97.

My husband (bless him) took one look at the box and said, ‘there’s no way that’s big enough’.  I was shocked.  How could he possibly think that I had so many Filofaxes and inserts that I could not fit them into a 31cm X 24cm X 9.5cm box?!  So I set to work to prove him wrong.





Dammit.

*hides box plus contents of drawer from husband’s sight*

Moving on . . .

Here are my assorted adhesive coloured dots (1,200 in a pack!).



They were only 78p; what a bargain!  I currently use some similar dots in my Filofax to indicate birthdays (blue) and deadlines (red).  I got them from Staples but they weren’t as cheap as these little beauties.  These ones come in green, navy blue, cyan blue, purple and red.  The fun I will have playing with these!  They’ll come in handy for Children in Need day when I can stick them all over my daughter too . . . hahaha!

So.  The moral of the story is . . . if you don’t want to get to work too early, bob along to Tesco - skipping merrily along the way – and treat yourself to some stationery bargains.  Many to be had at the moment!

Wednesday 14 March 2012

Bargain diaries and organisers in Tesco!

As usual, I was wandering through the stationery section of Tesco this morning, killing a bit of time before I was due to be at work.  But . . . shock!  Horror!  The diary section had VANISHED!  I can think of nothing (well, not much) better than stroking and leafing through a wonderful selection of diaries.  I was about to start crying but decided that would be embarrassing, so I thought I'd have a wander over to the book section.  Lo and behold, the diary section had been moved into the BOOK section and they had SLASHED the prices!  Woo hoo!!!

There was a wonderful selection of diaries, from week on two pages to day per page.  Lots of different colours and sizes were available and so many were for less than a pound!  Quick!  I need a chair!  I'm about to faint!!!

They also had some Collins pink personal and pocket sized organisers available at, frankly, ridiculous prices.  The personal sized one was reduced from £20 to £5!  You can check it out here.  The pocket size was only £4.25 - wow!  Now you savvy Filofaxers will know how much diary inserts cost.  Well . . . the personal sized one contained a week on two pages (small weekend though, boo) but it was LINED.  Like!  It also contained notes, to dos, meeting pages and address pages.  It's worth paying £5 for the whole thing than stocking up on inserts for your Filofax!

Needless to say, I was late for work.  Oh well.  At least I've got my priorities right.  ;-)


(If you enjoyed this post and would like to know about more current stationery bargains, please check out this post.)

Monday 12 March 2012

Welcome!

Hello everyone!  Or should I say . . . is there anybody out there?!?

Welcome to my new blog.  I've never done on of these before but I thought I should give it a go.

My name's Lucy and I love stationery and Filofaxes.  So I'm going to dedicate my blog to 'All Things Stationery'.  And Filofaxes!

I felt I had to discuss my excitement at the new range of Filofaxes.  Whilst it could be more comprehensive, I've got my eye on one that's due to come out any time.  The COMPACT raspberry Finsbury.

I love the size of the personal inserts but find the actual Filofax too . . . bulky.  So I'm hoping that the compact will solve my problem.  I did consider getting a compact raspberry Metropol but I gather it's a bit padded (ie: bulky) and my Mum's got a pocket one which I find a bit 'plasticy'.  If that's even a word.  So I've decided to wait and get the Finsbury.

I emailed Filofax on 5 March and they said it would 'a couple of weeks' before it comes out.  So . . . only a week or so to go!

What Filofax are you going to buy from the new range?