Papelote mini notebooks review

I have been fairly remiss in my reviews, but a while ago, I showed you some A6 books in my Midori-style homemade leather notebook holder (see here for the post).

Homemade leather notebook cover

The notebooks I bought were the mini Papelote notebooks from The Journal Shop. Unlike both Field Notes and the Clairefontaine “A6” books I have (which are smaller than A6), these little notebooks really are A6.

I’ve been using these small books (in the leather cover) as general notes/scribbles books – a place to jot something down to process the information later.

So what are the notebooks like?

Cover - matches the insides

They are marketed as simple and indeed they are. The cover matches the insides and is a thick paper/thin card. The paper inside is 80gsm and off-white (slightly greyish). I had anticipated the paper to not be at all fountain-pen friendly and was pleasantly surprised.

The first page is a title page, and there are 64 pages in the notebook in total.

Title page

I did a pen/fountain pen test on the paper and found little or no feathering (depending on the nib/ink combination) and little or no bleed-through. I would tend not to be using a fountain pen in them, but more likely to use a Pilot V5 hi-tecpoint, so I tested this too and found the result absolutely fine.

Little/no bleed-through

Back cover

Narrow ruled notebook to the left; squared to the right

Overall, I was very pleased with them. I was after something simple and cheap to pop into the leather cover I made and these fit the bill perfectly.

The notebooks are also available in A5.

Midori style notebooks

The other leather came yesterday and today I made the notebook cover for the 9cm x 14cm notebooks (Field Notes; Clairefontaine).
Here they are together (new one at the top; A6 at the bottom):

And here they are open:

And with the other notebook showing (each has one lined and one squared book inside; the A6 notebooks are the ones from Papelote, bought at The Journal Shop):

Aren't they lovely?? I'm really pleased with them!

Making my Midori-style cover

Well, the leather came, the mini-punch came and the elastic came! So on Thursday, I made myself a Midori-style notebook cover.

I wasn’t feeling confident enough to cut a larger piece of leather to size, so I bought some pieces from eBay that were already the correct size for what I wanted. I didn’t want a notebook cover the size/dimensions of the real Midori, but one for A6, so I bought some leather that was 25cm x 15cm. Folded in half around A6 notebooks this would be about the right size (A6 being 10.5cm x 14.8cm; the 25cm would cover the width of the notebooks plus their thicknesses). The leather I bought was 1.8mm thick (the Midori notebooks are 2mm thick leather apparently) and is burgundy, with suede on the inside (it’s gorgeous!).

Let me walk you through making it.

Tools needed:
Leather
Punch
Elastic
Scissors
Small hammer
Board
Needle and thread

The way this style of notebook cover works is to have elastic thread in the middle of the leather cover into which the notebooks are slotted. I wanted to have two notebooks in the cover so I made two small holes (using the punch) at the top and the bottom of the ‘spine’ of the cover, a centimetre apart and 6mm from the edge. I also punched a single hole in the dead centre of the leather:

I then put a single thread of elastic through the holes at the top and bottom so that on the inside it looks like this:

...and on the outside looks like this:

The hole in the very middle is for the elastic band to hold the booklet closed. I knotted a piece of elastic at the right length then looped a small piece of cotton thread through the elastic loop, threaded the cotton onto a needle and used the cotton thread to pull the elastic through the central hole.

I was amazed at how easy all of this was (and have to thank Ray Blake for the inspiration! See his post here. In fact, read all of his blog because he’s great!).

So this is what it (sort of) looks like:

Open, with Clairefontaine A6 notebook showing

Open: Clairefontaine on L, Field Notes on R

Why ‘sort of’?

Well, because the notebooks I have put into it are the wrong size for the size of cover! I bought a couple of Clairefontaine “A6” notebooks from Bureau Direct (which aren’t A6, but are the exact same size as Field Notes books (9cm x 14cm). Both of them are shown in the cover. I have also bought (from The Journal Shop) some Papelote mini notebooks. I’m going to make another (smaller) leather cover for the Clairefontaine and Field Notes books and when the Papelote books come from The Journal Shop, I will put them in this cover.

The notebooks will be used as a general ‘clearing my mind’ notebooks – you know… where you have a zillion things running around your head and you need to just get them out before you can make sense of them and focus. Once they are out, I can sort them into proper to-do lists and so on, without having cluttered up my Mulberry. [Actually, I am having a little bit of a wobble with the Mulberry, but that’s for another time!]

What do people think?

eBay sources I used:
Leather came from: Leather4Craft
Mini punch came from: Silvercoasts
1mm elastic cord came from: k2-accessories