Midori Traveler's Notebook

I have wondered and pondered on it for ages, but after reading Ray Blake's, My Life All In One Place blog, I finally took delivery of the Midori Traveler's Notebook.  It costs £40 for the leather cover which includes one plain papered notebook, it seems a lot for a piece of leather and a bit of elastic, but I am soooo going to enjoy using this and I'm sure it's going to be worth every penny!

It comes very well wrapped, first a cellophane bag, then a clear plastic wrap, next is a card type wrap with elastic on it, this comes in handy to hold extra inserts.

I didn't know how much it would hold so I only ordered a couple of extra items with it.  I ordered from The Journal Shop, they do free delivery and it came the next day.  How's that for service!

Lightweight paper (013) and  Lined Paper (001)

Zipper Pocket (008)  and  Connecting Bands (021)

Under all that wrapping is a muslin bag with the Notebook inside.  You also get a spare orange elastic, should the one on the Notebook break or you fancy a change.  I've left the original brown one on mine, I'm not a fan of orange and I do like the look of the brown one.

The notebook is slimline and does not come with a pen holder, unless you want to tuck your pen in the middle elastic and this would quite easily work, but I have gone for the Leuchtturm Pen Holder which I got from Rymans for £2.99 and stuck it to the back cover.  Wish they did it in a Brown, but it's not so bad.

My Kingsley Pen is quite chunky and fits in the pen loop well.

So out the cloth bag is this beautiful piece of leather.  But oh my goodness! The smell was pretty horrendous, almost like Turps (the worst smell in the world in my opinion) and it had this powdery white residue, but after handling it for a while the residue disappeared, the smell was still there though. 24 hours later, it's not so bad, smells like......shoe polish!  I think with time, it will fade completely though, I don't want to go messing with it just yet.

As you can see, I added a little charm to the book mark string.  I did have another charm on here, but took it off after realising it can mark the leather quite easily.  I'm looking for a tumbled piece of Amethyst with a hole drilled through...if anyone can advise where to get one from, please could you let me know. Thanks!

So that's my Midori Traveler's Notebook set up, I am going to use it as a journal, I've found some great paper to use, can you see the brown craft paper in the middle, well that's what I will be using. (It's very similar to what you wrap parcels in.) You can buy the craft paper notebook from The Journal shop....but I've made my own....BUT that's another story!

If anyone out there is still undecided on whether to get one of these, my advice is go for it, you will not be sorry.  It is beautiful and the notebooks are very easily made if you don't want to fork out for Midori ones.  Watch this space!