If you have been thinking about trying a Travelers Notebook for a while now (like I was!) these new May Designs TN’s from Target are a great starter notebook! I wasn’t sure which size I wanted… honestly I wanted two smaller pocket sized travelers notebooks but May Designs was sweet enough to send me two classic sized notebooks.
I could have gotten the smaller sized May Books but at the time I didn’t realize there were different sizes!! So that part is completely my fault. Either way I’m getting off track!
Target receently put out it’s own line of travelers notebooks for $19.99 (made by May Designs… have I said that a couple million times already?) so I hit the road to pick one up… I needed a larger notebook to hold my larger may books after all!
There are four notebooks being offered and I fell in love with this beautiful gray and rose gold baby. They’re not leather but instead seem to be a thick faux leather fabricy type of material with a big front & back pocket. I love the pink elastics… they are a perfect match! It has four strings inside and the closing elastic. My only disapointment is that the cover isn’t a wide. I have five notebooks in here and as you can see they stick out the side a little bit. That’s okay but I prefer it when the cover extends past the notebooks a little bit.
I love the rose gold on the front though! It says All the Things on the front which is pretty fitting since I’m going to be using this planner as my on-the-go, list, to-do, budget, meal planning, keep it all organized planner. I already have my Happy Planner where I do my weekly plan with me’s (and keep track of my weekly/daily schedule) and my tiny floral product travelers notebook for my shop so this little gray notebook is the perfect compannion to the other two.
Plus now that I’ve been using it for a while I kind of love the size!
Go figure!
My tiny pocket notebook is super cute but it’s a little harder to write in. That’s fine for my product planning since that’s not an every day thing but for my meal planning, budgeting and to-do lists I’m loving the larger scale. I needed a place to do a brain dump every week (I’ve been using a spare piece of paper) so this works perfectly. If you’re happy with your vertical planner but you need a little more space for all the lists… then maybe a travelers notebook is for you!
Of course, one of my favorite parts of using a travelers notebook is all the fun decorative pieces!! I love all the paperclips and bookmarks… the dashboards and vellum’s! This is my happy place right here.
Add a little bit of rose gold and I’m a happy, happy girl!
If you’re looking for these little paperclips you can find the rose gold fox over at the Creative Bee and the gorgeous rose gold swan was a custom order from Fun Paper Craft. I absolutely love both shops so you really can’t go wrong here! The gal who made my little fox said that the rose gold glitter was slightly off colored so she included a second fox… I think both foxes are perfect but that’s why I have two. Trust me… I’m not complaining!
The original swan had blue feathers… which were gorgeous just not what I was going for. Luckily the gal over at Fun Paper Craft was super easy to work with and whipped this little guy up no problem. I love how she made his beek rose gold too. So cute! The little pom pom paperclips are from the target dollar spot and the tabs for each notebook are scrapbook paper. Don’t worry I’ll share how to make these little guys in a post down the road.
This pom pom may be my favoirite planner charm ever! I picked it up from Michaels and it came with this beauitful rose gold feather charm. Y’all it’s just so pretty! It has little links that hold it together so it moves with the pom and I just want like tweleve of them. I did find them on the Michaels website but only the silver version… I swear mine is rose gold so you may want to check your store if you’re looking for that color.
My next step was too pull out all of my old beads from back-in-the-day and get started on a few bookmarks! These babies mark different pages in my notebook from the top clips and let’s face it… they’re just so pretty! I mean how cute is this little hot air balloon charm? Or the tiny venietian mask?
TIP: You don’t need expensive fancy beads to make your bookmarks… grab one or two charms you love and then buy an inexpensive bracelet from the Target dollar spot! Faux pearls, rhinestones… the whole nine yards for a fraction of the cost!
I’ll put together a post on how to make these cute little charms for you in a bit!
Alright, May Designs… this front pocket is my only problem with this entire notebook. I so wish this baby had the type of vertical card slots that the Webster Pages TN’s do… but as far as complaints go that’s a small thing. I added a few fun cards from orders and paperclips from the target dollar spot but honestly my little fox die cut from Sweet Bella XOXO is my absolutel favorite bit from the front bit of my planner! It’s so cute!!!
Now we get into my swan thing… I’m loving them this month! Look how sweet they are! I ended up with my little swan paperclip, dashboard and even swan shaped paperclips!
Now on to the May Books!! May Designs sent me two custom books and I absolutely love them!! When you do custom books you get to pick the background, font, font color, shape… the whole she-bang. I absolutely love them!! I picked one with the budget insert to keep me on track spending wise next year.
I cannot wait to use these babies!
The paper is a-m-a-zing and I love the linen feeling of the cover.
Isn’t this little card adorable? I added some scrapbook paper to make it a dashboard and the rose gold foiling is adorable.
Here is my custom blog post insert (this is the second insert May Designs sent me) I am LOVING THIS ONE!! It is sooo pretty and I love the setup of the pages inside.
That’s one of the best part of the customizable May Books… you can decide which page layout you want inside your book! So I sat down and thought about how I plan my blog posts and then picked a layout that would work… genius.
I did add a bit of pearl embellishment to the cover which I am in love with… honestly I just needed to hold the washi on at the top. That specific roll of washi is sooo unsticky and I couldn’t find my adhesive so I went with adhesive pearls instead.
Hey… it works!
The other three notebooks I have are the ones from the Target & May Designs Collab. Each travelers notebook comes with two notebooks… a weekly insert that goes from January to June and then July to December.
That’s the entire year y’all!
Of course, I already have a weekly planner and I don’t really have any need to replicate what’s already in my large planner in a smaller planner. You know what I mean?
What I do need is a menu planner… because I swear we’ve had tacos 6 times this week. So I’m going to use washi to make the left hand pages into a grocery list and the right side can be my meal planner.
I can’t wait!
On top of the calender inserts I grabbed a list and gratitude combo insert pack from Target. I don’t have the gratitude insert in rotation at the moment (the darn notebook is already too chunky!) but I’m loving the Lists insert for my to-do’s! I’m using the grid paper for a brain dump and then putting everything in order of priority on the right.
I’m loving it!
That’s it folks!! That’s the end… I have a little notebook in the back pocket from the Target dollar spot and a few washi cards I made for the road.
I swear… this is a rabbit hole I never should have jumped down. I mean just take a look!
I love how all three planners go perfectly together… 2018 is going to be the best year!
[…] might recognize this little planner from my setup earlier this year… this is my on-the-go planner. I keep a running to-do list for days that my little ombre […]