Welcome! Stay for Crafts
Welcome to my crafting blog, or rather the place where I put pretty pictures of my pages, my cards and whatever I get in the mail because I have no self control.
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Product Placement
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@pretendcottagelady
Welcome! Stay for Crafts
Welcome to my crafting blog, or rather the place where I put pretty pictures of my pages, my cards and whatever I get in the mail because I have no self control.
Momento Notes (Game Journal)
It's been a while since I've done a game journal update. In large part because I haven't had time. Keeping track of games is still something I'm trying to figure out, but as a general rule of thumb I only write down games in which I've had to figure things out or if I have something from the game I want to store.
While most people use their gaming journals to help them keep track of things in game, often I'm going in blind. So unless I plan to replay a game I tend to not do this. It just doesn't work out well for me.
However, I will write down information that I've had to figure out. Those are the types of games I most like writing down in this journal. Since I went through the effort of figuring this information out, I might as well store it for future me. As a trophy of sorts.
That being said, Momento is an unpacking organization game that uses environmental story telling and requires the player to piece together the story. So if you don't like spoilers and probably can read my handwriting, don't read.
Dip Pen Test
For this month I had been using the Sailor Studio 192 ink, and it's a very pretty ink but I've had issues writing with it using my fine nib fountain pen. Not to the point where I've had to add ink to a wet cartridge to dilute it like I have done with my two brown inks, but enough where storing my pen upside down when not in use is a standard thing.
Granted, it's a general thing I do with all my fountain pens that are in use.
And when a kind soul had offered to help me replace my pen, I told them I suspected it was more of a case of wrong ink in wrong pen rather than the pen itself. In fact I had suspected that this particular ink might do better as a dip pen ink.
As it turned out, my glass pen finally arrived in the mail, and since I had that thought still in my brain, I decided to test the pen with the ink since I still had a bit o the sample left. Doing this was actually a bit eye opening for two reasons.
First, I didn't realize until writing with a larger nib that this ink has a slight sheen to it. Sheen, shimmer and glitter inks all use additives into the ink to give that effect. As a general rule of thumb, it is terrible for your fountain pen and you should not use them in your fountain pen. The recommendation has been for dip pens only.
However, if you do want to use them, use them on a cheaper pen you don't care to lose eventually, use a medium for best effect and clean as thoroughly as possible when switching out inks to ensure the pen will last as long as humanly possible. I... because I didn't fucking swatch the ink before inking my pen used a fine nib. My pen will be fine, it's pretty durable, but it's annoying to know I had done this.
The second thing I've discovered that among glass dip pens, price means shit. My first glass pen was on the pricey side, and unfortunately I had chipped it when it somehow bounced out of it's box. But that pen always had a side that felt better to write with than the other. The replacement I got, which was designed so I could replace the nib in case I broke it. It never felt quite right to write with, never held as much ink as I would like and I don't use it. It was also quite expensive, especially because I had to pay a tariff on it, fuck knows why.
This glass pen, as you can tell, is a novelty glass pen. I bought it on a whim because it was 14 dollars, though with shipping it cost me nearly 20 dollars. This pen writes beautifully, it doesn't matter which side I write from, and it feels good on the page... and annoys the ever living fuck out of me that, that's the case.
Museum of Lost Things
If you're not familiar with @dailyrandomwriter, I write as a hobby, that is what I do for fun. Since i have a lot of journals, I have taken to exploring journal role play games or writing exercises. It also gives me a chance to use my stupid amount of stationery.
This is The Museum of Lost Things, the idea is you have an exhibit card and you write down things that have been lost. I will write more about this on my primary blog because I want to expand on the exhibits that I have done in this journal.
I've been making this set up ahead of time and then taking the journal with me occasionally so if I have time I can just chill and write. It helps I have a lot of vintage and dark academia stationery. It is supposed to be quick and easy.
But I have been treating this as a reflection exercise and purposely note things that I sort of remember from my childhood or growing up but haven't thought about it in a long, long while.
Pen Tests
I have recently gotten two cheap-ish fountain pens, that is, they are under 30 dollars each.
The first was an accident, I did not mean to get a broad nib that broad. I should figure out how to letter with it. It's a bit hard because I am left handed, and while on normal writing fountain pens this will not hamper me, on something like this, it is much more difficult. There's a reason why I prefer to use brush pens for lettering.
The second one is just I needed a cheaper, metal, no-screw cap pen to use on a daily basis with more neutral ink. Generally neutral anyways, this is not pure black ink clearly, it has a purple sheen to it, but that's fine for what I need it for.
Sticker Activities
Since I had time on my hands (aka I got kicked out of my place for 3 hours), I took a tiny sticker activity thing with me.
These have been growing in popularity, which unfortunately means you need to sort through the good ones from the bad ones. I really like these small ones because I can then stick them into my journal afterwards. Whereas the full size ones will not fit, even a B5.
Granted the big ones also take much, much longer whereas this is pretty good for a short attention span. It will make my journal very chunky (like it's already not chunky).
You'll also note I taped it into my journal, this is because there is a coating on these backgrounds, so it's generally easy to pull the stickers back up if you don't like the placement, but it would be really hard to use glue tape on this.
But I love these and need to look for smaller ones like this in the future.
A New Journal Activity
Like the journal from the first six months, i actually had pages left over, and I had also made plans to use them. However, unlike the last journal, where it was more, I'll figure it out later.
I had a series of prompts on my computer, and since this was in an A5 it meant that it was more do-able to write in. It also helped that I was making plans to do things.
Also, there's something to be said about the fact that I have a lot of vacation due to me in the next six months.
As it happened, I recently gave in to get cleaning help so I was kicked out of my place for about 3 hours. I hung out in a cafe with the intention of journaling anyways. Unlike the first year I started really using a journal, I have no plans to journal ever single day, but most days... and sometimes a little bit every few days.
July Work Pages
As for the work journal, this has never changed. It certainly is an example of, if you set it up enough it'll go very fast. This took probably three hours over the course of two days.
Still more bears (I have so many bears from the Everein brand). I thought this was a camping theme by the way, but it seems to be more of... mail coming from the forest theme? If that makes sense?
It doesn't matter, it uses a lot of blue and that was why I chose it.
Month in Review
The month in review page has been expanded to two pages because of the way each month is supposed to start.
In future set ups, the 'Fave' sections won't be titled and I'll probably end up titling them as I fill them out. I'm going to try my best in the next six months to fill this out in bits and pieces throughout the month instead of leaving this last minute.
The Hope to Do section is new, this is to list things I hope to do, but won't be my primary focus. I can add to it things from the journal collections, or new things that come up throughout the month.
This is designed in such a way that it'll take advantage of the dutch door on the cover page.
Weekly Logs
If the lack of spacing consistency bothers you, sorry but not sorry.
It turns out, I am not bothered by this, which is great news for me because it makes setting up go really, really fast.
What i had ended up doing was setting down the decorations first and then adding the every other line highlight to every single part of the page that was not covered by a sticker.
The result is that it makes everything feel like it's all filled up. Now this tactic works well for an A5, I don't know if I could still make this work with a larger notebook size.
Holiday Plans and Memories
This type of tracker is going to show up a lot in this journal. That's because of work and my very particular weather requirements. My place of work is generous in that it closes for two weeks in the summer, and I get a full week of holiday during the winter holidays.
In addition, the other holidays owed to me, I prefer to take off in the fall, as winter is hard to navigate on my own, and summer heat is a bitch.
As a result, most of my time off happens in the last six months of the year. So this will show up... a lot apparently.
Housekeeping Tracker
If you've kept track of what I'm doing (and I don't know why you would), you may have noticed my Housekeeping Days have gone back to Saturdays.
When I had changed it to Sundays, the plan was to start the new cleaning cycle on Sundays, and clean a bit throughout the week, with the final lot being on Saturday. As I have said before, work is kicking my ass and cleaning has not become practical as I'm spending time prepping for on-site work days instead.
While I can live with this tracker set up for six months, probably one of the earliest regrets is the fact I kept the division of how frequent certain tasks get done in this tracker.
It is becoming harder and harder on some tasks to upkeep the cleaning on a regular basis, while other tasks that I had not intended to be a weekly thing has accidentally become a weekly thing due to accidental routine chaining.
I don't know how you accidentally chain a routine, but I had somehow.
Exercise Tracker
I've gone back to actually drawing something on my damn tracker instead of stickers because I found I wasn't really using it as I should. I may use stickers again, but either stickers I can colour or stickers that can be integrated somehow, because how I was doing it was not working.
As for how this tracker works, this is actually using the method to draw mountain maps. On the left, you can kind of see my map mountain which is properly shaded in using the thatching technique with a black fine liner.
For every day of purposeful exercising I do, I get to shade in a mountain range properly. We'll see if i show the final result, it depends on how good I feel about it.
My working schedule is kicking my ass at the moment and for reasons unknown I did not reduce the number of dashes to represent 5 minutes on this tracker. So I still have the goal of the average of 20 minutes a day, even then though I should be building myself up again and making it 10 minutes instead.
Monthly Log
The single strip washi tape which covers the page edge of the monthly log is really acting as a marker. From the side of the book when closed, you can make a pretty good guess where each month is. I tried my best to fit the theme with the tape.
Though the theme this time around is kind of chaotic.
This theme used a heavy two 2m tape rolls and one sample tape, which was probably also a meter long. It combined a bamboo garden with blank clear windows and water themed lanterns. I also placed a mountain scenery tape behind the windows, which gave the theme a lot of blues to go along with the greens.
Which is why I could highlight the lines in light blue, and this will actually end up using blue/teal ink for the fountain pen.
Otherwise it's my standard monthly log, I love this set up because it gives me room to write.
July 2026 Cover
Maybe it was a protest against the amount of white space I had in the last journal, but I decided for this go around that every cover page would be a dutch door.
This is a decorating element I had not used in three years, and as I am writing this I realized this brand of journal was also the last time I used a dutch door.
Normally, I use Archer and Olive notebooks, but I do have a small collection of Notebook Therapy notebooks. It's just it takes a bit more planning to use Notebook Therapy notebooks due to the slightly smaller page count.
Though one could argue the standard 192 pages in the Archer and Olive books is maybe a bit too much.
Sugar (Glucose) Tracker
The change in design for this tracker is mainly because I wanted it all on one page. Primarily because by this point I was really tired of this set up.
Not because it was boring, but because the PET tape was a bitch to deal with. If you've handled a lot of these PET and washi tapes you'll get a sense that they're not all created equal.
While PET tape has always been difficult to peel, which has resulted in the popularity of the already die cut tapes, normally they're not that bad for me. However, occasionally, due to the plastic or some other reason, it can be very hard to peel, and that was the case for this botany themed flora tape.
I still have some of this tape left, which is even worse. Honestly, I should throw it out, but I also have a few potion themed video games in my Steam Library that I might want to use it for in the future.
Discomfort and Observation Log
Instead of graph bars, which I have traditionally done for three years for my discomfort tracking, I am just putting a number from 0-10. For those who hate this type of pain scale, I'm doing this for two reasons.
One, it is faster, and will help me if anyone asks me that question in the future. Two, I actually made a discomfort/pain scale describer card for myself for my last journal. That card is going to get migrated into this section both for reference and as a bookmark.
As for why it's not divided by months, it was primarily in case I needed to write more. So there are more lines than the number of days for 6 months.
This does mean that I run the chance of some pages (or many pages) being blank, but these medical trackers really exist to force me to ask myself these type of questions everyday (sometimes even twice a day).
It is the only time in my journal where not having a lot to write about is actually a great thing. It means that I've been in good health for most of the journal's run.