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!

Sunday 18 November 2012

Filofax spotted in the wild!

Hello all!

I've been recording the new series called 'Elementary' with Lucy Liu and Jonny Lee Miller.  They've been stacking up in my Sky+ planner for a while now and I managed to watch the first episode the other week.  I love it!  It's really clever and Jonny Lee Miller's character is very quirky.  If you get the chance, give it a watch.  It's on in the UK on a Tuesday night on Sky Living at 9pm.

Anyway, I digress.  In the first episode aired in the UK on Tuesday 23 October, what did I spot???  Yes you've guessed it, A FILOFAX!  Lucy Liu (Watson) had just met Jonny Lee Miller (Holmes) and she dropped her bag.  Out tumbled a Filofax!  Now I'm not sure what type it was, but I thought it looked a bit like a brown Finsbury (is there such a thing?), although I'm not sure it was because I think the clasp looks a bit... wrong.

Lucy Liu (Watson) dropping her bag to reveal a Filofax in Sky Living's 'Elementary'.

And here's a link to the Youtube clip I took the screen shot from at 1.54 minutes in.

What do you think???  Answers on a postcard please!

Lucy x



Please FOLLOW ME if you enjoy my posts!

Wednesday 14 November 2012

Perfect punching for A5s

Well hello there gang!

On Saturday night, my hubby went on a VERY rare night out with some friends.  The next thing I knew, he was falling down the stairs at 2am.  After that, I couldn't get to sleep until after 4am so naturally, on Sunday, I was like a zombie and really didn't fancy doing anything too taxing.  So I decided to have a go at setting up my A5 raspberry Chameleon Filofax.  Well, punching some paper for it anyway.  The 'setting-up' part will come later when I've woken up again...

My A5 raspberry Chameleon


I've had my A5 since about July this year but the school holidays involved lots of entertaining my six year old daughter and once she was back at school, I increased my working days by an extra day.  So all in all, I just haven't had the time (or the inclination really) to get it sorted.  I obviously didn't need an A5 Filofax very much did I!!!  Oh well.  It would be rude not to complete my collection - I have at least one of each size available now!  Which is extremely important as I know with absolute certainty that all you Filofax fans will understand completely.

Anyway, some of you may remember Ray's post here about lined paper that was a good alternative to Filofax paper because it's so much cheaper.  I've been after some for a while now but every time I went to get some, the shelf was empty (another reason I've only just got round to giving my A5 some attention!).  So last week, I popped in to Staples and they actually had some!  I bought two packs of two Eco-Friendly Writing pads (with perforated pages) from Staples at £2 per pack (I would put a link here but it doesn't seem to be available on their website for some strange reason).  So that's 160 pages for £2.  Compare that to Filofax lined A5 paper which is £2.75 for just 25 sheets!!!  Wow - what a saving these Staples pads are!

£2 for 160 sheets from Staples - bargain!


Anyway, I've had a bit of experience with punching these pads before.  My hubby uses an A5 Filofax for work and he made his own very fancy day-per-page time management diary pages (that's another post for me to do...) and he used my punch to punch them, as well as these pads which I bought him on Ray's recommendation.

I use a Rapesco Adjustable Diary Punch 66-P which you can currently buy from Amazon for £10.48.  You can use this punch for mini, pocket and personal sized paper, but as many of you will know, with a bit of 'jiggery-pokery', you can also use it for A5 pages too.



Here comes the jiggery-pokery!

Basically, you pull the punch holes apart as if you were going to use it to punch personal pages.  You hold the paper in your left hand with the margin down the right.  Put the punch at the top and punch the first three holes with the bottom of the punch.  Then move the punch down to the bottom and punch the other three holes using the top of the punch.  Easy right?  Yeah...

It's not difficult to do, but you do need to make sure you're punching the holes in the right place, otherwise they won't fit on your rings properly and that will make you swear very loudly.  Not that I would do that because I'm a lady.  Yes that's right, a lady.

Now I may be preaching to the converted here, but in case you're new to punching A5 Filofax paper, this is what I did...

I took a piece of dark Filofax paper (green in this case) and put it on top of 7 pages of my Staples lined paper (the Rapesco punch can punch no more than 8 pages at a time).  Then I took the plastic bottom off the punch and put the cellophane I took from the pads on the floor to catch all the holes.  When I punched the holes (as described above), I used the hole punch upside down so I could see exactly where I needed to punch the holes.

Green sheet on the top, 7 white ones underneath.


A clearer shot for your inspection!





Here you can see exactly how it works.  You know where to punch because all you should be able to see through the holes of the hole punch is white, instead of green.




So because I used the dark paper as a guide over the top of the white paper, all my holes were punched in exactly the correct place, quickly and easily.

I really need to do a video but hell will freeze over before I do something as horrifying as that!!!  Maybe I could do a demonstration at the Philofaxy North-West meet-up on 1st December???  Let me know if this idea appeals and if so, I'll bring what I need along with me.  It's not rocket science but sometimes a little demonstration can make all the difference!

While at Staples, I also bought a pack of A5 Multiuse 80gm paper (£4 for 500 sheets) for my printer.

A5 printer paper from Staples, £4 for 500 sheets.  Bargain!


My intention is that I'm going to make some of my own templates for my A5 at some point in the near future (I've got plenty of pocket and personal sized templates that I've done myself but nothing for A5).  But that's another post!  I wonder if it'll be 2014 before I get round to making them... ;-)

Lucy x



Please remember to FOLLOW ME if you enjoy my posts!

Saturday 10 November 2012

A spot of Filofaxing ready for 2013...


Hi guys!

Today I've been FILOFAXING.  I've been wanting to get my 2013 diary sorted out for quite a while now because I had almost a page of diary dates written down at the end of my 2012 diary, ready to transfer into it. But unfortunately, I seem to suffer from a condition called "Mountainoutofmolehillitis" whereby I always envisage a job taking about 14 times' the amount of time that it actually takes to complete, so I often end up putting it off for as long as possible because I can't be bothered won't have time to do it all in one go.

Anyway, today I bit the bullet and got cracking, and it took me about two-and-a-half hours to finish.  Phew!  So now my 2013 'week on one page with notes' diary and year planner are both complete and ready to go!

This is what I did...

Firstly, I gathered all my lists of dates together and wrote the following information on my year planner:


  • My daughter's school holidays (dark green, right side);
  • Dates I'm on call (red, left side);
  • Dates I'll be out at shows/gigs/band concerts/parties etc (purple);
  • Birthdays (light blue);
  • Important deadlines (red);
  • General perpetual reminders and reminders for my Secretarial duties (pink).


Then I transferred all this information into the diary itself (for the full year).  After that, I went through the diary week by week and wrote my reminders in. For example, when I have a birthday coming up, a week or two before I'll put a reminder on the 'notes' page to remind me that I need to buy a card and present if required. Or if I need to renew some insurance, I'll put a note in to remind me to start hunting around for quotes.

I like to have the year planner nice and full because as I use a slimline, I can't fit a full year's worth of diary pages into it in one go, so at least I'll have the year planner available so I can check for any clashes if I'm organising something well in advance.

I also use a few weeks' worth of 'day per page' diary pages as well, but I fill these out only when I actually put them in my Filofax.

So people - have you filled your 2013 diary yet? Which one are you using? And how do you use your year planner, if you use one at all?

Lucy x



Please don't forget to FOLLOW ME if you enjoy my posts!

Monday 5 November 2012

I've been bargain spotting!

Hello all!

Just a quick post to let you know of some bargains I found today!

I got a text from my sister-in-law yesterday saying she'd bought herself a Filofax from TK Maxx for less than half price - a personal raspberry Finsbury.  Naturally, I directed her to Philofaxy and my blog so she could bamboozle herself with All Things Philofax!  (Did you see what I did there?  Eh?)


Anyway, finding out that such a Filofax was available at TK Max, this got me thinking.  Approaching Christmas time, they do tend to begin stocking Filofaxes (especially of the discontinued variety) so I thought I'd have a wander round and check out the situation, for research purposes only of course!!!

Well, what did I find???  A LOT!  Here's what they had:


  • Pocket Chameleons (black, brown, raspberry, aqua and SPRING GREEN!);
  • Compact (!!!) Chameleons (red and raspberry);
  • Personal Chameleons (black, brown and raspberry)
  • A5 Chameleons (brown, black, raspberry, red and SPRING GREEN!)
  • A5 Finchleys (red and mustard)
  • Pocket Adelphis (raspberry)
  • Slimline Adelphis (black and raspberry)
  • Personal Adelphis (raspberry)
  • A5 slimline Adelphis (black and red)
  • Pocket Butterfly (pewter)
  • Pocket Amazonas (black)
  • Pocket Cuban (black)
  • Mini Chameleons (raspberry, red, black, brown and SPRING GREEN!)
  • Mini Amazonas (almond, black and brown)


I would have bought a compact raspberry Chameleon and a slimline raspberry Adelphi, but I've already got these so I didn't actually buy anything.  I was gutted that the slimline Adelphi was only £25.  I paid an awful lot more than that for mine!!!  :-(

They were all no more than half price but many were less than half price, so pop along to TK Maxx and grab yourself a bargain!

Lucy x