Sunday, June 24, 2012

My Filofax Birthday

In July, I will be 1 year old in Filofax years. To celebrate, a little early to note, I bought myself a little present. What else but a brand new Filofax? A personal Osterly in brown. Very beautiful. I have decked it out in all new duds, natch: new cotton cream paper, which comes with it; tabbed dividers made from 'designer' duct tape sheets purchased from Target, and backed with ivory card stock; a brown Today ruler/marker; a personalized post-it dashboard with sticky notes purchased while on vacation in Hawaii, and some very smart beige-y, cream-y sticky tabs from Smash.

As I don't enjoy bright neon colors, I wanted my color scheme to be nice subdued earth-tone hues to match the planner. Throughout you will see browns, beiges, cotton cream, of course, a little black.

The only thing lacking is the perfect pen. I'm on the hunt for one with brown ink.


Personal Osterly in Brown



The customized dashboard

The handmade tab divider. 

The Today marker and a page from the Diary Section

A page from the Notes Section. I ripped pictures from a magazine
of some items that I need and swathed a piece of Smash tape over it. It's
the piece that says 'Need It!'

A page from the To Do Section. Standard fare

A page from the ASL (American Sign Language) Section. I hole punched a booklet
of signs for quick reference. I am a sign language interpreter.

A page from the Bible Section

A page from the Books Section. I have challenged myself to read 40 books this year.
Almost half way there!

A page from the OOTD (outfit of the day) Section. I created a template
to record everything I will wear for the upcoming week. No scrambling
around in the morning for something to wear! 

My business card holder


Tuesday, January 3, 2012

2012 Filofax Set-up

I have been looking forward to this day since around Sept or Oct '11 when my months-old Cuban Filofax began to lose its luster. I scoured thousands Filofax Flickr photos, and tried to emulate the random messiness of schedules, sticky notes, stickers, the more-than-occasional stray page, the explosion of color. It was all so appealing to the eye, so...interesting. I ended up with a schizophrenic amalgamation of other people's ideas.

In reality, I like my Filofax tidy. I like symmetry, order, and monochrome. What I did not like was Filofax's 'array' (I use that word lightly) of tab dividers. Making my own, I discovered that I am not an artist, and that too many colors and patterns turned my eye away from rather than to my Filofax, causing me to neglect its upkeep for days on end.

I was happy to discover these...



Dividers from Succes in navy blue, the most classic color in the spectrum, and incidentally, the same color as my car, and the cardigan I bought yesterday from H & M. I love these. They are a flexible, light-weight plastic(y) material (Succes calls it synthetic). I bought one packet of 5 dividers with symbols (365 for the Calendar section; a check-mark for the To-Do section; a pen for Notes; an "i" for Information; an envelope for Addresses). Because they did not have blank tabs in navy, I bought a packet of 3-letter address tabs to re-purpose for my own use. I flipped them over and re-labeled them with my Dymo label maker. My other sections are ASL (American Sign Language; I'm an interpreter); The Bible, to take notes when I'm at church or during my personal reading time; Finance, to keep track of spending; Lexicon-my word list. When I'm reading and come across a word with which I am not familiar, I look it up, write down it's meaning and try to incorporate it into my vocabulary; Projects, just projects; To buy - my shopping lists. I have different pages for different stores: Target, Marshall's, T J Maxx, Sephora, the mall, etc; To Read. lists of books I have read and want to read. It is prefaced with a quote by Henry Miller: "We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate;" To Wear. I made my own template to plan my outfits for each day of the week.
In the back is a top-opening envelope for receipts, and a card holder; in the mesh zippered pocket I keep paperclips (I only use the circle ones called Clipiolas) and stamps and such.
Other points of interest in my Filo:
*For the Calendar, I use the fold-out year planner and the wo2p diary. 

I pimped out my frosted "Today" page marker with a press on flower (if you read the prior post entitled 'On Filofax', you'll see that I also pimped out the fly leaf in my weight tracker planner). I like how this one looks like a climbing vine.



*In the Info section, I have a fold-out world map, which I refer to often.

*In the Bible section, I have placed a card that I received from my church which has our 2012 Year theme (Church to Live) and a sub-theme for each month. I laminated and hole-punched the card, and placed it in the front of this section.


*This is the template that I created to plan my clothes for the week. I print it on Filofax pre-punched paper.


*I use a navy blue Jet-stream Uni 0.7 pen that doesn't quite fit into the pen-loop, so I just hook it on.


*My Filofax is a Personal Cuban in Chestnut. It goes everywhere with me (except when I carry a smaller bag, but that's another blog),and holds its own against my iphone and Galaxy tablet.


*I only use Filofax Cotton Cream paper, as seen in the haul photo below.


There she is, folks. Ready for the new year...