I was delighted to meet Lauren Phelps at the Little Craft Fest event in Houston a couple weeks ago. Owner of Lauren Phelps Designs and journal goddess, she is a fountain pen fan herself, she produces journal/planner/notebooks that feature Tomoe River 52gsm paper in her date-free planner/journals called Live | Plan | Dream series.
These notebooks are available in Standard Travelers, Weeks, A5, A6 and (oh joy!!!) B6! I sampled the A6 size (148 mm x 105 mm, $32.99) with a flexible leatherette cover in a muted peachy-pink color. The notebook includes 392 pages of 52gsm white Tomoe River paper and the majority of the pages feature 4mm dotted grid. The notebooks is threadbound and flays flat and has slightly rounded corners. The quality is excellent.
In the front of the notebook is twelve, 2-page monthly calendar grids making it possible to start your planning in May or August or whenever you want to jumpstart your journal or planning goals for a whole new year.
On the back page is a page spacing and tab placement guide. This is such an interesting addition. I totally understood the tab placement guide on first glance but the other guide info took me a minute to understand. The guide info includes numbers to indicate the number of grid boxes on the page both horizontally and vertically as well as marks to show how to divide the page into sections. Its a pretty clever way to help if you like to divide your pages.
I also got a Moon Child Planner Cover – a collaboration with Nib & Fleur ($23.99) which is a clear, flexible vinyl cover, printed with an opaque white design of flowers, moon and stars. The inside front cover features two small horizontal pockets to store extra ephemera. I love this cover and can still add additional decorations on the notebook cover under the vinyl cover.
At present, the prices for these undated Tomoe River planner/journals are less expensive than most Hobonichi branded notebooks while the quality is on par or exceeds the Hobonichis.
Of course, I do not have information as to the notorious Tomoe River paper issues regarding the Lauren Phelps Designs but the sample I tested performed well and met all my expectations for paper quality. I love that these planner/journals are available in a variety of sizes for whatever size you prefer, are undated and less expensive than Hobonichi. They are worth the investment.
DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by Lauren Phelps Designs for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.
