MJdori: My Travelers Notebook

Hello dear friends! 

Happy Wednesday! I hope this post finds you well! 

I just got back from my MEB trip (if you follow me on IG then you got to see some of the adventures I had during my free time). One of my goals on this trip was to work more in a journal that my mother and I put together a couple weeks ago when I visited for my brother's graduation. Please excuse the iPhone photos. I didn't bring my big camera with me and I really wanted to share this post with you guys!

My MJdori- my travelers notebook

We're calling them MJdori's, and we've made a few prototypes for ourselves until we get them just right.

We picked the leather up from Michael's along with some elastic string. We bought some Moleskine notebooks from Target and went home. The piece of leather is big enough for a regular sized TN (once you cut a little off the side of the notebook). I found some arrows in the jewelry section and decided that I wanted to use those for my journal. 

It took us about an hour to make the journal. She rounded the edges of the leather and poked the holes using a leather punch tool for the elastic and the arrow on the corner. After that we just put in 3 Moleskine notebooks, all of which were lined.

On this trip I decorated several parts of my notebooks and replaced the last notebook with a sketchbook that I picked up at Barnes and Nobels. 

After watching this video on YouTube I decided to put some postcards in my journal with some washi tape. I actually watched several of her videos because she was just such an inspiration. I suggest that if you like Midori's you should watch a bunch of her video's! Full of inspiration! 

I used the first notebook in my dori as a journal, where I write about my day each day and I occasionally draw. I found a picture on Facebook of Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon and wanted to try to redraw it. I need to find the original image to share with you guys. I am waiting until I get home to color him in with my colored pencils, hence some random pencil marks (it's for shading purposes).

The second notebook in my dori is my Project Notes book. Until we make my business dori this is housing all sorts of project notes- craft projects, photography projects, blogging, and stuff for my upcoming brand launch.

The last notebook in my dori is a sketchbook (I need to cover the insert because the orange cover is bugging me). It's thicker then the other Moleskine notebooks that are in my dori. I'm using this as a sketchbook as well as for some random things I wanted to add.

I printed out a US continental map and am logging all the places I've visited and places I want to visit. I will update this as I visit more new places, just seemed like a fun way to track all the places that I travel.

This is a map of Germany. I wanted to do something similar to what I did with the US map, but I am working on marking some places on this map that aren't on there. I actually really like how the map overlaps both pages and hangs off a little bit at the top. It ought it would bother me, but it doesn't bother me as much as I thought. I could not get this printer to cooperate with me (it's the one at the hotel lobby)

Someone in one of the groups I follow does this thing called a Life List (guess it's the same as a bucket list, just with a different name) and so I thought it would be fun to make a list of my own. No idea why I randomly decided to draw the Deathly Hallows symbol from Harry Potter... but I did.

So you can kind of see a Batman drawing I did on the other side of the paper. I haven't finished it yet, hence why there isn't a proper picture of it. Once I get that done I'll share a picture on my instagram account for you guys to see.

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So I find that I really like this journaling system, enough to work with my mom to make another one solely for my business stuff. I like the leather cover, I think it's what has drawn me to the system in the first place. I like how it's customizable: I can change the color of the elastic, change the charms, and make the inserts how I want them to be. I always have multiple notebooks full of various things and this system is a way to keep all the journals together and organized.

Before I go: I really like this review from Stuffs & Things- it's a Man's Perspective of the Midori Travelers Notebook. A less frilly review of the notebook.

In a couple of week's I'll write another post to share some more customizations (once i get back to my supplies) and how I feel about my dori at that time.

Do you have a Midori? Or a Fauxdori? Let's talk about them!