Circa-us maximus

In which, thanks to the Goddess Alyson (as she is henceforth dubbed), I babble on about stationery. So if that doesn't interest you...move along, nothing to see here.

Anyway, today my box of Circa goodies arrived. I bought the punch (figuring there was no point to pay for paper to be posted to me when I can do the one-off punch purchase and convert any paper I want).

This is the punch.



It's hefty. Burglars beware. I can do damage with this!

I also bought the sampling kit and a junior starter kit. And scored a free gift card but more on that later.

Here's the junior made up (the letter size is the same, only bigger).



My only quibble with these is they don't have a band to hold them together but a quick trip to Smiggle for a couple of their giant rubber band/notebook holder things took care of that.

Here's my first attempt at pretty-ing up the cover. I just punched a greeting card. In future, I think I'd find a pic the right size (or cut one down) and laminate it before punching but this is the quick fix so whatever's on the paper in the notebook front page doesn't show through.



Then I decided to experiment. I had this notebook which I've been using as my carry around in the handbag sized writing goals and longhand scribbling book.



The cover is heavy plastic and it was wider than A5 though pretty much A5 height. Some hybrid of 1/2-US letter and A5 I guess. Because I love the cover, I decided to see whether I could Circa-ize it. I'd trawled Officeworks to see if they had any disc bound products at all and came up with two types of presentation (plastic pocket filled) folders. (an Officeworks quick release display book and a Marbig Kwikzip display book respectively). The Officeworks one had black 3/4 inch discs that looked the same as the Circa ones (and nice heavy plastic covers, so that will be a good source of covers (other than expensive paperchase notebooks) and extra 3/4 discs for archiving (not to mention plastic pockets) if I can find more).

So I decided to try those with the cover. I'd also bought a guillotine and rotary cutter set that Officeworks (yay, we loves Officeworks) had on sale. So I detached the covers, trimmed them and punched them. The plastic is a bit heavier than the Circa ones and I don't think I'd try punching anything thicker with the punch. But it worked...voila!



I'm going to use this day to day and it will also replace my filofax (yay to carrying one notebook not two) as it's got the monthly planner (levenger's but in future years I might look for something on DIYPlanner), some name and address pages I whipped up in Excel, and then lined sections for goals, daily to-do's and writing. I just trimmed and punched the pages left in the notebook for now. Waste now want not.

Then, in the spirit of further experimentation, I decided to see what I could do with the Marbig discs (which are 1/2 inch and acid yellow). Officeworks also had various stationery on sale so I picked up a $2 pack of what looked like plastic sheets but are actually plastic pockets with a cute cartoon angel/demon pattern. This is the result.



Cute! But the plastic is very thin, so it might need some reinforcement of some sort (another layer of thicker plastic perhaps). It's just got pages ripped from one of my spirax notebooks at the moment (trimmed and punched). They're pretty thin too and I doubt they'd stand up to much moving around but should be fine for scribbling. More letter/A4 experiments shall be forthcoming to figure out the best compromise between paper quality and expense. I can just print lines on blank paper of course, but want to see what else is around as well (I'm thinking tear-off, un-binder punched lined notepads might work well, if such things exist in decent paper weights).

So there you go. I am Circa'd up. All that took me maybe an hour or maybe two if you count oohing and aahing and putting the two circa books together and transferring info from the filofax. I still have four black discs left, so could even try making myself a HipsterPDA if I can figure out a cover. (If you haven't heard of the Hipster PDA, go here.) Or can keep them to add to the stash.

And then there's the gift card to consider. I'm thinking more discs (bigger ones) for archiving. And maybe the bookcloth cover...luckily the Goddess Jo is off to Boston and Washington shortly. After that I shall have to make do. At least until July when I might be able to implore the Goddess Alyson for another delivery at Nationals : )

Now for some actual writing....