How I made the Midori Traveler's Notebook mine

Hi everyone!

Here are a few things I did to customize the Midori Traveler's Notebook.  I'm not even a month in it and it's already gone through several incarnations.

Decorating the notebook covers

 I Mod-Podged vintage-looking stamps and stickers on the front and back of the Kraft insert.  It's at the very front of the notebook.

The calendar notebook was stamped with Le Petit Prince rubber stamps to decorate the cover and front page.

Jane Austen-themed stamps used for the lightweight paper refill.

If you like acrylic stamps, my favorites are the stamps from Papertrey Ink.  Their designs are the best and the quality of the stamps are top-notch.

Business card insert as Post-It board

 I was previously using the TN as a wallet but it got too thick to be comfortable so I used the card insert as a Post-It board and to keep stuff in.  It lives inside the Kraft folder.

Pen holder hack

Super simple and easy.  Just stick binder clips where you want your pens to go.

The elastic pen holder is a hack I made with magnets that I'll write about soon.

Magnetic pen holder hack

First attempt at leather stamping

Apologies for the crappy photos, my camera wouldn't focus.  In case you can't recognize it, I stamped a dog for the elastic.

I also stamped my name to hang on the bookmark, along with a charm.


I've changed the elastic charms quite a few times since my leather-stamping skills are less than stellar.

Pandora charms used for the elastic closure.

I finally settled on this pink metal plate with homemade insert and pink elastic.  It's all pinked up and I'm most happy with it.  The bookmark charm is rose quartz pendant I've had for ages.











Bookmark tabs

My favorite hack is the bookmarks I made from plastic file folder material.  I borrowed this idea from Patrick Ng's blog but I improvised on it to make it work for my needs.

Images don't really mean anything.  I just chose images I thought would be nice.

Construction is super simple.  I hope the photos below show that. The notches slide into the stapled part of the notebook but you don't really need them.  I made the rest without the notches.  They then slip between the pages of the notebook.  This hack wouldn't work for stitched notebooks though.

Notes pages

I needed pages that would be for scribbles, quick notes, etc.  Since the MTN has no rings what I did was cut up some paper to size and slip it into one of the notebooks.  I re-located the elastic in the calendar notebook so that I could use it for these pages as well.  (Does that make sense?)  I didn't even bother to stitch up the paper.  After I'm done with them, I'd just throw them away and replace them.

I think the photo below can illustrate it better than I could ever describe it.  As you can see, the pages can be taken out at will.  They're just inserted into an elastic band.

Adding extra elastics

And finally, I added extra elastics.  I thought I would prefer attaching refills to the book itself vs. using elastic bands.  I was right.  It was better because the refills then weren't pulling against each other.

I just threaded elastic through the same holes in the Midori to create 2 more elastics.

I've been super-organized lately because I just love using this notebook.  I don't miss my everyday Filofax yet, at least for now.

And that's how I customized my Midori notebook.  I wonder how else it'll change cause I'm pretty happy with it now.  But I'm sure I'll think of more things to do. (:

Thanks for visiting!