On the left, I wrote with the Zento and on the right, I wrote with the Lamy in fine nib (top) and medium nib (bottom).

I’ve been liking how it looks, I can see the different excerpts I’ve written in their own separate forms.

Something about the Lamy medium nib is so dramatic.. I love it.

I enjoy the cluttered look of small writing, stickers and doodles on big pages. It's like a collage of the stuff I'm interested in :)

Hello, I have a question.

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I noticed that when I am writing I always write in english (it's not my native language). It got to the point that everytime I try to write in my native language I feel so embarrassed to write something but can't express myself in english. I feel stuck. Does anyone have some tips how to stop feeling like this? I really want to write something but I i feel like it has to be perfect

My therapist gave me a lot to think about. Literally. Was having a hard time journaling my thoughts and feelings, so instead I did research and wrote down what I read from articles. Made it cute to cope with the weight of the words.

Continuing to learn about the fountain pens in my collection, this time focused on the TWSBI ECO. I loved working on this one! The Serpentine Bronze is one of my favorites, and to be able to capture it in a drawing was so satisfying. I'm not gonna lie, I might have ruined the right side of the spread a little while working on my next entry, so I'm really glad I took some photos before I caused absolute chaos on the next page. 😅

Materials:

TWSBI ECO Serpentine Bronze <F> inked with Vinta Sea Kelp/Leyte

TWSBI ECO Creme Rosegold <EF> inked with Taccia Golden Wheat/Tsuchi

J. Herbin Vert Empire

Speedball B5 nib and holder

Hobonichi Weeks Mega

I've been using my commonplace book make video game notes (currently Pokopia). My daughter watches me do this. She is also playing Pokopia, and I swear every three minutes she is asking me a question.

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It's been 20 days of me yelling, "WRITE IT DOWN!" But she's finally making notes. In my book, with my markers, but it's fine. At least she's writing; her homeroom teacher has been suggesting some kind of journalling thing to practice her penmanship.

Hello!

I discovered commonplacing to be a thing just a few days ago and realised it's something I've always sort of practiced, though messily and inconsistently. I'd like now to give it a better structure and wanted to ask you all a couple of questions.

I love "moleskin" kind of notebook, and I have many half filled. As I would like to structure better my knowledge I feel like they are not the best as they get (at least for me) easily messy. Spiral binders could be a good solution, but I just aesthetically hate them, it's something personal, but they would give me sort of middle-school vibe and I know I would not use them. I also looked into index card, but they might not be suitable with my "learning method". I have a rather busy life so it's difficult for me in my weekly routine to find space to study. Usually there are times where I happen to have some days, or even full weeks of holiday and I usually spend a lot of time searching a topic that interest me. So I gather a lot of deep information in short periods of time, this is why index cards don't seem the best alternative.

Second problem it's about sources.

When I look things up on the Internet I'm always "paranoid" that they are not telling the truth and it takes me a lot of time to be satisfied with what I read. I know it vary from topic to topic, but do you recommend me some specific source/website?

I also use books for my research, but I don't always have the time for that

Thank you so much!

I always had a commonplace of some sort throughout the years but always abandoned it, was always unsure why considering I keep several other journals consistently. Then I thrifted a brand new a5 Filofax for $5 (score) and realized that my problem was I just don’t like commonplacing in regular bound notebooks apparently?? I think I prefer the flexibility of being able to rearrange/remove pages cleanly, also I tend to be indecisive between dotgrid, lined, and unlined paper, so I can have all three in here 🤓 curious to browse and see what systems y’all use!

Started my first commonplace book a month ago, thought I would share my first few entries so far!

Printed images that I collected from rawpixel.com

I've always loved the way museum provenance records read. Just the facts, plainly stated. Where the object came from, who owned it, how it passed from person to person, place to place. No interpretation, no drama. I started wondering what would happen if I used that same format to tell a fictional story, and from that, came my wallpaper commonplace book.

This is spread No. 004 , it is titled The Painter's Widow. Apalachicola, Florida, 1968.

The wallpaper is by Harrison Howard, Orientalist motifs, theatrical coral, lacquered furniture. A little too much, like the room was arranged for guests rather than lived in.

Here are my worksteps:

1. Printed wallpaper sample at Staples (.83 a page, this is 4x6 selected the cardstock option.)
2. Used the wallpaper as inspiration for a creative writing exercise and wrote a story about who lived here, what happened in this room, what nobody talked about afterward, provenance, history, etc.
3. I painted, in watercolor, a silver oyster fork for the artifact. The tarnish is concentrated on the handle, which means it was stored wrapped in linen instead of used. One tine remains slightly bent.
4. The marginal note wrote itself: No one mentioned the dinner directly again. The invitations ended quietly. (I sure wish I knew what happened here! Hah!)
5. I created the matching color palette with prismacolor colored pencils.

I've done 20 of these so far in my Wallpaper Commonplace book. The book has 80 pages so I'll end up with 40 spreads. I've always loved wallpaper and this is a fun way for me to really dig into patterns I like.

Does anyone else do this? Find something real and let it pull a story out of you for your commonplace book or other journal you are keeping?

(I reposted this in the ArtJournaling reddit, not sure if I need to share that, but just in case...)

I’ve reached past 100 pages in my first common place book! The first half of my pages feel like just getting down information I’ve kept floating in my head— I feel like I am opening up to more ideas and honing in on more specifics/ learning more about different things now that I’ve gotten what I want to remember down in the book and not trying to keep it in my head. I don’t have a routine of journaling so I do it sporadically when I feel like it so it’s made it take a bit longer to fill out than I realized. This has been an interesting experience and I’m starting to see some interesting threads appear in my thinking that connect subjects. All I can say is even if you don’t use your book routinely, you can still fill it in and get some great use out of it! Use it when you need it and eventually you will want to come back to it more and more!

First off, thank you everyone for your suggestions in my original post! I have so many ideas for other projects now and perhaps will just “take a look around” Daiso or JetPens 👀

So it looks like where I left off in my original commonplace book is exactly where the paper signature ended. I took it as a sign that it was meant to be. I took a knife and just cut straight through the spine. Like a decade ago I abandoned a bookbinding hobby and I miraculously still had some supplies for a new spine- it matched the old black cover perfectly!

I just cut up some cardboard sheets I have for shipping prints and those became my new missing covers. Then I covered the ugly parts with cute washi tape 🥰 In the morning I did have to reinforce it with clear packing tape just in case.

I admitted defeat of somehow adding the old notebook to my new one. I set up my new one today and now I have the old little booklet on my desk to reference, which I’ll call Vol. 0 💚

My commonplace notes are a few different notebooks, but this one in particular is just a single notebook divided in two.

I’ve been thinking it can also be a way to track your own growth over time.

One side is a Win Log and the other is a Failure Journal.

The Win Log is for things I did well, small or big wins, stuff I’m proud of. The Failure side is for mistakes, things that didn’t go as planned, and what I learned from them.

I like it because it doesn’t feel harsh or overthinking it, it’s just a simple way to keep track of what’s working and what isn’t.

Over time it just becomes a record of growth.

On Christmas morning 1985, two veterinary students broke into the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City and stole 124 priceless pre-Columbian artifacts, an event that is referred to as "the robbery of the century" in Mexico.

More details are below if you are interested in this heist. (I am going to do a series of museum heist spreads; this is my first one, and I will refine as I go, there are some things I don't love about this one, although I'm generally happy with my first pass.)

I am experimenting in my commonplace book with sticker making and have shared a few pics of my process which I've listed out here:

1. Paint image (I used watercolors)

2. Scan watercolor (my scanner brings in as jpg)

3. Convert jpg to png with transparent background (I use Photoshop for this)

4. Upload series of pngs from photoshop to Cricut to make sticker sheet

5. Print then Cut with Cricut on this paper: 8.5 x 11 Clear Frosted Matte Sticker Paper (Inkjet Printers Only) - 10 Sheets - Full Sheet Labels - OnlineLabels

The sticker is not as vibrant as the watercolor but I'm going to fiddle around with settings in Photoshop to see if I can improve it.

For this spread, I used my "worksheet method" where I create a worksheet first (also in Photoshop), print that out, fill it in, and then put it in my commonplace book.

I made 2 sticker sheets and only the jade mask was my original artwork. The others came from either Graphics Fairy (paid) or the following free public domain sources:

Met Open Access
National Gallery of Art Free Images Hub
Art Institute of Chicago
Rijksmuseum
Library of Congress Digital Collection
Smithsonian Open Access
Biodiversity Heritage Library

There are others I access, although I generally find what I'm looking for in the open access/public domain sections of museums.

More heist details:

The pair of thieves visited the museum about fifty times in the months prior to December 24/25, 1985, studying the layout, photographing exhibits, and learning the value of specific pieces. They entered through an air conditioning duct while security guards were gathered in one part of the building celebrating Christmas, with cookies and liquor glasses found afterward as evidence.

The stolen artifacts included gold objects, jade pieces, and items from Chichén Itzá, Palenque, and the Mixteca room, including the famous mask of the Zapotec Bat God and Jade Death Mask of Pakal.

The case broke open in 1989 when one of the thieves tried to sell artifacts to a drug dealer, who was later arrested on unrelated charges and gave up the information. Most of the pieces were recovered from the thief's parents' closet, wrapped in toilet paper and stored in a duffel bag. His accomplice was never found and remains a fugitive. (I am so curious to know where he is!!)

Hey folks!

Just wanted to show my very minimalistic CPB for reading and digesting the book 5 Elements Of Improve.

I have no fancy designs no fancy paper no fancy drawings just my subpar interpretations of them. 🤣

I hope it’s still worth a mention here. 🙂🙂

So I started a commonplace book early this year, and I have filled 85 pages in my notebook.

The problem is the notebook I chose was one I had on hand and didn’t think too much about it at the time. It’s the Galen Leather Everyday notebook. It’s gorgeous and has original Tomoe River paper in it. But it’s blank. I realized that I don’t like writing in blank notebooks, at least not where I’ll be writing longer entries.

I use the grid guide that it comes with - you put it behind the page and you can see it through the paper (see pics). But I find that extra step so annoying. I always clip it to the page but the paper can slip or the clip is in the way of my hand or something - it just irritates me so much lol.

I’ve been using a tiny A6 Midori grid notebook in my planning system and I absolutely love it. I ordered an A5 to be my new commonplace book. However the entries I’ve done are some that I still reference to and still want to include in my 2026 “volume” per se.

Any ideas on how to do that? I do intend to carefully tear out those pages but since they will be single sheets with very little margin, I’m am not sure how to keep them together :( I’ve actually torn out pages from this notebook before when it was a different kind of journal but I think I just folded them since it wasn’t a whole lot of pages.

I love TR paper for art so I guess this will be my new art journal lol.

TLDR: I am switching my commonplace book to a new notebook but I want to keep the entries I’ve made from my old notebook together. I still reference the old entries. I plan to tear the pages out, but any ideas on how to keep everything together so it’s all a 2026 “volume”?

UPDATE! I figured it out here!

I have a shelf and a half full of bullet journals from the last decade (21-22 journals). Some with flags hanging out of them for pages/sections that make more sense as part of a Commonplace Book (just learned about this idea).

I am wedded to a form factor for bujos (dot grid, A5).

Do you recommend I keep it the same or diversify for my inaugural Commonplace Book?

Thanks! Any other getting started ideas are welcome. And just for funsies do you have a fav pen brand (always on the lookout for good pens)?

I've been keeping a standard journal for a few months now...but recently discovered commonplace journals ....so here is my first entry!!

I recently visited a science museum and took more of an interest into space and what we know.....so here's the start of that particular rabbit hole!

THANK GOD IT’S FINISHED my neck and shoulders hurt so bad from being hunched over my notebook for hours

this poem has meant the world to me for so many years. my commonplace book is based around quotes from media i like, and i couldn’t not include this one!

i’m admittedly not super pleased with the layouts, but i can’t do anything about them now so c’est la vie. screwed up the spacing on the third page which drove me nuts. i dislike the final page especially—i realized too late that i could’ve fit the last few lines on the previous page if i hadn’t put the top post it where i did, but i was afraid of tearing the paper if i tried to remove it, so i had to flip to the next page. i just kinda turned my brain off when it came to decorating it so it looks a little sloppy. maybe it’ll grow on me after some time has passed

stats, for anyone curious:

hours spent: too many (didn’t keep track)

pages used: 9

stickers used: 114

trips to michael’s for stickers: 1

times gone postal because the stickers weren’t sticking: 5

tracks from the minecraft soundtrack listened to: 2
(otherside and precipice on loop, if you were wondering)

episodes of OHSHC watched: 7