When I was in high school back last century, it was before computers had taken ahold of society. There were no inkjets and no print-it-yourself scrapbooking ephemera from CD-ROM collections, and even "clip art" collections --usually of the Dover variety-- where generally only available in messy third-generation Gestetner reproductions from unclean woodcuts and etchings. (You folks older than 35 probably know what I'm talking about... you kids, you just hug your svelte little Macbooks and thank heaven for Epson.) In short, it was nowhere near as easy to create a custom notebook or journal without grabbing your X-Acto knives, some glue, scraps of leatherette or thick paper, and a bunch of markers or paints. Yup, those were actually a lot of fun, those little craft projects, but for every personalised tome worthy of keeping, there would inevitably be five sorry-looking collections of folded scraps sporting misshapen heads you drew, glued beads and plastic charms from gumball machines that would fall off within two days, and perhaps a photo-machine strip of yourself and a friend making goofy faces. Not that these didn't have a personal connection of some type, but you just knew everybody would make fun of you if you took it out of your knapsack in public.

Now, it's not so much that a Levenger Circa Notebook out of the box is a plain thing. In fact, it's rather elegant in a way. But sometimes you just want to make something your own.

A simple Lined Notes sheet with a left margin. This is a 2-Sided refill for my ThinkCreateSolve 6-ring set.

This fits 10.8cm x 17.15cm (or 4.25in x 6.75in for those of you in the USA) "Day-Runner" and other brands.

Included are:

- A PDF which will print 2 refills to a Letter-sized sheet on any inkjet or laser, double-sided, with minimal paper waste. This requires a borderless-capable printer, preferably with a duplexer (you could also do it manually)

These remain available for personal / non-commercial use only. A collection of over 50 updated sheets in Classic and Compact sizes are now commercially available (professionally printed, cut, and punched) at www.thinkcreatesolve.biz .

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Make brainstorming easy with this Mind Mapper 2-Sided refill for my ThinkCreateSolve 6-ring set.

This fits 10.8cm x 17.15cm (or 4.25in x 6.75in for those of you in the USA) "Day-Runner" and other brands.

Included are:

- A PDF which will print 2 refills to a Letter-sized sheet on any inkjet or laser, double-sided, with minimal paper waste. This requires a borderless-capable printer, preferably with a duplexer (you could also do it manually)

These remain available for personal / non-commercial use only. A collection of over 50 updated sheets in Classic and Compact sizes are now commercially available (professionally printed, cut, and punched) at www.thinkcreatesolve.biz .

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Sketch and keep notes on this 1mm / 5mm Grid Notes 2-Sided refill for my ThinkCreateSolve 6-ring set.

This fits 10.8cm x 17.15cm (or 4.25in x 6.75in for those of you in the USA) "Day-Runner" and other brands.

Included are:

- A PDF which will print 2 refills to a Letter-sized sheet on any inkjet or laser, double-sided, with minimal paper waste. This requires a borderless-capable printer, preferably with a duplexer (you could also do it manually)

These remain available for personal / non-commercial use only. A collection of over 50 updated sheets in Classic and Compact sizes are now commercially available (professionally printed, cut, and punched) at www.thinkcreatesolve.biz .

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The sound of a gel pen scratching words across the surface of a Moleskine fill the house. The scent of red chai waifs into the air and into my nostrils. And as I write, my body relaxes and releases the tension of the day out. Images of spending hours on the sofa, delicately crafting beautiful and meaningful journal entries, always seem to dance around in my brain. Reality is, there's always more stuff to be done in one day than Nature allows. And more often than naught, promises of writing in my journal or playing in the studio before bedtime, go unfulfilled; lost to the shuffle of cleaning the house and laundry.

Do you wish there was more time in a day to do more? I know I do. Between work, chores and responsibilities (and diversions like WoW) I never seem to be able to journal as much as I want. Until now. For those of us who find ourselves constantly with less time and more on their to-do list, here's two quick journaling tips and a hack that remind us all that journaling doesn't require scheduling a special time.

Two weeks ago, we kicked this series off with an introduction to mind mapping. There we learned what mind maps are and how to make a simple one. Last week, I took the series one step further and showed you how you could apply mind maps to various aspects of a single project from brainstorming phase to project wrap up. Today, I'm going to get to the fun part that I'm sure all of you have been waiting for. The books and applications (online and desktop) that can help make your mind maps appear polished and professional. I'll give you my thoughts on each item listed here and hopefully help you form an opinion on what techniques you want to try. Of course, you may just want to stick with paper and pen... and that's fine too. I know that depending on where I am at, I sometimes want to use an computer based application for my maps; while others, I want to use my moleskine and pen set.

Last week I introduced you to the concepts of mind mapping and all the ways that it can help you brainstorm ideas. Hopefully, you've given mind mapping a try and have seen just how many new ideas or connections you can make in a relatively short amount of time. This week we're going to put mapping techniques to the test by taking a project idea and seeing just how many ways we can apply mapping techniques throughout your project from initial brainstorm stage to the final wrap up.

Now I know that my focus tends to be more "writerly" based (only because I spend most of my days writing and designing technical documents for various audiences) so I've decided to try and pick a project that could be more fun... like website redesign. So imagine you are a web designer working on a website redesign for a client. They have given you free reign on the project and unlimited budget. However, they want it to pop and wow visitors and need it within two weeks time. What are you going to do? Ideas swim in your head but nothing seems to jump out at you. Your stomach sinks and you wish you were in back in bed, daydreaming the answer. Seeing that you just arrived at work, and cannot really go home to dream more... you grab a large blank paper and write down the word website in the middle and circle it. It's time to make a website.

Every now and then I get an itch to redesign my personal website domain. Usually this gets spurred when I see some new eye catching web design and I go, "Oooh, shiny." and then wish I could apply more modern designs and graphics to my own home online. I end up breaking out graph paper and project cards and start listing new site structures and what things need to go into my site. Of course, every time I do this, I don't get any further than that. However, a few weeks ago, I saw yet another spiffy design, and out came the hipster. This time, instead of grabbing more than one card, I pulled a single card out and gave it a title. Then, I wrote down SOM (the nickname for my domain) and circled it. From there, I listed sections, tools, colors and anything else I wanted to put into my web space. I successfully created a mind map; the first one I've done since high school.

For the next three weeks, I'm going to discuss mind mapping and how you can apply it to almost every aspect of your life. This article briefly introduces the mind mapping concept, how to make one, and when to use them to get the most bang for your buck. Since I enjoy practical learning experiences, next week we'll go into the details of how you can use and create mind maps throughout an entire project from inception to publication. In the last installment I'll get into online and offline tools and some good book resources to help you jump-start mapping your life.

Mapping Inner Space: Learning and Teaching Visual Mapping author: Nancy Margulies,Nusa Maal asin: 1569761388

There are some days when I don't want to stay at home to make art. Sometimes, my friends and I like to gather at each other's homes and make an art day out of it. Usually surrounded by mass piles of paper, magazines, glue sticks, chips and dip and good tunes, we craft and journal the day away. Traveling with art, for me falls into two categories based on distance: short trips and long weekend craft gatherings. And when you travel with art in mind, the first place you need to start preparing for is how you're going to carry all the knick and knacks to your destination. Usually, this means a bag.

I start my travel kit with the container because I tend to go overboard with picking all the things I want to carry with me on trips. Therefore, by starting with the bag first, I can pick and choose just the right amount of pens, paper and other things I love to craft with. Now, I've gone traveling with art using nothing but an old recycled plastic bag, but I've found that it's not very good to carry paper measuring 12x12 or small jars of paint that get lost in the small corners of the bag. Which is why I have a two dedicated bags that I use when I want to carry more art than just my journal, a few pens and my tarot deck. These bags were made for paper-based scrapbooking, but I've found that they work well with any sort of art, as long as you're willing to get creative with how you view the pockets and features.