Watch me create a handmade Happy Notes using two plain A5 notebooks with really really cool covers. Since I first tried the Happy Planner system I am in love with disc bound notebooks which are my favorite way of keeping all my collections in place. For bullet journaling and general planning I religiously use a Hobonichi but then again I needed some versatile way of managing my steady collections and dividing my various projects by category. it does not help that I am so chaotic and multi passionate. I finally found peace with the disc bound / Happy Planner system and I am making my own pages and covers to avoid breaking the bank. 😉
In fact, most of the times, I paint my own intuitive art covers and make refills out of the unused pages of my son’s study notebooks. You can see some of them here. In this case however, I could not resist those beautiful covers and, truth be told, I needed an A5 notebook to house my bullet journal collections. The mini Happy Planner dimensions are pretty cute and versatile but are simply not big enough for this purpose. The process is the same though and you can definitely get the idea from the video in case you want to make your own.
As you may have noticed I combined the two plain notebooks into one Happy Notes journal but you could very well make two if you wish. Myself, I like to have as few books as possible and, at least for the time being, I use a Hobonichi as my bullet journal to hold all my planning and tracking in one-book-a-year and this Happy Notes to house all my steady collections that I know will be relevant for more than a year. And what’s more, the disc bound system allows me to move pages around, add or subtract as needed without confusion or challenges of the OCD type. This one stays exclusively at home. Using the frankenplanning technique I can keep my personal and business collections separate yet in distinct sections while still having them all in one book. After many trials and experimentations with bullet journaling in various notebooks, and, well, getting a little fed up and tired of setting up page after page and moving collections from one book to the next, this combo is finally the right balance of versatility and efficiency.
