Sit back, relax and get the ideas out of your head and onto paper!

Socrates wrote that inspired ideas originate with the gods and that the gods inspire us not when we are rational, but when we are at peace with ourselves. Einstein did some of his best thinking while sailing with the wind blowing through his wild hair.

The famous graphic designer Milton Glaser believes that drawing can change your brain and so can the search for the right musical note. It is about paying attention to what we are looking at, what we are experiencing; this is what is most challenging and can be most inspiring.

'I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand' ~ ancient chinese proverb.

Digital girl in an analogue world

The first word processor I'd ever seen was introduced to our grade three class. We were told we had to learn to type faster than we could hand write, and as I searched for the right letters, small hands stretched wide across a great expanse of keys upon keys, I wondered how anyone could possibly type faster than they could write on this clunking thing.

Today I type faster than I hand write. And my handwriting is atrocious.

Right now, I'm preparing for a month-long trip wherein electricity will be guarded and cherished as if it were a pile of precious kittens. Read: the laptop shall be used sparingly. I haven't written steadily with a pen on paper since I kept a diary with a lock on it. My grocery lists look like the cat wrote them. I sometimes question the worth of my opposable thumbs.

Enter graph paper, a friend of anyone who was brought up to type rather than hand write. Those neat little squares beg to be filled with perfectly legible handwriting. Also: yellow paper! I will sing the praises of these Rollbahn notebooks for all eternity. Or until I get back to the city to suck up as much electricity as I possibly can.

Along with the Rollbahns, I've armed myself with a couple Delfonics ballpoints—so sleek, so slidey—and some irresistible nautical clips. I count on being thoroughly inspired and struck by bolts of amazingness, since blank notebooks and full pens bring a certain ring of threat—er, promise, to a writer. Anchors aweigh!

Inside Paper-Ya, a quick journey video inside Vancouver's best kept secret

Enjoy!

What's in your Moleskine? Christian Borku from Barcelona, Spain shows us his

So what's in your Moleskine? Show us like Christian did & yours can be featured in our blog :)

PS: Thanks, Christian!

I'm not writing it down to remember it later, I'm writing it down to remember it now, with FIELD NOTES

Inspired by the vanishing subgenre of agricultural memo books, ornate pocket ledgers and the simple, unassuming beauty of a well-crafted grocery list. Always keep one in a pocket, or purse to have ready for your inspired thoughts. Sit back on the beach and jot down a love poem to the sunset, or design your get a way home in the woods. Or simply for making the grocery list and to do list. 48 pages, and durable with saddle-stiched binding.

 

Here's a quote from a satisfied Field Notes user:

"I've tried lots of different small notebooks. Field Notes are the best ones I've found, small and thin enough to really have with you all the time, in a shirt or pants pocket. I've carried them for over a year, and my small notebook is used every day for ideas, shopping lists, account numbers/passwords (coded, of course), design sketches, references.

I am now laminating the covers with simple self-seal lamination sheet to lengthen the life of the cardboard cover."

--John C. Moore

You don't have to be Marco Polo/Christopher Columbus to discover the wonderful world that surrounds you. This can help

Even the mundane can be wondrous with just a bit of imaginations. This book shows readers and journal keepers how to use their imaginations to observe the world around them with the creative perception of an artist or scientist. Illustrator Keri Smith’s book How to Be an Explorer of the World encourages readers to be curious about their environment and to see the world with new eyes. With 59 explorations, you'll surely be groomed into a great explorer!

How to Be an Explorer of the World gets our two thumbs up and is our Pick Of The Day.

We're often asked what sort of stuff people do with a Moleskine notebook. We're gonna let their work do the talking...

Notebooks with the same features as the present Moleskine notebooks were a popular standard in 19th and 20th century Europe, handmade by small French bookbinders who supplied the stationery shops of Paris. As documented by many art collections and museums, in the late 19th to early 20th centuries, these notebooks became a prominent creative tool for avant-garde artists who enjoyed drawing and writing outdoors, putting down impressions on paper, painting from life in the streets and cafés, and capturing extemporary scenes, ideas, and emotions.

Among artists who used similar black notebooks were Oscar Wilde, Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway and Henri Matisse.

The present Moleskine notebook is specifically fashioned after Bruce Chatwin's descriptions of the notebooks he used in his travels. The name itself of “Moleskine” is a nickname that Chatwin uses in one of his most celebrated writings, The Songlines (1986).

(Source: Wikipedia)