This week has been one full of planning new products for my shop. So far I've only sold books with plain blank pages, but as I've begun to keep a bullet journal of sorts myself I've grown to appreciate the dotted grid. It's not as distracting as lines or grid if you sometimes like to doodle as well as write, but it still gives you that little guideline that's super helpful if your handwriting tends to slope a lot.

- book 9,7x18x0,8cm / 3.8"x7.1"x0.3"
- pouch 15,5x26,5cm / 6.1"x10.4"
- 84 light yellow pages with a dotted grid pattern

This little purple set of long stitch notebook and a matching linen drawstring pouch is now for sale at a special sample sale price of 15€+shipping sold. The quality of work is as impeccable as always, but the materials are a bit flimsier than I'd use on my regular priced products. The pale yellow pages may have some bleed through if you use a marker on them, but that's about it!

This is a one of a kind item; the dotted grid long stitch notebooks I'm about to make will have different proportions and materials, so if you're a big fan of purple, this is your one and only shot.

One thing that will remain the same is that I'll be making drawstring pouches for the new notebooks as well. I used to make these pouches for my Coptic bound wedding guest books (and the occasional notebook, too) for storing cards and photos along with the notes from the guests, but the pouch works just as well holding some journaling essentials at hand.

I'm a minimalist when it comes to my bullet journal (just one pen, no frills!), but I know many people have tons of different pens, washi tapes and stamps they like to use on their journals, so maybe this pouch will come handy keeping the necessities close. Works perfectly as a travel journal, too, using the bag for storing pens as well as ephemera along with the book itself.

I generally like to stock books to suit many tastes and price ranges, but I'm well aware the lower price range is doing quite poorly after I've had to raise prices. The shipping costs keep going up so high I can't raise my shipping costs any higher without losing even more customers than I do with the price raise on the products themselves. I'm hoping these skinny and light long stitch notebooks will help fill the gap a bit (though I'm not promising you a bargain if the price tag is the one and only thing you consider!), but I do hope I can come up with other papery products in the more affordable range of things. Ideas are welcome, as always!

As I'm finalising the design on my new long stitch notebooks, I'd like to end this post by asking you a few questions. What are your journaling habits? Do you prefer lines to blank pages, or are you a fan of the dotted grid? If you're a bullet journal person, do you have a preference regarding the number of pages? I personally don't like my daily planner type of journal too heavy or thick, but as I move towards the diary type of journal writing the more pages I'd like it to have. Many people appear to have different books for different purposes - what's the blank book you personally appreciate the most in your life?