[stationery] in which I talk about my current hyperfixation

[kaberett]

(Sorry in advance about the inevitable linkrot in this one.)

WASHI TAPE: is basically fancy masking tape, i.e. paper tape with a low-tack adhesive that can be easily repositioned... but make it decorative.

There are semi-reasonable uses for washi tape, most of which are (to my mind) "wrapping presents", though it is apparently also very popular in Scrapbooking.

And then there is the whole [gestures] bullet journal... ecosystem.

In this context, people like to talk about (i) "functional" wash tape (printed with calendars/months/days/checkboxes/...) and (ii) Read On For 16 Amazing BuJo Hacks Using Washi (you can tell from the number of articles there are, most of which desperately repeat variations on "use it as decoration", that there... are in fact limited actual uses for the stuff).

My personal use of the stuff is mostly not strictly decorative (I tried it; could not make it work for me), but definitely has non-trivial Decorative Elements.

(I don't use "functional" washi tapes; I enjoy messing around with scripts and ink for days and dates, and I would much rather Just Make Myself Bullet Points than faff about getting tape aligned right, even if washi tape did take fountain pen ink well, which it mostly doesn't.)

Usage the first is "sticking ephemera into notebook", e.g. I stuck the ticket for my PhD graduation into my notebook using mt ex phenocryst (search for "phenocryst" and you'll actually get taken to an example of it; see thin sections); an Owl Feather I got to take home from an Owl Experience last year with a British birds washi tape (though annoyingly she's updated the design and kept the same name -- my version does not include the zoomed-in heads); etc.

Usage the second I haven't done in a while but am Seriously Contemplating Reviving: using 5mm washi (as opposed to 15mm, which is standard) to frame/emphasise text. In particular my current bujo usage includes making occasionally lengthy inline notes about plants/exercise/Life In General, and while I stick the relevant page numbers in the "index" (insert That's Not What That Word Means rant here) now that I am referring back across several years' worth of notebooks I am coming to realise that it might be nice to have "whole not-todo-list thing set off with a strip of thin washi to make it more immediately visible when returning". Could I "just" draw wee borders in for myself? Sure, in theory, but Brain Says No (what if I get it "wrong"??? what if I commit to something that is TOO saturated and TOO loud and TOO distracting from the text it's supposed to be making easier to read??? -- put some washi over it, says every single 16 Amazing BuJo Hacks article on the internet...). Current frustration: there does not appear to be anywhere on the internet either 5mm washi with seedlings arranged in a vertical sense, or 5mm washi with electrocardiogram-esque representation of heart beat. Frivolous things I am contemplating: tiny rainbow dots.

Usage the third: falls firmly in the category of Alex Reinvents Planners. BY WHICH I MEAN: one of the things I spent almost two decades of Consciously Paying Attention baffled about, from school planners on through diaries I bought myself, was why? there were all? of these mini-calendars and Which Month Is It and so on and so forth? details? on every page? WHY is this useful? HOW is it useful???

... and funnily enough in the course of Turning A Blank Notebook Into Something I Can Usefully Refer Back To I have... discovered... the point... of many of these features...

... but in my latest reorganisation of how I keep my daily notes organised I wound up without a convenient place to stick a great big THIS IS WHAT MONTH THIS IS marker on most pages. And it turns out that's actually really useful information to have trivially available when I'm flicking back looking for something. So I have realised that the solution is... washi tape!

In the first instance, I decided I'd use an existing tape, retrofit it from mid-April to the beginning of the year, and see how I got on with it. There was one tape in particular in my stash that struck me as useful: narrow motifs with a long repeat, so it's quite a while before you start seeing the same images come up again, and the wee pictures fit neatly into the margin of the page where I wouldn't ordinarily be writing anyway, as opposed to taking up This Could Be Useful Though real estate.

... whereupon I promptly discovered I liked it enough that found myself going "... okay, but what if... seasonal?"

Which is why I now have in my possession mushrooms & toadstools (not sure about the pink background but meets all my other criteria), with British tree leaves on the way.

(Annoyingly the flowers I've been using so far this year and Particularly Appreciating... are not something I can find any remaining trace of online. Rational brain is aware that washi designs undergo A Lot Of Churn so even if The Right Thing isn't available now there will almost certainly be acceptable alternatives in future. Emotional brain is VERY CONCERNED that TEN METRES OF TAPE that I'm using ONE CENTIMETRE AT A TIME won't be enough.)

My utter inability to find anything that, within these constraints and this schema, I Like Enough for winter... is why I am taking photos of a variety of holly cultivars, and have open tabs containing e.g. morphological illustrations of Ilex species courtesy of researchgate. I am not at all convinced that the multi-step process of "get good enough at watercolour to illustrate a bunch of recognisably different holly cultivars and species" followed by "order a minimum of 100 rolls with custom print" is in any way shape or form something that might be described as a "good plan", but I have established that you can get sticky-backed washi paper that can get put through printers and then sliced up, and I am entertaining this concept more seriously than I might ideally like.

Meanwhile I've accidentally got three tapes picked out for a possible black-and-white variation to use when I have, you know, finished my current 30m of tape, good grief -- not wholly convinced about the last one, the snow flakes, but have convinced myself that "bats" is a perfectly reasonable black-and-white potential for spring (given that they usually reemerge in March). Alas the best one I've found so far is still not actually Good Enough, because I am ridiculously picky.

... and, yes, it's this use-case that's encouraging me to fantasise about ridiculously overengineered decorative tape dispensers. So that I'm not winding up upsetting myself by cutting the wee tape lengths for month markers at a variety of inconsistent angles...