Hi friend! Elizabeth here from @thejoyfulsojourn on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, to dish about the winter 2025 subscription box, and share ideas for how to use the new B6 softcover notebook set making it’s debut in the box.
Supplies
Use discount code "JOYFUL10" to save 10% at Archer and Olive!
- Examples today are in B6 softbound notebooks from the winter subscription box, but you can certainly use any journal for these decorative pages!
- Decorative elements like pens, stickers, washi tape, and stamps are excellent for creative play, I used the artisan papers, stickers, and pens from the winter subscription box, along with alpha stamps and functional stickers from Archer & Olive.
- Don’t forget your Tools! Stencils, scissors, tweezers, and glue were used today.
Winter 2025 Subscription Box
Archer & Olive continues to blow me away with the beauty, functionality, and value, of their quarterly subscription box! The quarterly subscription box is just that – a curated box of stationery items that auto-bills and ships every quarter (December, March, June, September). Each box has 7-8 items that spark creativity, and those include at least 2 notebooks exclusive to the box!
The quarterly subscription box also tends to feature never-before-released products, and A&O did not hold back this season with a whopping THREE new products inside: a craft knife, "duo tone" pen set, and B6 softcover notebook set.
The B6 softcover notebook is a standout! With it's portable B6 size, and three slim notebooks with varying layouts (graph, dot grid, and lines), there is a lot of flexibility for usage. Let's dive into how I set them up!
Determining Notebook Usage
The portable size of the softcover set was a huge help in determining how I was going to use the notebooks. Think about the type of information you want to have within arms reach at all times, and go from there. For me, wellness/health tracking, planning, and notes/common-placing, were all topics that I like to keep close.
The next step is identifying which layout - graph grid, dot grid, or lines - works best for each topic area, and assigning a topic for each notebook.
Notebook 1 – the one with the graph grid
When I think of graph grid, I think of an excel sheet: numbers and data! That was a perfect match for my health and wellness tracking subject area.
Decorating the Cover
I used washi tape and stickers to decorate the front of the notebook so it'd be easily identified when flipping through the softcover. Nothing over the top or too fancy, though I do like to lay elements down in sets of 3, and I was careful to do that!
Decorating the 'Title Page'
It can be difficult starting a new notebook, so I always break it in with a decorative first page. With this wellness notebook, I decorated the page with items from the winter sub box: a torn piece of artisan paper and stickers. I used alpha stamps from a previous sub box to spell out 'tracking' and add the year.
Layout Sample
The last step (for now) was adding a quarterly tracker page. I kept this really simple decoratively, relying on the duo tone pens from the sub box and the grayscale calliograph pens.
Vertical monthlies like this one are excellent for tracking multiple things at a glance. With the rounded bullet-tip side of the duo tone pens, you can color code different health areas, and chart them each day without taking up too much space.
The duo-tone dot is a perfect fit inside the 5mm grid spacing, and I know this layout will look so cool when the dots start populating!
Notebook 2 – the one with the dot grid
When I think of dot grid notebooks, I think of bullet journaling and planning, so the dot grid notebook was of course selected as my 'planning on the go' notebook! (See how I'm utilizing each notebook according to it's layout style?)
Decorating the Cover
I used alpha stickers from a recent launch to spell out "plans" vertically down the front of the notebook. This is my favorite of the three covers, and I wanted to be sure to leave the floral design fully visible! Something about this one just looks cool...
Decorating the 'Title Page'
The title page on this one was a labor of love...for myself! One of my favorite looks with washi tape and stickers, is creating boxes (or frames) for them to fill in. It's laborious but there's something so calming about it, and I always love how it turns out.
I used an A&O stencil to make a bunch of boxes, grouping them together by number of letters in the words I'd be forming as the header.
I then laid down the washi tape and stickers in and over each box, trimming away the excess.
This was an awesome test for the sub box craft knife, and it worked beautifully! If you're able to check out my corresponding YouTube video showing these set up, you'll see how the knife makes efficient work of this project.
On top of each box, I laid down an alpha letter to ultimately spell out the header, "on the go planner".
Layout Samples
It's unlikely I'd go super-decorative on these functional planning pages given the 'on the go' nature of the B6 travelers notebook set, but I wanted to share two quick layout ideas for the notebook.
Below you'll see both daily and weekly layout options.
For the daily, I created an hourly time-blocking schedule using the duo-tone pens, and separated it from the day's to-do's with stickers I cut up from the sub box. The weekly layout features a one-page weekly, with weekdays on the left side and brain-dumping, to do's, and currently information on the right page.
One more note about the duo-tone pens from the winter sub box - not only is each pen is dual-tipped with a bullet on one side and fine liner on the other, but the colors are actually different! The bullet tip color is much lighter than the fine tip side, which means you can layer them: bullet tip as a highlight, and fine tip for writing on top! I've utilized that feature in how I added the dates on both examples below.
Notebook 3 – the one with the lines
When I think of lines, I think of journaling and note-taking! Using the lined notebook for common-placing and notes was an easy final choice.
Decorating the Cover
Another simple cover with washi tape and stickers from the sub box!
Decorating the 'Title Page'
With this last notebook I went in a totally different direction with the first page. I grabbed a semi-transparent sheet of paper from the sub box artisan paper collection, and glued it down on the left side like a tip-in (you can do this with any collage paper from A&O!). To reinforce the hold, I added a strip of lace washi from the sub box along the left margin.
I hand lettered the word "noted" in the upper right corner of the first lined page with a calliograph pen, and will leave it just like that. I love the way the scripted word peeks through the semi-transparent paper. This notebook now feels like a secret space with hidden treasures!
Watch on YouTube!
If you'd like to see an overview of everything in the winter 2025 subscription box and catch first-hand how I set up these notebooks, head over to the Archer & Olive YouTube channel where you can get creative with me!
Printable
Do you have a new B6 notebook that you want to use but don't know what for? Check out my printable below fora quick guide on notebook ideas based on layout!
We would love to see how you use our quarterly subscription boxes, so be sure to share your pages on social media by tagging myself and Archer & Olive with your project using: @archerandolive @thejoyfulsojourn @archerandolive.community #AOShare #archerandolive
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