The lovely people over at Boxclever Press got in contact with me recently, asking if I’d like to trial some of their stationery items, as they thought their stuff would be my kind of thing (spoiler alert, they were right!).
A large and very heavy box arrived at my door a few days later, and oh my goodness! They sent me the incredible Platinum set, which includes sticker books, washi, spare inserts, spare rings, a hole punch, and of course, the planner! To see everything they sent check out my unboxing and review video, because in this blog post I’ll be focusing on the main item, the Busy Days Planner.
Let’s start with the specifics – including the discs and plastic cover, the planner measures 9 x 9 3/4″ (roughly 23 x 25 cm). The pages inside measure 7 1/2 x 9 1/4″ (roughly 19 x 23.5 cm). This is an 18-month planner, so it’s fairly bulky and heavy. For me it would definitely be a desk planner rather than one to carry around. Admittedly it doesn’t weigh as much as my one of my filled kikki.K large planners, but I don’t carry those around either!
If you were used to carrying around a similar disc planner (you know the one I mean 😉 ) or an A5 ringbound this would be no different. And of course, thanks to the disc system, you can add or remove pages as you want to, so if you wanted you could make it as light or as heavy as you wanted!
Let’s talk about what is inside. The first few pages have some normal stuff such as personal information, year at a glance, etc., But there’s also some really nice additions to that such as in the picture above, where you can set out your plans and goals for the year.
Each month is tabbed with a different colour, and at the beginning of the month are the above pages for filling out both practical and ‘normal’ planner things such as birthdays and other events for the month, but also some fun pages for filling out dreams and hopes for the month. In the first photo you can also see the last page of each month, where you have space to write down what happened or what you achieved.
One of my favourite parts of these pages is the little addition between the ‘special days’ and ‘birthdays’ boxes, where something to do with the month has been highlighted for you:
After that we have the month on two pages:
And the week on two pages:
Because Boxclever press is a British company they feature UK dates and holidays on the monthly pages. They have other dates and holidays in there as well, but it’s particularly nice to see UK dates in a planner!
I’m a big fan of the horizontal week on two pages layout too. It’s not too different to be complicated when transitioning from another planner, but it’s still a bit different from the norm!
As you may have noticed by this point, the pages are all printed with colours and graphics. Each month has it’s own theme, and these do not repeat in the next year; so September 2017 is different to September 2018. I love these themes. They’re not too much to be overwhelming, but they’re very pretty. If you like decorating it would be easy to follow the theme and do your own thing, or cover up the graphics if you wanted to.
There are various other inserts at the beginning and end of the year:
Plus a folder in which you could add stickers or documents, and they’ve provided a couple of sheets of stickers to get you started!
The last thing I want to talk about is the quality of the paper, which is just amazing. It’s thick without being too heavy and feels lovely to the touch. I tried out various pens so see if any bled through or showed through on the other side of the page…
And none of them did! (You may be able to see a slight smudge on the LAMY pen test, but that was done by my hand!).
The punch that comes in the Platinum set I tried out on both multiple papers and something that was laminated – and it had zero problems with those and the holes are clean. The punch is also not as heavy as it looks!
Final thoughts? I think this is a great desk or home planner. Personally I wouldn’t carry it around but I suppose if I were used to carrying around an A5 it wouldn’t be a problem. The paper quality is brilliant, and I love the style of all the inserts – particularly all those pretty graphics. My main criticism is that I’m not over keen on the thick plastic cover. Though I appreciate it protects the pages I think it should have the name of the planner written smaller, perhaps just in one corner so that it wasn’t so bold and obvious. If I were using this planner I’d replace the plastic front cover with something pretty that I’d laminated – though I’d still keep the back page; as I said, I do appreciate how much it protects the pages!
So there we go! If you’re interested in the Busy Days Planner then take a look over at their website. There are various options on starter sets from just the Busy Days Planner on its own or all the way up to the Platinum Set. And postage is free over £7, woo!
Thanks for reading, and remember to check out my video unboxing and review of the Busy Days Platinum set to see the washi and sticker books 🙂
Grace ❤
@ms.paperlover
ms.paperlover 