#3 September Studies: Black Ink or Bust?

Welcome to the third post in the Createyou86 September Studies Blog Series.  This post may seem trivial, but i can promise you that I am guilty, and for most planners it is a pretty. serious. discussion.

Let’s start at the beginning, two years ago when i started planning, many of the posts about owning a Filofax were about how terrible the paper quality was, and what pen you should buy so that you can avoid bleed through, or shadowing.  At this point there was “pretty planning”, but it wasn’t as prevalent as it is today.  When i received my first Filofax I was overjoyed, I could now be apart of an exclusive community that nobody else (in my family or locally) knew about, or cared to know about (that i was aware of anyway.)  That first Filofax was a red Personal Domino, and it came with a red Papermate Inkjoy (that pen is still working 2 years, and 3 months later) which i had never to my knowledge tried using before.  I loved it!  I loved how smoothly it glided across the page (with no skipping at all).  At this point i knew nothing about pens, and had no idea what skipping was. I loved how vibrant the color was, but soon things changed.
Some time into my new Filofax addiction (let's just call it what it really is!) I began to explore other options.  I went this route because red was starting to get old, and i felt like i couldn't see my planning as well as i might with a different color.  PaperMate has so many different types of pens, and colors, and tip sizes that i was starting to become overwhelmed when i went to Target, or The Dollar Tree (at this point i have an entire pencase full of different colored pens even specifically from PaperMate because i did a product review, and pen test for them.)  After testing, and reviewing their product i decided that i still LOVED the product, but i didn’t need color except for special occasions.

I decided that i would stick with black pen only….

I am also that person that went to Target to buy the PaperMate Inkjoy 18 COLOR pen set….

Now let's be clear.  I AM using colored pens in planners other than my daily planning, but i don’t use them often enough that i will be running out of that eighteen set pack ANYTIME soon.  You can check out several of the planners that I use in my previous post (Rigid Planning), and below are a couple of my most recent layouts.

Let us know in the comments below if you use colored pens/pencils for your planning, or black pen!