It’s been almost three months since I moved into my Mini Amazona Filofax and I’m still enjoying it so I wanted to give you a quick update on my progress!  Firstly, I mentioned in my last post that I wasn’t happy with my pen, the nib was just too fine and it felt too short to hold comfortably.  My mum showed me her Zebra Expandz Ballpen and it fitted perfectly in my Filofax!

It’s not very expensive to buy (check it out on Amazon here) and it comes in a range of colours – mine is an orange/gold colour.  When expanded it feels like a regular pen and the nib is thicker than the Filofax Mini Barley one.  I’m not an expert on pens (more an enthusiast!), but I’d say it was about a medium nib, where as the Filofax one is more fine. I particularly like the Art Deco style lines on the clip, as I’m a fan of all things Deco:

My next issue was whether I could train it to lie flat.  I haven’t had it sitting under books or anything, but every time I open it up, I bend it back slightly on the spine, which means it will now lie open.  Not quite flat yet as you can see below, but I’m happier now that it doesn’t close on me:

I’ve found this Filo slightly harder to personalise, I think because of the smaller format. Finding existing cards, etc to punch and fit is hard and I haven’t got around to making any pages with my hole punch yet, but I did find this funky letter ‘C’ at my local Lorimers store, which fits perfectly in the front:

One other thing I wanted to share with you is my nail polish swatches.  I’ve been into doing my nails since my early teens and I often go home from the shops with a new nail polish similar to one that I’ve already got.  In an effort to stop me buying so many new polishes, I decided to swatch them onto quick reference cards to keep in my Filofax.  I cut out some cards that fit neatly into a Pocket size clear envelope and were also small enough to fit into the back pocket of a Mini and painted a small circle of each colour.  I haven’t ‘needed’ to buy a new polish for weeks!:

And my final update for this week is a bit of a tease… I recently found a Radley organiser, which fits Filofax Mini sized inserts, in a charity shop and just had to snap it up!  It has very tiny rings, so it will be like a slimline Mini, but I can’t wait to try it out.  Has anyone else used a Radley organiser before?  I’d love to see pics!

One other thing I’d love to know, which I’m sure someone who reads my blog will know – does a Mini with really big rings exist?  I’m still loving the Mini size, but I wish it was a bit chunkier (how I’ll cope with the Radley I don’t know!)!

Happy filofaxing, Cat

Find a bargain Mini Filofax on Amazon here