Tag: How I Do Things | Page 2 | Rachel’s Reflections

November 26, 2021

Ink Catalog Update

Surprisingly, I’ve got a short post for you today. I’ve written about my ink cataloging methods before. I’ve swabbed far too many inks at this point to change my system. That said, if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t choose my current system.

Having seen many methods, my favorite is the one used by many pen stores: pocket sleeves in a binder. Vanness Pens has a post on Instagram that shows one of their binders of swabs (take a look around the 4:38 mark). The biggest pro to that method — for me — is being able to reorganize the swabs. Beyond that, you can use any paper you want to. And the swabs are more easily portable/storable than the col-o-ring. You can easily use sticky notes or washi tape to note which inks you own, or want to buy.

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Inventory Method Update

November 23, 2021

Rachel

2 Comments

Inventory Method Update

Posted in Fountain Pens

Three and a quarter years ago, I wrote about inventories as part of my fountain pen series. Back then, I was using Google Sheets to keep track of my pen and ink collections. Of course, at the time, I only had 50 total pen records.

As my collection grew, I found that I needed something with more features than Google Sheets. After some searching, I found Airtable. It’s basically a WYSIWYG database. You can customize your databases quite a bit, if you’d like, or you can work with very basic features. You can use most of the features with a free account, but there are additional features and reporting abilities available with a paid account.

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Journey to the Right Layout

September 24, 2021

Rachel

Journey to the Right Layout

Posted in Paper

I always feel a little presumptuous, writing these “here’s how I do things” posts, but you all seem to really enjoy them. So today, I’m sharing my current notebook layout and how it’s evolved into this over the years. I’ve just started a new notebook, and this seemed like the perfect timing for the layout post I’ve been planning.

Note: Please excuse the redactions. Some info I just can’t share with the world.

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Deciding Which Pens to Sell

August 6, 2021

Rachel

6 Comments

Deciding Which Pens to Sell

Posted in Fountain Pens

This seemed like an apropos time to share this post, with the DC Pen Show going on and other pen shows (hopefully) to come later this year. Lots of us sell pens to give us bigger pen show budgets. That’s probably why I’ve seen some posts recently wondering how to decide which pens to sell. If you’ve never sold a pen, the first one can certainly seem like a wrench. And the occasional posts about seller’s regret wouldn’t help that feeling.

I give my sales significant thought, specifically to avoid that horrible feeling. On the hope that it might help someone, I’m sharing how pens end up on my “for sale” list. I love being able to sell a pen to pay for a new one. I want to make sure that I’m very clear that this post is about how to choose what to sell once you’ve decided that you want to sell pens. It’s not about telling anyone that they should sell pens.

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Using All My Pens

July 23, 2021

Rachel

Using All My Pens

Posted in Fountain Pens

I’ve had several people ask me how I use all my pens. I went through a few methods before I settled on the current one. It seems to be working pretty well. I’ve gone through 4, maybe 5, rotations with it so far, and I don’t see myself changing it any time soon.

The base of my strategy is separating my pens into categories. It doesn’t really matter what the categories are, you just don’t want more categories than the number of pens you’ll have in use. I keep 5 pens inked — not including my always inked pens — and split my pens into “Less Expensive” (under $250), “More Expensive” (Over $250), and “Indie Pens” categories.

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