Inside My Midori - How I Stuff and Decorate My Dolldori

Are you a Midori lover? I think this traveler's notebook traditionally known as the Midori, or Dori with a more descriptive prefix, is taking over the planet a little bit. It is definitely for pretty paper lovers...making and/or decorating your own inserts is a great paper stash buster. I stitched one up just for fun so that I could use my beloved matryoshka doll fabric, ceramic doll bead, include some embroidery just for myself on the inside, and now I'm completely in love.

I stitch my dolldori's to be the large cahier size--about 8 inches tall and 5 inches wide when closed

Next time I'll share how I made and decorated my notebooks, but for now, we'll just take a walk through my Dolldori. She's gotten quite fat with creativity, and that's why I love it.

At this point I have five notebooks, a dashboard, and a folder inserted!

Stitching up a fabric dori, which is traditionally made of leather, means it's just not going to be perfect--and I love that too.

Inside I stitched a front pocket and the first notebook is my art journal which will hold some drawing, coloring, and favorite quotes and verses. I used this cupcake scrapbook paper for the cover.

Here is the back of the art journal cover, and the front of notebook insert no.2, a writing and info journal.

Inside cover of notebook no. 2

Here is the back cover of notebook no. 2 and the front cover of notebook no. 3, dedicated to notes and info about my craft projects, Etsy shops, and writing projects. 

Inside cover of notebook no. 3

I made notebook no. 3 with a variety of colored printer paper, and I printed lines on it, so I really like how it went together.

Back cover of notebook no. 3 - front cover of no. 4

I decorated notebook no. 4 with polka dot scrapbook paper and a cutout from a scrapbook pad page, but inside is simply yellow notebook paper. It is a notebook just for lists!

This is the back cover of the list notebook, and the front cover of my dori planner! So here's the truth. I love my dolldori so much, I tend to want to carry it around in my bag. I have a little 2015 art journal style planner  that is just for my bag, but I love having a planner in the dolldori more. I wasn't really going to do that at first, but then I stumbled upon mylifeallinoneplace.com and was able to easily print out the planners for my dori for free. Each document makes a six-month planner booklet, so this one is June-Dec 2015. It has weekly pages, plenty of room to write, and still fits nicely with all the other notebooks.

Inside front cover of dori planner

 

One of the planner pages for an upcoming week--I've already added some stickers

I absolutely wanted a dashboard in my dolldori to be post-it note headquarters. I just laminated it using packing tape. Inside that folder is a six-pocket folder I made from a file folder, and still need to decorate it a little more. Important thing: it all fits!

Back cover of the planner, front cover of the dashboard

Inside the dashboard with the six-pocket folder

Inside back of the dashboard

The inside back cover is embroidered...you know how I believe in wearable art, so my dolldori is wearing it.

The best thing about my dori is how personal and original it is. It's true that you could have a plain leather Midori with standard, plain cover inserts and be happy with that. But, if you want to unleash your creativity on something that you get to carry around, look at, and use all the time, this is a wonderful way to do that. And the notebook inserts will fill up, and you get to decorate more and keep enjoying them and finding new ways to use them. I'll be posting soon about how I make and decorate my inserts--it's not too complicated, but really fun. Back to my stitching!

Eat, Write, Dream, Stitch