44 AUTUMN//WINTER 2017 One product that seems to embrace all of this perfectly is the Busy Days Planner from Boxclever Press because it combines the worlds of planning, scrapbooking and journaling. As well as a week-to-view diary, the planner also includes pages for each month, to note ‘Hopes, plans and dreams’ and ‘That was the month that…’ with space to record memories, goals and plans. The planner has been designed so that users can customise it as much or as little as they want, adding photographs and mementos directly into the planner, as well as their own cover design. Because it is bound with a flexible disc binding, users can easily remove and add pages.  At the recent Home and Gift Harrogate I noticed that Rachel Ellen, the well-known card publisher, had several products on her stand that encouraged users to personalise their notebooks by including sheets of lettering, stickers and fun images, and an organiser with a cover to which you could add your name. Likewise with colouring, which in 2015 became a huge craze linked to creativity and de-stressing, and took the stationery world by storm. WHSmith cited it in its half-year figures as one of the major areas of sales growth for the period for the business overall. And while it was colouring books to start with, two years on we are now seeing colour-in card packs, pencil cases, posters and backpacks. The customisation trend is encouraging retailers to broaden their product offer and many are starting to stock chalk markers, glass markers, washi tape and various stickers so they have a selection of products available for use on all sorts of surfaces including paper, glass and balloons. Retailers are seeing this as a way of engaging with customers, and Hobbycraft has a monthly blog which focuses on different projects. I’ve spotted two blog posts this year related to personalising stationery – one for notebooks and one a wedding scrapbook. They specify what accessories you need to create the finished article and then how to do it. Personalisation takes it one step further, and is a strong trend in its own right. Once upon a time personalisation involved a white sticky label with your name written on it or, if you were very flash, a DYMO tape where you squeezed the letters out as evenly as possible. Now it can be anything from buying a product online and having your name or initials added, to having photographs printed on the covers. Leuchtturm1917 offers personalised notebooks, in a choice of two fonts, one modern and one more traditional. As a German company, that can be an expensive option because of the postage costs, but in the UK various businesses offer this service, such as Prelogram and Pen Heaven. Leuchtturm1917 also runs in-store promotion days, offering a free print service with each purchase. Stone Marketing i like birds Donkey Smiggle Rachel Ellen