I was provided by May Designs with the notebook shown below, to facilitate my review. As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

It’s always fun getting something personalized.  When we do reviews for personalized products, I almost always do them for my kids.  (In part, that’s because I have at least one child with an uncommon name, while mine can be found on almost any personalized item currently being manufactured.)  This time I decided to do a little pampering for me and have this special notebook made for me.

May Designs is probably best known for planners.  The planners are made just like the notebook you’ll see here, except the pages inside are — of course — planner pages.  They’re beautiful!  And I really love that they’re so compact.  But we all already had our planners for this time period and I didn’t need to double up, so I opted for just a “blank” notebook. That way I can use it in tandem with my current planner.

How to Design Your May Book

See, here’s how it works: You visit MayDesigns.com.  You click on “notebooks.” And then you start picking out your elements.

The first thing you’ll choose is your print.  There are dozens and dozens to choose from.  Once you’ve chosen your print, you’ll be taken to a new page where you can customize the remaining elements.

You’ll be asked if you want a custom monogram and, if so, what color?  What font?  And what shape should the background be?

Then you’ll choose your inside pages.  There are eighteen different options (if I counted them correctly — a bit tricky to do while scrolling down the page — and not counting that the same setup is currently available in two different date ranges because of the season).  You can preview each one so you know what they are.

It’s worth heading over there and checking them all out just to see them.  There are some pretty cool options.  A lot of organizational stuff: an agenda (in several different setups, including an academic option), a menu planner, a baby diary (includes things like a feeding chart and a place to track diaper changes), and a “bump” diary.  There are creative options, too, like a kids’ coloring book and a calligraphy practice book.  And a handful of basics: totally blank pages, graph/grid pages, dot pages, and lined pages.

I went with the grid paper because I think it’s really versatile.

It’s really, really easy to use the online notebook builder.  You can go back and forth and swap things out as often as you like, and just not add it to your cart until you’re happy with it.

All of these notebooks are about the size of a half-sheet of printer paper.  (They’re 5×8, so a tad smaller.)  The covers are canvas.  They look nice, and they feel even better!  And you can see in this picture how the binding is actually stitched:

These are just really good quality notebooks.  Well, okay, not just good quality.  They’re also quite lovely to look at.

And I love when companies are attentive to small details.  There’s even a place to mark your name inside the cover in case your notebook ever gets lost.

Which one is your favorite?

*Those pens are Papermate Flair pens.  I first heard about them from another blogger and they’re my new favorite.  Felt-tip pens with amazing, vivid colors, but little-to-no bleedthrough.