My custom Van der Spek order - by Anita

After writing my previous post, my custom standard Van der Spek arrived more quickly than expected and I am SO delighted with it! Petra kindly sent me some photos to include in this post.

The outside has a wonderfully pebbly texture in the red Janet Leather and I love the contrast with the smoother burgundy inside. It's funny how much I like the burgundy as I really wasn't sure at first when I received my leather samples.

Janet Leather red (108) with light grey ostrich stitching

Janet Leather burgundy, light grey ostrich stitching, 25mm silver rings, extra pen loop, big back pocket, no stiffener

Once I'd completed my order, I did consider asking if I could instead have matching stitching inside and out, instead of the contrasting light grey. I wasn't sure if it would work, but I am so glad that I didn't change as I am a little obsessed with it! Maybe that's a little strange, but the stitching is beautiful and the contrast works well with both colours in my opinion.

Before I got to the checkout, I had a good think about buying a zipper compartment, but I only really need a zipped pocket when I use my binder as my wallet, which isn't very often. Aha, I then remembered that I still have my trusty plastic pencil case that I hole punched (7 years old and still going strong).

The only thing that I didn't think about was that the thicker Janet Leather with the big back pocket means that it didn't initially lie flat, which was a surprise. However, in the short amount of time that I've been using it (since 15th August), it has already started to improve and squashing it down a little helps too.

I just removed the contents from my Ascot and plonked them straight in.

I haven't started to properly use the pockets yet, but this one at the back is perfect for holding my Hobonichi stencil.

I've never owned a personal sized binder with a big back pocket, but I really think that they should all have one as it's so handy for storing A4 paperwork.

Another consideration for when I was ordering was whether or not I wanted to move up to 30mm rings. In the end, I decided against it as I wasn't sure how heavy it would make the binder, and if I really need all that extra capacity. I'm glad that I went for 25mm as my binder holds a surprising amount more than my Ascot.

You can see here the difference in ring sizes:
25mm in standard size VdS
23mm in the Ascot

To check the difference in capacity between the two, I filled the Ascot up with paper and then moved this into the VdS. You can definitely see that there is room for quite a bit more in the VdS.

Another comparison that I did was to completely fill both, remove the contents and measure how high the inserts were: - the Ascot had 14mm vs. 27mm in the VdS!

The VdS is slightly larger and wider than the Ascot, but I'm very happy as between the larger ring size and big back pocket, it consequently holds so much more.

View from the top of VdS

View from bottom of the VdS (profile quite slim without the big back pocket)

As my overall plan was to get back again to owning one binder, I have now sold the Ascot and it's currently on its way to a wonderful new home in the US. Ironically, my work colleague then gave me back a mini Kensington that I gifted to her many years ago, so for a short while I was then back up to three binders. Whilst the mini Kensington is lovely, it is also on its way to a new home in the US.

I've never named any of my Filofaxes before, but as this binder is such a special one, I started to think about what I would call her. How to choose? Some of the names that I considered were Binky (Death's horse from Terry Pratchett's Discworld books), Valentina (Tereshkova, first woman in space) or Yuri (Gagarin, first person in space). However, none of them really stuck. And then a perfect name came to me whilst writing this post... My VdS is a real TARDIS as for its size, it's much bigger on the inside, like Doctor Who's time machine. I'm a bit of a Doctor Who fan, so I then remembered an episode that I loved called the Doctor's Wife (written by Neil Gaiman), where the TARDIS is placed in a human body and the woman's name is Idris. I also like the actor, Idris Elba, so we have a winner!

Finally, I'd like to say a huge thank you again to my friend that helped me raise the funds to buy Idris, and to everyone at Van der Spek for making me such a wonderful organiser.
Further Information.

Web Site: http://www.vdsshop.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/VDSleathergoods
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/vanderspekorganiserfans/
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