I might not be going back to school, but I’m most certainly taking advantage of the fact that there are a whack of sales happening this month on pens, notebooks and other awesome things.

You can’t go wrong with a good back-to-school sale. Sometimes you have do a bit of work to find the best deal, but in my world, I’m first and foremost looking for the cutest, functional pieces of stationery. I happened to find everything at Staples, while we were shopping for a paper shredder.

Pens

I grabbed a pack of BiC permanent fineliners, and was so excited by colours like fandango pink and blue sky blue (in the entire pack, the latter is my favourite colour). I purchased these to use in my bullet journal but quickly discovered they bleed a lot. Luckily I’ve been able to make use of some cardstock to cover up the bleed so that it doesn’t detract from the drawings/designs on the other side. Could be good for a lot of other things…but probably not for the pages of a bullet journal.

Stencils

I happened to see these hanging on a peg wall in the pen aisle. I’ve recently taken a liking to sketching out my lettering (which is usually done in a bubble lettering style) but I wanted to see if I’d prefer to use stencils and perhaps invest in a few other kinds down the road. There were four in a pack and they cost less than six dollars but I have to say I’m not as much of a fan of these as I thought I would be. There are a few sizes I’d prefer to use, but overall these stencils tend to create lettering that’s quite uneven.

Notebooks

You can never have too many notebooks! These little guys were an incredible deal (three for $4.98) from Hilroy and they have the cutest designs on the front to boot. The one downside is you can’t really fold the pages behind without messing up the shape of the notebook, but the size is just so convenient — it was too hard to pass these up.

Outside of this trip, my husband actually brought home more washi tape for me. The tape is made by 3M and I have to say they’ve got some of the best washi tape going! One of my other favourite places to snag washi tape at is on Granville Island at a store called Paper-Ya, though a few of the rolls I did purchase earlier this month were not transfer-proof.

Are you taking advantage of all the back-to-school sales to stock up on your bullet journal supplies? Let me know what you’re buying in the comments section below!