Philofaxy Meet up / London Stationery Tour!

I am an avid reader of the Philofaxy blog and when I saw that Steve (from Philofaxy) was organising a meet up in London I was straight on the case, emailing him to book my place. Do you remember Georgie from Georgie@Home who I interviewed earlier on in the year? Well, Georgie lives not far from me at all so I emailed Georgie and asked if she wanted to come with me and I was delighted when she said yes! London is only a 45 minute train journey from us (about an hour away if you count driving to the station) but I really don't go that often.

So the day finally came around and Georgie and I were so excited. You know when you are excited about something, nothing seems to go right? Well I couldn't decide what to wear (as it happens I ended up taking my big coat as it had been raining all week, only to have to carry it around with me on the hotest day in a long time, typical!) and to top it off my phone decided not to wake me up with the usual alarm. Why is it all week I had been up at 6.30 and then come this most exciting day I was fast asleep so it was all rush rush rush. I picked Georgie up from her house and we got to the Station on time to get the 8.30 train so from there on we could relax into our day.

We had a good old natter on the train on the way there and I had the privellege of seeing some of the things Georgie has been creating but I won't spoil it for you, you will just have to wait until Georgie unveils it for you, although she did show it off in the vlog we did which you can view at the bottom of this post. A rather nice chap sitting opposite us very kindly took our photo.

We arrived in London with lots of time to spare so being the tea drinking fanatics that we are we went for a spot of shopping at Fortnum and Masons. Did we buy anything? Well yes we made a few little purchases, mainly tea and naughty treats funnily enough. We had a great time and could have spent a lot longer, as it was we ended up lingering far too long in the Stationery department not realising that the time was getting away from us. I have to say though, whilst I loved the food hall, I was some what disappointed with the stationery. As it is such a unique store, bringing such varied items from accross the World, I was expecting some knock you down amazing stationery but no. The quality of the items was good, for example, really high end paper but I was expecting something abit more unique and quirky I think. And as for Filofaxes, well there was hardly any. Very disappointing which is a shame.

So we made our way accross London to Oxford Circus where we were greeted by two lovely ladies as we were exiting the tube station and they recognised us from YouTube which was great. They were so friendly and welcoming and most importantly they knew the way to the restaurant!

Outside the restaurant (Vapiano), we met Steve and then very shortly afterwards we were joined by Pamela otherwise know for her 'Roses in December' blog. So we went inside, upstairs in the far corner, tucked nicely out of the way so we could get down to the business of talking about planners! As Steve says in his write up of the day, there was a lot of fondling, smelling, ooohing and ahhing over the various planners that everyone had bought along. I didn't know what to take and actually I did kind of regret taking my A5 as it was just so darn heavy to lug around for the day, now I know why I don't do it on a regular basis. Steve had a back pack full of planners, how he did that I do not know!

After all that fondling, I have now decided that whilst I do like my Filofaxes I really want a Gillio Mia Cara, but looking at the price on their website I don't think that is going to happen any time soon. Actually I don't think that will happen at all but I do know that I would like to get a really nice leather Filofax in Personal size but I am still undecided on which one. Don't get me wrong I like my Personal Domino and Personal Saffiano but after fondling the leather ones at the meet up, I really want a touchy feely leather one! I do really like the Filofax Original in Nude, I think I do from the photos, I haven't yet been able to see one in person yet which I was kind of hoping to do whilst we were in London but none of the shops we went to had one. Oh and don't get me started on the Kate Spade planners. One of the ladies had hers with her and it was just beautiful, you could really feel the quality of it and I just wanted to hold it. I did and I am not ashamed to admit it either!

Everyone was so friendly and welcoming and it was really such a wonderful time, we didn't just talk about planners and stationery, we did end up deviating chatting about various things and we never  ran out of conversation and it was like we had known each other for a long time. The food was amazing too and really good value for money, I definitely reccommend a trip to Vapiano if you are in that part of town.

So the time was very quickly escaping us, some people had to say their goodbyes but before they did we had a line up of all the planners for their own little photo shoot!

The remaining of us decided to go on a bit of a shopping trip, well it would be rude not to wouldn't it! One of the meet up gang emailed us in advance of the trip a graphic of possible stationery shops that we could visit. Unfortunately we didn't have time to visit them all which is a shame but that is something to look forward to on another London trip!

Image creator unknown - if it is you please let me know so that I can credit you or remove if you would prefer!

So the first stop was Rymans which was dead opposite the restaurant (a different Rymans to the one listed in the graphic above). I made a little purchase of a sketch book because as you know I do tend to get through them and I am always on the look out for a good one! From there we went to John Lewis who had some pretty cool stuff. I wasn't massively excited as it was all stuff I had seen before, it was well known brand named stuff which you can pretty much get everywhere, not that there is anything wrong with it, just that, I had kind of seen it all before, some nice bits but not enough to encourage me to part with my pennies!

Next stop was Prints at St Christopher's Place. It was a really lovely little shop, everything was beautifuuly laid out and colour co-ordinated, although I didn't really have a good look around, at this point it was really warm and the little shop was just too hot for me so I stood outside with Steve and had a sip of my water! It is definitely one to check out on a returning trip.

From there we went on to Selfridge's and it was here that I saw a beautiful Cross display. I recently wrote a blog post on She's Eclectic blog about my Cross pen and here in Selfridge's they had loads of them but most importantly for me they had the fountain pen to match the biro that I have. I would love to own that one day and at £65 it will be a one day, who knows maybe I might be lucky to receive it as a Christmas present or something but I was practically drooling on the glass looking at it! Selfridge's also had a really lovely Kate Spade collection. I have seen Kate Spade items all over instagram and in various videos so it was really nice to be able to see it in person. I really can see why so many people love the stationery items, the bow paper clips are just gorgeous!

We had to say good bye to some more folks so Georgie and I went with two of the girls headed to the Paperchase store in Tottenham Court Road. I had heard so many things about this giant haven of stationery and it did not disappoint! The ground space of the store has got to be at least four times the size of the store that I go to in Cambridge and then it had three floors (Cambridge only has one floor!). It wasn't big it was humungus! The only thing is that at this point I was getting really tired and my feet were killing me so for me at this point in the day the store was just a bit too big to cope with, I need to go back again at the start of a shopping trip rather than the end. I did really enjoy the browsing though and came away with a pretty letter writing set that was in the sale. I got to see the Filofax Temperley which was interesting. I really like the inside layout in as much as it is not just a planner but it has more of a purse or clutch bag layout to it, I just wasn't taken by the exterior design. If the exterior was more to my taste that would certainly be on my wish list. I did however fall in love with a little Paperchase own brand planner which is on my one day list too! The picture I took isn't the greatest quality though I am afraid but it is the one in the middle or you can see it on this link.

And then the shop was closing so it was time to head home, mind you it was 7 pm by this point and I was well and truly flagging. Unfortunately for us there were problems with the trains so we ended up having to wait for ages and when the train came it was really crowded so we ended up having to sit seperately, I think we were just so tired by this point that we just didn't care!

We had a really lovely day and the next day my feet did ache! I would totally reccommend going to one of the Philofaxy meet ups if you can, it was thoroughly enjoyable and I would definitely go to another one. It was lovely to meet Steve, the person behing Philofaxy and I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for organising the day and also for everything that he does for us with the blog and other social media.

If you would like to watch our VLOG of the day you can do so here...