How to care for your Yop & Tom journal or notebook

Thank you for purchasing your Yop & Tom notebook. We hope you’re as excited as we are!

We understand you would like to take care of your journal in the best way possible. Your notebook is a precious item to store your thoughts, plans and creativity. More than just notes, often they contain memories and emotions.

Of course, all our journals are made with the utmost care and attention to detail. However, if there is anything wrong with your journal, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

For more general care instructions, please follow our guidelines below.

Before you use your new journal

Your Yop & Tom journal will come packaged in shrink wrap. Use a knife to make a small incision in the top of the shrink-wrap, taking care not to cut or damage the cover or internal pages.

It is common for PU leather products to have a slight odour. You will find that if you air the product this will soon dissipate. We recommend airing your journal on a flat, dry surface, not in a small container such as a drawer or box.

Due to the binding process, your journal will take a few uses to open up to lay flat on a desk. To aid this process you can break in the spine. To do this, place your journal spine down on a flat surface. Carefully open the front and back cover so they are touching the desk. Taking small sections (approximately 10 - 20 pages) of the notebook slowly fold these down onto both the front and back cover, until the notebook is lying flat, opened in the centre. Repeat this process until the binding has loosened up and can lie flat.

Removing stains and marks

If there is a stain somewhere on the vegan leather cover, try and dab the stain with a damp soft cloth and gently rub it off. Finally dry it with a soft dry cloth. Do not rub the gold foil, this will damage the foiling. No creams, polishes, cleansers, or leather conditioning agents should be applied to any portion of the leather. This may seem obvious, but please do not bleach, iron, tumble dry or dry clean.

Pen Types - bleeding and ghosting

Our journals are made with high quality, FSC Certified paper. We use extra thick paper for our journals to prevent bleeding and ghosting when possible. In general, most fineliners, ballpens, brush pens, fountain pens and most water-based markers hold up well. Some pens with high acid or alcohol contents may still ghost or bleed through. We recommend you always use the pen test page or a page at the back of the journal first to test this if you’re in doubt.

Removing pages

The binding of our journals prevents individual pages from being removed, so we recommend leaving the pages in the journal wherever possible.