Review: Born Pretty Cartoon Notebook--Plus, How To Make Your Own Swatch Book

I've reviewed plenty of Born Pretty Store nail products on this blog, but did you know the make non-beauty products too? They sell everything from clothes to kitchen supplies to phone cases. I was recently given the opportunity to try out some of their stationery and I picked out this cute little notebook. I've been wanting to create a swatch book for a while now and this seemed like it would be the perfect fit!

When you order the notebook, you receive a random design (although you can leave a note with your order if you really have your heart set on one of the designs), so thankfully they are all adorable! Mine has a bear on it and there's also cat, panda and pig designs.

The notebook is nice quality, especially considering that it's priced at under five dollars. It's made of a faux leather-type material and the bear on the front is attached to the notebook as a separate piece, so he could serve as a pocket for notes or as a place to tuck a pen or pencil. The cover and binding both feel pretty sturdy. Inside, the pages have lots of cute little drawings on them and there's a variety of page types: grid paper, unruled, lined, diary pages, etc.

I don't know for sure how many pages are inside, but there seems to be plenty of paper and the spine is 3/4" thick. The notebook dimensions are about 4x6 inches, so it's big enough to write comfortably in, but still small enough to stash in your purse.

As for the swatch book idea, I can't remember where I saw it originally, but it's really cool and easy to do. Just put a small swatch stripe of each polish on a page. You can organize your book by color, brand, finish--whatever makes the most sense to you. Label each swatch with a name, let it dry for a while (the pages in this notebook are thick enough that I didn't have any bleeding through), then repeat until you have your entire stash cataloged in one handy reference guide! To give you an example, here's the page I made for the brand Happy Hands:

If you would like to purchase anything from Born Pretty, they have provided a 10% off code for Nailed readers below:

Disclosure: This product was provided to me for my honest review. For more information, please see my disclosure policy.