On my recent USA trip I visited these places:

• Las Vegas, Nevada
• Road trip around Arizona and Utah visiting national parks
• Portland, Oregon
• Seattle, Washington
• Anchorage, Alaska
• Vancouver, Canada

I shared my detailed itinerary in this post: USA Itinerary: West Coast cities and National Parks of Utah and Arizona (3 weeks). But in this post, let’s talk about planner supplies shopping!

I exercised great restraint (largely due to the very poor AUD to USD exchange rate) and only ended up buying 3 things:

1. An ARC A5 discbound notebook (can never have too many of these and the paper is so smooth and bright white)
2. Sharpie S Note creative markers (similar colours to the Zebra Mildliners but these only have a chisel tip not dual ended like the Mildliners)
3. Pilot G2 Gel pens 0.7mm

The point of the holiday was to visit the national parks so I’m not surprised I didn’t find much. Most of the nice stationery stuff is all online nowadays.

Thanks to everyone who emailed me store recommendations. I wasn’t able to reply to each person but here is a list of shops people recommended that I wasn’t able to visit:

• Oblation Papers (Portland)
• Little Otsu (Portland)
• Paper Hammer (Seattle)
• The Container Store
• Daiso

Also thanks to the people who recommended I download the Joann’s and Michaels apps before visiting for some coupons. I’ve shared some photos from the shops I visited later in this post if you also don’t live in the USA and are trying to decide which stores are worth it, as some of them are a bit far out of the cities.

ARC A5 discbound notebook

I had been hoping to find the aqua Martha Stewart discbound notebooks but didn’t see them anywhere. It looks like they aren’t sold online anymore either so I wonder if they’re discontinued 🙁

Read more:Why I use the Arc Planner instead of binders

Sharpie S Note creative markers

I was hoping these would be dual tip but they’re only a chisel tip.. a small chisel tip. If you like using 3mm grid dotted notebooks these would be perfect. As you can see they don’t fill an entire 5mm grid, but you could do a double underline instead with the thin chisel tip.

I think the colours are nicer than the Zebra Mildliners.

Related post: 4 Similar (and cheaper) alternatives to the Zebra Mildliner Dual Tip Highlighters

Pilot G2 Gel Pens 0.7mm

I’ve had many readers over the years leave comments or emails shocked that I didn’t like the Pilot G2 pens. Well, I saw a nice rainbow set (that’s not available on Amazon or at least won’t ship to Australia), so I bought the pack and… I like them! The colours are really nice and they write smoothly. The other G2 pen I have was one someone gave to me and I think they’d written with it quite a lot as it was very inky and felt thicker than a 0.7mm.

Here are some photos from the stationery shops I visited on the trip!

Las Vegas

There was never going to be any stationery shops in Las Vegas.. but our tour guide did stop at a few Walmart’s on the Globus ‘Enchanting Canyonlands’ tour I took around Arizona and Utah.

Walmart didn’t have as big of a stationery section as I was expecting, it was mostly just pens and highlighters. I regret not buying the Pen & Gear dual end markers (I didn’t realise they were a Walmart exclusive brand).

I actually don’t really like the Papermate flair pens. The needle tip isn’t good if you’re write on an angle like I do. But if you do like them, Walmart’s own brand ‘Pen + Gear’ had some nice rainbow felt tip pens – much cheaper than the Papermate too.

Portland

Apart from being conveniently located on the west coast (i.e. the USA side closest to Australia), really the only reason I wanted to visit Portland was to go shopping in suburbia! My mum and I desperately wanted to visit Joann’s, Michael’s and Hobby Lobby. Neither of us are comfortable driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road so needed somewhere accessible via public transport. All of these shops (and many others we wanted to visit) were conveniently located on the same road / shopping area: Clackamas, which was easy to get to via bus or train from Portland’s downtown area where we were staying.

I thought there would be far more Happy Planner stocked in Joann’s, Michael’s and Hobby Lobby but was surprised there was really only one small stand or half an aisle with only a handful of sticker books and planners to choose from.

Of the 3, Hobby Lobby was the biggest and was our favourite.

Hobby Lobby

We enjoyed looking at all the aisles of autumn, halloween and Christmas decor. The amount of stuff you can buy to decorate your house was mind boggling. We don’t have any of this in our Aussie craft shops!

Buying planners online, especially the Happy Planner there’s always the risk that the laminated cover will get scratched in transit. Well that seems to be the case in store as well because a lot of the time the planners were just strewn on the shelves in a disorganized mess. Hobby Lobby had the largest range, was the most organized and had the least damaged stock.

They had the most washi tape in stock too.

Joann’s

Joann’s reminded my Mum and I of Spotlight here in Australia.

I didn’t like that Joann’s put a tag on the sticker book shelves so you have to find a store attendant to get the lock off if you want to have a look through or buy any of the sticker books.

It was good to see the Park Lane Paperie discbound planners in person. Simple, clean layouts you can decorate however you like.

They had the accessories like stencils, mini stamps and sticky notes too.

The Point Planner brand has some nice accessories as well.

Michaels

Plenty of accessories to add even more storage to your rolling cart. I also saw a version with 4 trays instead of the common 3.

There wasn’t much Happy Planner stuff in Michaels. Some of it was on sale so the shelves had been stripped, but even then I was expecting an entire wall of Happy Planner.. but there was really just one stand of it. They have a much bigger range online.

More pens I wanted to buy but they were just to expensive with the exchange rate.

The Artist’s Loft Dual Tip Mild Color Highlighter Markers reminded me of Zebra Mildliners.

They had the Artists Loft notebooks too.

I found this Punch Studios planner at TK Maxx.

Office Depot had brands that are readily available at most stores and online so I wouldn’t go out of my way to go there next time.

The only unique to Office Depot item that interested me, was these Callisto gel ink pens but they worked out $25 AUD with the exchange rate.

Powell’s bookstore in downtown Portland actually didn’t have much planner stuff. A few dotted notebooks but very few pens and planners.

I unfortunately didn’t make it to Paper Source on NW 23rd Avenue before it had closed for the day.

Blick Art Supplies had plenty of craft supplies but not too much planner stuff, mainly just pens you can find in other stores.

Seattle

There weren’t many stationery shops in Seattle. I only ended up visiting Target in the downtown area which stocked Day Designer for BlueSky planners and Sugar Paper. The planners were in the same layouts that have been around for years and which I already own so I didn’t buy any.

Related post: Day Designer for Blue Sky Planner review

Anchorage

Unsurprisingly, Anchorage didn’t have any stationery shops. Was still worth a visit for the autumn colours and scenery!

Vancouver

Vancouver didn’t have many stationery shops either. The only one worth noting: Staples – which is where I found that ARC notebook. They also had some Emily Ley planners and Moleskine notebooks.

The Indigo bookstore had a few basic planners, the leuchtuurm dot grid notebooks and various pen brands (ooly, mildliners, frixion, gelly roll, zebra sarasa).

Overall I found there’s much more planner supplies in online USA shops so if you can’t make it to the physical stores in the USA, at least you can still buy everything that was in the shops from their online stores.

More stationery shopping around the world

• Favorite London Stationery shops for planner supplies
• Europe stationery haul!
• My 2nd Europe Stationery Haul!
• Favorite Places to Buy Planner Supplies in Australia 
• Favorite Switzerland stationery shops for planner addicts
• Favorite stationery shops in Paris
• My Favorite Stationery Shops in Rome
• Favorite Stationery Shops in Austria
• Favorite stationery shops in New Zealand
• Favorite Stationery Shops in Copenhagen, Denmark
• Favorite stationery shops in Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Favorite Stationery Shops in Germany
• Favorite stationery shops in Finland (Helsinki & Rovaniemi)
• Favorite Stationery Shops in Belgium (Brussels, Antwerp & Bruges)

Planning tips

• Planning on a budget: If I only had $50 to spend on planner supplies, this is what I’d buy
• 10 Discbound notebooks for planning or bullet journaling
• 100 things to put in your habit tracker of your planner or bullet journal (plus free printable habit tracker)

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