Rhodia Notebook Sizes for Junk Journaling: A Cost Controller's Checklist

If you've typed what is a junk journal into a search bar and then spent an hour comparing rhodia notebook sizes on your phone, you're in the right place. Look, I'm not a professional artist. I'm a procurement manager who has tracked every office supply order for the last six years, and I've built up a private stash of rhodia pads for my own journaling. This is not a review blog. It's a five-step checklist for picking the right pad, estimating the real cost, and not wasting money on paper that doesn't work for the project.

Before the Checklist: What Is a Junk Journal?

Before you start comparing rhodia notebook sizes, let's get one definition out of the way. A junk journal is a handmade book made from found materials—old maps, ticket stubs, receipts, postcards, washi tape, pretty envelopes. Unlike a standard diary, it's not a list of daily thoughts. It's a visual diary with layered collage and small pockets of memory.

This distinction matters because the style of journaling drives the paper size. A pocket notebook for a train ticket collection is not the same as an A4 desk pad for mixed-media collage. If you've ever tried to glue a ticket stub to paper that can't handle wet glue, you know how quickly a small project becomes a mess.

Step 1: Choose a Rhodia Notebook Size Based on Your Junk Journal

The official Rhodia catalog (accessed January 2025) lists the usual ISO sizes: A4, A5, A6, and B5. Here's how they translate to junk journal uses:

• A4 (21 x 29.7 cm): Best for full-page collage, large photo placement, or if you want one open spread to be the entire workspace. A rhodia dot pad A4 is my favorite because the paper sits flat and the dots are subtle enough to disappear under layers.
• A5 (14.8 x 21 cm): The safest all-rounder. Fits in a bag, gives you enough room for writing and a few flat collage pieces.
• B5 (17.6 x 25 cm): In between A4 and A5. Great if you want more space than A5 without the desk footprint of A4.
• A6 (10.5 x 14.8 cm): Pocket or clutch-only journaling. Perfect for tiny ephemera and daily logs.

When I compared an A4 dot pad and an A6 notebook side by side, I finally understood why advice like just start is useless. The size changes how you work. One is a workspace. The other is a wallet.

Step 2: Match the Paper Format to Your Collage Habits

Rhodia pads come in dot, grid, lined, and blank. For a junk journal, don't default to lined paper. Lined guides fight with collage. Instead, pick dot grid if you want alignment help that disappears under layers, or blank if your style is more free-form.

Here's the thing: the rhodia dot pad A4 is not just for bullet journaling. The dots are spaced enough to keep lettering straight, but they're light enough that you don't notice them after you glue something over them. That's why it's my go-to recommendation.

If your junk journal includes a lot of writing, lined or dot grid will feel more comfortable. If it's almost pure collage, blank works fine. Actually, let me rephrase that: blank works fine if you're careful with alignment. Dot grid is still the safer choice for the first few pages.

Step 3: Use a Percentage Decrease Calculator to Compare Real Costs

Here's where the cost-controller side kicks in. Notebook prices look different once you compare cost per usable page. Let's say one notebook costs $12 with 96 pages, and another costs $15 with 150 pages. The second is cheaper per page even though the price tag is higher.

Your local stationery store might also run sales. If a price drops from $15 to $12, that's a 20% decrease. A percentage decrease calculator does the math for you: ((15 - 12) / 15) x 100 = 20%. Simple.

When I audit my own stationery orders, I use that percentage to adjust my cost per page. If a rhodia dot pad A4 is on sale, I'm not asking how much off the listed price is. I'm asking what the sale price does to my cost per usable page. A calculator is faster than guessing. And if you're not used to doing this, trust me on this one: the difference between two sizes is rarely as important as the difference between their true price-per-page.

Step 4: Factor in Waste and Verify With a Percent Error Calculator

Not every page in a junk journal gets used in full. You'll cut pages in half, test paint, mess up a glue spread, or abandon a layout. That's why the vendor's page count is not your usable page count.

Here's something that surprised me. Everything I'd read about junk journaling said you can use any old paper. In practice, when I started using good paper, my waste dropped dramatically. Bad paper bled, curled, or made me redo pages. That's a hidden cost I had ignored for too long.

To keep your budget honest, estimate how much waste you expect—say, 15%—and compare that to the actual waste in your first project. The percent error calculator is the tool for that. Take the absolute difference between your estimated usable page count and the actual usable page count, divide by the actual number, multiply by 100. If you thought you'd get 100 usable pages and the pad actually gives you 88, that's (12 / 88) x 100, or roughly 13.6% error. That tells you whether your estimate is realistic.

I used to skip this step. Then I tracked an order of ten A5 pads for a workshop—or rather, eleven, because I bought one extra—and found my planned page count was too optimistic. The percent error calculator made the gap obvious. It was annoying, but it fixed my next estimate.

Step 5: Buy One Rhodia Dot Pad A4 and Test Before You Stock Up

Buying a single pad for a test is not a waste. It's a control test.

Take the rhodia dot pad A4 and run it through your own routine: apply gesso, glue a ticket stub, write with a fountain pen, draw with a wet marker. Then look at the back of the page. If the paper bleeds or feathers, you know before you've invested in a whole stack. If it doesn't, you've found your journal base.

Even after ordering the A4 dot pad, I kept second-guessing myself. What if the dots were too large? What if the paper was too smooth? The two days until delivery were stressful. Then I opened it and tested it. The dots were fine, and the paper handled my pen. My overthinking was the only true waste.

The conventional wisdom says buy in bulk to save money. My experience with 200+ stationery orders says that only works if the paper actually fits your project. A one-pad test is a small ticket. Ten pads of the wrong paper is a much bigger one.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Choosing a lined notebook for a collage-heavy project.
• Comparing prices before page counts.
• Assuming A5 in one catalog is the same as A5 in another—check the dimensions.
• Letting a sale rush you into buying a size you don't need.

That last one hits close to home. Had maybe ten minutes to decide during a sale window last year. Normally I'd compare three options for a week, but there was no time. Went with the A4 pad because of the discount. It was fine, but it wasn't the size I'd have chosen without the rush. In hindsight, I should have skipped the sale. But with the countdown timer, I did the best I could with the information on my screen.

Small Orders Are Not a Problem

Let me address the elephant in the room. A lot of journaling content assumes you have a craft room and a budget for seventeen different notebooks. You don't. If you want one rhodia dot pad A4 for your first junk journal, that's enough.

In my procurement role, the vendors who treated my small orders seriously are the ones I still use when the budget grows. The same logic applies to stationery. You don't need to apologize for buying one pad. If a store makes you feel like your order is too small, that's a red flag.

So bottom line: choose your size by project type, compare cost per usable page with a percentage decrease calculator, verify your waste estimate with a percent error calculator, and test one pad before stacking up. That's the whole checklist. Do that and you'll have a junk journal that actually works for you.