This Famous Nail Artist Made an Adorable Cannabis Strain Journal
Finally, a journal you’ll want to fill out.
The single most common question from cannabis consumers also happens to be the one question the cannabis industry still can’t answer: How will this product make me feel?
Even after reading reviews and hearing first-person testimonials, everyone’s body chemistry is unique. Budtenders can recommend a local favorite and you can read up on CBN and varietals associated with sounder sleeps, for example. But you honestly don’t know for sure. Until cannabis is federally legalized, researchers can’t conduct the work needed to answer these questions with anything close to scientific certainty.
But don’t fall into complete cannabis despair just yet. In fact, anyone has the ability to navigate their journey towards their perfect strains, regardless of access to a laboratory. The most accurate way to find what works for you is to start paying attention to what’s coming close. Every time you try a new strain, farm, or product and feel some of the desired effects, noting every detail allows you to narrow down what’s working for you.
It will require some patience and a lot of diligent note taking—for which there is fortunately an increasing number of tools to help you do so, at your speed. Goldleaf first introduced a structured solution to this problem in 2016 with its strain journal designed to look like a Moleskine notebook, providing a grown-up template for patients, growers, and enthusiasts to fill in and track their highs and cannabis education.
Now Strain of the Day, a new, stripped-down journal designed to make tracking your seshes an easy, accomplishable task, created by Nisha Persaud. An educator at a grade school by day and famous nail artist in her free time, the New Jersey native had developed a relationship with cannabis over the past few years, looking forward to a blunt at the end of the day to free her mind to get more creative and artistic. Cannabis quickly became a rich part of her self-care practices, and she developed her own way of remembering each and every sesh.
“Every time I try a new strain, I keep a little bit of it and set it aside,” Persaud says. “Now I had this incredible collection, but I only had the names to distinguish them by. That’s what made me want a book where I could keep descriptions and notes about the strains that I smoke. I want to remember which strains worked really well for me, which made me hungry, and which made me sleepy.”
Persaud also happens to love writing things down, and had already created a manifestation journal she sold alongside her unique press-on nail sets. The Strain of the Day journal was a logical next step, and one that immediately showed interest when she posted it on Twitter. She sold over 100 copies within the two weeks of the post, and dispensaries have since reached out to make bulk orders.
There are pages dedicated to new strains sampled and spaces to fill in observations, aroma, effects, and price, plus points of review added in every seven days to allow you to reflect on memorable highs and strains of the week. Her coworkers commented that the simple and slightly playful journal has the look and feel of a children’s book—an influence from her time in education, possibly, but also a welcoming aesthetic to an easily overwhelmed brain.
The key to any of this working is being consistent about tracking your seshes, a true challenge when smoke seshes tend to be a time of repose and/or recreation. Persaud's journal includes fun smoke break activities to keep readers engaged, and the cute illustrations add some needed whimsy to the serious note taking.
Persaud has pipe dreams of writing a grade school book about weed and cannabis education worksheets, but that hinges on whether she can figure out how to promote it without getting all of her social media accounts suspended.
“I launched my nail art business on Instagram, and that’s where most of my business comes from. But I can’t do the same things with the strain journal,” she explains. “I posted on Instagram recently to talk about the book, and something I wrote or showed in the picture crossed their guidelines and I got a pop-up warning. It scared me, I am not a rule breaker. I didn’t want my account to get deleted, or impact Clawset accounts, and it’s honestly very discouraging.”
Social media apps have taken an increasingly harsh stance on any depictions or descriptions of cannabis, particularly Instagram and TikTok. Despite those ongoing hurdles, Persaud is humbled by the response and emboldened to keep going.
“It’s a crazy thing,” she says. “To have a thought and bring it to life, and get to see how it affects people all over the world—it’s amazing.”