News — Junk Journal

A travel journal that is only writing misses the best part. The ticket, the receipt in a currency you cannot read, the coaster, the hotel key card sleeve — those are the things you will actually want in ten years, and most travel journals have nowhere to put them. Here is how to build one that holds paper, survives a bag, and gets filled in while you are actually away. Build it before you go The mistake is buying a beautiful blank notebook and intending to make pages while traveling. You will not. You will be tired, and the notebook...

A pocket is what turns a junk journal from a scrapbook into something you keep going back to. A page you can look at gets looked at once. A page that holds something gets opened. Six folds below, with measurements, in rough order of difficulty. All of them work in any book. 1. The flat pocket The workhorse. Ninety percent of the pockets in most journals are this one. Cut 1 inch wider and about two-thirds the height of what it will hold. For 3x5 cards: cut 4.5 x 4 in. Fold 0.25 in along the bottom edge and both...

A cereal box is close to ideal cover stock. It is about 0.4mm thick, it scores and folds cleanly, it is free, and there is one in most kitchens right now. Here is the whole thing: measurements, four ways to cover it, and how to add a closure that works. Measure before you cut Three numbers, taken from the pages you are binding. Measurement How to get it Height Page height + 0.25 in (an eighth of an inch of overhang top and bottom) Width Page width + 0.125 in at the fore-edge only Spine Stack your signatures, squash gently,...

Being stuck in a junk journal is almost never a lack of ideas. It is one of three specific problems, and knowing which one you have tells you which prompt to reach for. The three ways you get stuck Blank page. No subject. You want to make something and have nothing to say. Use the Ordinary Life or Memory prompts. Blank hands. You have a subject but no idea what the page should look like. Use the Structure prompts — they tell you what to build, not what it is about. Too precious. You have a subject and a plan...

Most "free junk journal printables" are a download of somebody else’s vintage-looking art, printed on your paper, at your ink cost. It looks like everyone else’s journal, because everyone downloaded the same pack. What follows is the other approach: the actual measurements for every standard ephemera shape, so you can cut them from paper you already own. A ruler and twenty minutes gets you a stack that no download can match, because it is made of your own paper. Tags The most-used shape. Cut a rectangle, then cut the two top corners off at an angle and punch a hole....

The book matters more in junk journaling than in any other kind of journaling, because you are gluing wet things to the pages and stuffing objects between them. A book that would be perfectly good for writing will buckle, split at the spine, or refuse to close by page twenty. Three specifications decide it, and only three. The three that matter Spec What to look for Why Paper weight 100 gsm minimum; 120–160 is better; mixed-media 200+ is ideal Glue, paint and tape warp thin paper permanently Binding Something that opens fully flat and tolerates expansion Layered pages add bulk...

A junk journal is a book you make yourself out of paper other people would throw away. There are two ways to get one: bind it from scratch, or rebuild a notebook you already own. Both are below, start to finish. The from-scratch version takes about ninety minutes and costs almost nothing. What you need Essential Why Paper — roughly 20 sheets Any mix: printer paper, book pages, brown paper bags, envelopes, sheet music, maps A cover A cereal box, a file folder, a damaged book cover, thick card Waxed thread or embroidery floss About four times the height of...

The problem with most junk journal inspiration is that it shows you a finished page and not the decisions behind it. You end up copying a layout you cannot repeat, and then staring at a blank spread the next week. Below are twenty-five pages grouped by what they are actually for, plus the four-layer formula that almost every good spread follows. Learn the formula and you can invent your own. The four-layer formula Nearly every page that looks considered has these four things, in this order. Nearly every page that looks muddy has more than four. Layer What it is...

Junk journaling and faith journaling solve the same problem from opposite directions. One is a book full of paper with nothing particular to say; the other is a practice full of things worth keeping and nowhere to put them — the bulletin from the Sunday that mattered, the index card someone prayed over you with, the verse you wrote on a napkin. Put them together and you get the most useful version of both. Here is how to actually build it. What makes a junk journal different from a Bible journal A Bible journal is notes in the margins of...

Junk journaling looks like it needs a cupboard full of supplies. It does not. Most of what you see in a finished spread is paper you already had, held down by three or four things you actually bought. Here is the short list, in the order it is worth buying.The four things you genuinely need1. Something to bind. A book to work in. This can be a bound notebook, or loose pages held on discs so you can add and reorder as you go.2. Something to hold the loose bits. Ticket stubs, tags, offcuts and photos need somewhere to live,...