Junk Journaling Basics: Crafting Through the Horrors

Earlier this year, I started a junk journal as a sort of low-stakes scrapbooking endeavor; and also because I’m bad at regular journaling (you know, the kind that my therapist has been recommending to me for the past 3 years). But I do have a penchant for collecting ephemera and documenting the passage of time in a physical way… insert the junk journal. There’s no right or wrong way to do this, but here’s my basics for getting started if you too would like to craft through the horrors and don’t know where to start. 

Supplies
-A basic ass notebook, composition book, or journal
-Glue sticks
-Scissors (I like these fun scrapbooking ones)

Harvesting Junk
If you don’t already have a box of ticket stubs, receipts, stickers, and the like laying around, you’ll need to accumulate some junk. Living your life with a junk-forward ethos will provide you with junk for months to come. What are the things you’d usually throw away or decline if someone offered it to you? Think business cards, coffee sleeves, order tickets, pamphlets from people on the street, trolley maps, promotional materials from businesses….

Keep a little zipper pouch in your purse or tote bag to store all of the junk you come across in your day to day. For the oldheads in the chat, a pink Glossier bubble pouch works fabulously for this purpose.

One unintended side effect of junk journaling is that it really is a mindfulness activity. Collecting the junk forces me to slow down, think before tossing something away, and keep my eyes peeled for flyers/stickers/business cards/etc that I normally wouldn’t have noticed. 

Creating Your Journal Spreads
The beauty of junk journaling is that, at the end of the day, this stuff is really just garbage. It’s a great exercise in non-attachment and enjoying the creative process rather than the end result. Oh, my journal page didn’t turn out very well? Good thing it’s TRASH! 

Here’s some examples from my own junk journal the past few months to help spark some inspiration! I hope you start your own and become a documentarian of your day-to-day adventures (づ๑•ᴗ•๑)づ♡