I'm sure that we're all guilty of holding onto things that may be deemed as junk. Personally, I've always been one to keep and collect old movie stubs, concert tickets, or a cool knick knack that I found laying around. All this stuff usually gets thrown in a "junk drawer" or just thrown out, but not anymore. Creating a junk journal is the solution to all your collecting problems. The idea of a junk journal is creating a booklet that can have small pockets to hold things or to just place items right on the pages. I'm going to walk you through my creative process of creating my own junk journal.
Let's start from the beginning. I wanted my pages to be fun and colorful. I found some extra scrapbook paper and cut each piece in half and folded them. I combined all the folded pieces together to form a book and I punched two holes in the binding and tied it together with ribbon. After my journal was actually made I started to decorate the cover. I used different stickers and pen to make it pop. I then started to work on the inside of my journal. For one of the pages, I added a pocket where I put different stickers that I have collected. To make the pocket I took another small piece of paper and folded it twice. I then taped the middle section to my page and then folded the other piece over and taped that as well. I went through and added pockets to some more of the pages so I can later fill them with other things.
My first impression of working with the scrapbook paper is that it was very thick, almost like a card stock. This made it very difficult to hole punch and I had take it one page at a time. Another thing I learned while working with the scrapbook paper is that the normal ink pen did not write well on the slightly textured paper. Because of this I chose to use stickers for the major titles on my front page and my sticker holding page. However, because of the textured paper they did not stick very well, so I put a piece of scotch tape over them to ensure they stayed in place. Overall, I really liked how the color of the paper and the texture add to the aesthetic of the junk journal though.
My experience of creating a junk journal was fun and exciting. It was interesting to see how all of the different shades of paper came together and the individual potential of the pages inside. I am looking forward to filling the pages of my junk journal with things that I find and with stuff from the places I go in the future.
