8 reasons to love junk journals

Plenty of makers like the thought of producing a junk journal (they are a whole lot of function), but they never know exclusively why they want to develop 1. I’ll address eight issues to love about junk journals that spotlight how specific these books are.

Maybe you are common with all of them. And it’s possible, if you have not deemed all of these details, they’ll give you some suggestions or a renewed curiosity in working on junk journals.

First, let’s rapidly go over what exactly is a junk journal.

A Junk Journal is a handmade ebook of recycled and uncovered elements and ephemera. The internet pages can be made use of to write, draw, paint or document recollections, views, ideas, and inspiration.

Resources for a junk journal are typically found or recycled, so this provides us to the 1st factor to love about junk journals:

1 — Junk Journals are genuinely distinctive parts of book art

Due to the fact there’s this sort of a substantial range in all the things used to make a junk journal, no two are precisely alike. Lots of of us have a assortment of artwork materials, papers, own ephemera, and other materials, and even if we have identical elements, the remaining product or service every single of us makes is unique.

Speaking of art provides, here’s the 2nd detail to adore about junk journals:

2 — Junk journals usually need a lot of elements

This indicates that you can actively interact in employing up your artwork provides and ephemera.

You can go as a result of your stash of sample paper and corresponding color inks. You can distress paper for your webpages or tea-dye or coffee-dye paper. Pull out other blended media merchandise like paints and stencils. You can increase gildings like ribbons, material, or beads. Here’s an possibility to use up what you have received.

If you’re employing aged or located products, it is the right time to glance as a result of your catch-all drawers in your dwelling where by you’ve stashed absent —whatever you have been stashing away— receipts, notes, random photos, motion picture ticket stubs, and use them in just your junk journals.

The third issue to like about junk journals speaks right to what you can do with all your found bits:

3 — You can practice upcycling creatively

Imagine of this as a skill. How do you prepare your resources and uncovered bits in a satisfying way? Which is the problem that you can pick to acquire up when you are making a junk journal.

I’ll be aware that this is the place a lot of people can get tripped up and overwhelmed. You can get apprehensive, “Well, I never know how to do this. I want it to glimpse lovely and wonderful, but I’m worried that if I try out, I’m heading to detest it, and I’m going to be so upset, and I’ll feel like a failure”.

Those are sincere fears. I absolutely felt them when I was setting up out. If you locate by yourself in this place, you can remind your self of two items:

1. What you produce is for your self. You don’t even want to clearly show anyone if you never want to, so you do not have to have to be self-conscious about what you make.

2. When you are completed producing your first junk journals, it is achievable you are not heading to like what you make (not likely) but it’s feasible. But the awareness you will have obtained from the working experience will help so substantially in creating your upcoming a single. You will know what you could have done in another way. Recall that this “creative upcycling” is a talent, so that usually means you have to work at it.

If you are a tiny confused with all the solutions and factors of creating 1, then consider my fourth rationale to appreciate junk journals:

4 — You can “dress them up” as significantly or as minor as you’d like

If you like chaotic, chunky levels you can do that, or you can preserve them pretty uncomplicated. You can assume about what you want to spotlight. Maybe you want a good deal of the consideration on the include, but want to keep the webpages plain.

Keep in mind, you can usually go back and include extra issues more than time. This is something that I however do. Years later on, I even now go back again and function on selected books.

I want to converse about something listed here — the idea of time, and our solution to doing work on tasks. We are likely to have the expectation of making artwork in a extremely specific way and it goes anything like this: You get started, you do the job proficiently just on that undertaking right until it is done, and then you go on the something else. The emphasis is on the end solution. You experience completed only when you have created some thing done.

There are 2 issues to consider why this is not the great way to solution generating.

1. The journey is just as essential (even extra so) than the desired destination.

2. If you are so focused on finishing and going on, you could be closing yourself off from returning to it, which is some thing I personally delight in carrying out.

Up coming, the fifth reason to really like junk journals is:

5 — You can pick a theme that speaks to you

Themes are great mainly because they support you assume about the seem and truly feel of your generation. Some individuals like to invest in printable kits that consist of webpages and lesser ornamental bits. These digital kits are normally reasonably priced, ranging from $2 to $4 on Etsy, and you can search for points like a Christmas topic, Beatrix Potter, Jane Austen, a pirate topic, Wonderwoman, or whichever!

Some folks really do not care to use printable papers and alternatively target on discovering their have paper resources. Never forget that you can also pick out to emphasis on loved ones themes and do a junk journal with pictures and papers from a relative or an individual essential to you. These are great strategies to embellish junk journals.

Upcoming,

6 — You can use it to retailer paper treasures

Very first of all, brainstorm with me examples of paper treasures. Postcards and photographs are paper treasures. What else? Currency. Postage stamps. Obtain a selection of paper treasures and then check out strategies you can tuck them into your junk journals. 

The upcoming purpose to love junk journals is a person of my favorites:

7 — You can flip them into gluebooks

This is my greatest suggestion for what to do with a gluebook. We have a tendency to get hooked up to the junk journals we make. This experience grows when you love adding to the articles of the web pages.

The previous purpose to like junk journals is:

8 — Junk Journaling delivers people collectively

It’s awesome how social media has been a big contributor to the attractiveness of junk journals for the reason that it is what retains people today linked with 1 yet another, even when they are on opposite coasts or in various nations.

Speaking of online artists, Barbara of 49 Dragonflies is a person who creates tons of movies about junk journaling. I am on her YouTube podcast of most asked for junk journal thoughts, where both of those of us will answer thoughts folks have about junk journaling. It arrives out up coming thirty day period in May.

In the meantime, if you’d like to see a online video on my 8 causes to love junk journals, you can see it in this article:

https://www.youtube.com/enjoy?v=W9tt5v5gvAQ