8 reasons to love junk journals

Heaps of makers like the strategy of making a junk journal (they’re a ton of work), but they do not know especially why they want to build 1. I’ll deal with 8 points to adore about junk journals that emphasize how specific these textbooks are.

Maybe you are acquainted with all of them. And probably, if you haven’t thought of all of these points, they’ll give you some suggestions or a renewed interest in working on junk journals.

1st, let’s quickly cover what precisely is a junk journal.

A Junk Journal is a handmade e-book of recycled and identified components and ephemera. The pages can be employed to create, attract, paint or history reminiscences, thoughts, tips, and inspiration.

Materials for a junk journal are usually located or recycled, so this delivers us to the first point to love about junk journals:

1 — Junk Journals are really one of a kind parts of e book art

Considering the fact that there’s such a huge assortment in all the features employed to make a junk journal, no two are exactly alike. Quite a few of us have a variety of artwork materials, papers, own ephemera, and other products, and even if we have very similar materials, the last product just about every of us makes is distinctive.

Talking of artwork provides, here’s the next matter to enjoy about junk journals:

2 — Junk journals commonly involve loads of materials

This usually means that you can actively have interaction in working with up your artwork provides and ephemera.

You can go by way of your stash of sample paper and corresponding colour inks. You can distress paper for your web pages or tea-dye or coffee-dye paper. Pull out other mixed media items like paints and stencils. You can add embellishments like ribbons, material, or beads. Here’s an chance to use up what you have bought.

If you’re using aged or found products, it’s the suitable time to glance by means of your capture-all drawers in your property in which you’ve stashed away —whatever you’ve been stashing away— receipts, notes, random pics, film ticket stubs, and use them inside your junk journals.

The 3rd detail to love about junk journals speaks specifically to what you can do with all your observed bits:

3 — You can practice upcycling creatively

Consider of this as a ability. How do you organize your elements and identified bits in a satisfying way? That is the obstacle that you can choose to consider up when you are generating a junk journal.

I’ll observe that this is where loads of persons can get tripped up and overcome. You can get apprehensive, “Well, I do not know how to do this. I want it to look gorgeous and amazing, but I’m scared that if I check out, I’m likely to despise it, and I’m heading to be so disappointed, and I’ll sense like a failure”.

All those are trustworthy fears. I certainly felt them when I was commencing out. If you find on your own in this placement, you can remind you of two items:

1. What you make is for you. You don’t even need to have to present everyone if you do not want to, so you really do not will need to be self-acutely aware about what you make.

2. When you are finished making your first junk journals, it is doable you’re not going to like what you make (not likely) but it is achievable. But the awareness you will have received from the encounter will enable so considerably in building your future 1. You’ll know what you could have performed differently. Keep in mind that this “creative upcycling” is a skill, so that suggests you have to get the job done at it.

If you’re a minor overcome with all the alternatives and components of creating one particular, then consider my fourth cause to appreciate junk journals:

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

If you like fast paced, chunky levels you can do that, or you can retain them very straightforward. You can believe about what you want to highlight. It’s possible you want a lot of the attention on the protect, but want to continue to keep the internet pages simple.

Try to remember, you can constantly go back and include more items more than time. This is anything that I however do. Decades later, I even now go back again and work on sure books.

I want to chat about something right here — the thought of time, and our method to performing on projects. We are likely to have the expectation of developing artwork in a quite exact way and it goes a thing like this: You get started, you function competently just on that job until it’s finished, and then you go on the one thing else. The emphasis is on the conclude product or service. You truly feel accomplished only when you have produced a thing completed.

There are 2 things to contemplate why this is not the suitable way to strategy creating.

1. The journey is just as significant (even a lot more so) than the location.

2. If you are so concentrated on finishing and relocating on, you might be closing on your own off from returning to it, which is anything I personally delight in doing.

Subsequent, the fifth motive to enjoy junk journals is:

5 — You can pick a topic that speaks to you

Themes are excellent due to the fact they help you consider about the appear and experience of your creation. Some persons like to obtain printable kits that include pages and smaller decorative bits. These digital kits are normally inexpensive, ranging from $2 to $4 on Etsy, and you can seem for factors like a Xmas concept, Beatrix Potter, Jane Austen, a pirate topic, Wonderwoman, or whatsoever!

Some individuals don’t care to use printable papers and rather focus on finding their own paper sources. Do not ignore that you can also decide on to concentration on household themes and do a junk journal with photographs and papers from a relative or anyone significant to you. These are wonderful techniques to embellish junk journals.

Subsequent,

6 — You can use it to keep paper treasures

Very first of all, brainstorm with me illustrations of paper treasures. Postcards and pictures are paper treasures. What else? Forex. Postage stamps. Come across a selection of paper treasures and then explore means you can tuck them into your junk journals. 

The up coming explanation to appreciate junk journals is a single of my favorites:

7 — You can turn them into gluebooks

This is my best suggestion for what to do with a gluebook. We have a tendency to get hooked up to the junk journals we make. This emotion grows when you take pleasure in including to the material of the internet pages.

The very last motive to enjoy junk journals is:

8 — Junk Journaling provides folks together

It is remarkable how social media has been a massive contributor to the popularity of junk journals simply because it is what retains individuals linked with one particular one more, even when they are on opposite coasts or in unique nations.

Talking of on the net artists, Barbara of 49 Dragonflies is anyone who results in tons of video clips about junk journaling. I am on her YouTube podcast of most requested junk journal concerns, wherever both equally of us will solution queries persons have about junk journaling. It will come out following thirty day period in May.

In the meantime, if you’d like to see a movie on my 8 causes to love junk journals, you can see it below:

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