8 reasons to love junk journals

Heaps of makers like the plan of producing a junk journal (they are a great deal of function), but they really don’t know particularly why they want to develop one. I’ll include eight items to appreciate about junk journals that spotlight how particular these books are.

It’s possible you’re familiar with all of them. And probably, if you have not regarded all of these points, they’ll give you some thoughts or a renewed interest in doing work on junk journals.

To start with, let us immediately cover what exactly is a junk journal.

A Junk Journal is a handmade reserve of recycled and identified resources and ephemera. The webpages can be made use of to publish, draw, paint or history recollections, thoughts, strategies, and inspiration.

Elements for a junk journal are generally located or recycled, so this delivers us to the initial factor to like about junk journals:

1 — Junk Journals are truly exclusive items of e book artwork

Given that there’s this kind of a large wide range in all the elements made use of to make a junk journal, no two are accurately alike. Several of us have a array of artwork provides, papers, private ephemera, and other supplies, and even if we have very similar elements, the final merchandise just about every of us generates is distinctive.

Speaking of artwork provides, here’s the second matter to appreciate about junk journals:

2 — Junk journals ordinarily call for tons of components

This indicates that you can actively engage in using up your artwork supplies and ephemera.

You can go by means of your stash of sample paper and corresponding colour inks. You can distress paper for your pages or tea-dye or coffee-dye paper. Pull out other combined media objects like paints and stencils. You can include gildings like ribbons, fabric, or beads. Here’s an opportunity to use up what you have bought.

If you are employing outdated or discovered goods, it’s the suitable time to glimpse via your capture-all drawers in your residence the place you have stashed away —whatever you’ve been stashing away— receipts, notes, random images, motion picture ticket stubs, and use them inside your junk journals.

The third issue to love about junk journals speaks immediately to what you can do with all your identified bits:

3 — You can exercise upcycling creatively

Feel of this as a talent. How do you prepare your elements and located bits in a pleasing way? Which is the challenge that you can pick to take up when you are producing a junk journal.

I’ll observe that this is where lots of individuals can get tripped up and overcome. You can get apprehensive, “Well, I really do not know how to do this. I want it to appear attractive and fantastic, but I’m scared that if I test, I’m likely to detest it, and I’m going to be so disappointed, and I’ll experience like a failure”.

Individuals are honest fears. I definitely felt them when I was starting off out. If you uncover you in this placement, you can remind yourself of two things:

1. What you produce is for by yourself. You really don’t even want to clearly show any person if you really don’t want to, so you do not have to have to be self-mindful about what you make.

2. When you’re done earning your first junk journals, it’s feasible you’re not going to like what you make (not likely) but it is feasible. But the knowledge you will have gained from the working experience will assistance so much in creating your subsequent a single. You will know what you could have carried out in another way. Don’t forget that this “creative upcycling” is a talent, so that means you have to function at it.

If you’re a little overcome with all the options and components of creating one particular, then take into account my fourth cause to really like junk journals:

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

If you like fast paced, chunky levels you can do that, or you can preserve them really uncomplicated. You can imagine about what you want to emphasize. Perhaps you want a whole lot of the attention on the deal with, but want to preserve the pages simple.

Try to remember, you can often go back again and include extra matters over time. This is a little something that I nonetheless do. Decades later on, I still go again and work on specified guides.

I want to chat about something below — the thought of time, and our method to doing work on projects. We are inclined to have the expectation of making art in a quite specific way and it goes one thing like this: You commence, you work efficiently just on that project right up until it is accomplished, and then you go on the anything else. The emphasis is on the conclude merchandise. You feel completed only when you have manufactured anything accomplished.

There are 2 things to look at why this is not the suitable way to strategy generating.

1. The journey is just as vital (even more so) than the place.

2. If you are so targeted on completing and relocating on, you could be closing by yourself off from returning to it, which is one thing I individually appreciate performing.

Next, the fifth explanation to adore junk journals is:

5 — You can select a concept that speaks to you

Themes are excellent because they aid you think about the appear and experience of your development. Some people like to acquire printable kits that involve web pages and smaller ornamental bits. These digital kits are generally cheap, ranging from $2 to $4 on Etsy, and you can glimpse for issues like a Christmas concept, Beatrix Potter, Jane Austen, a pirate theme, Wonderwoman, or whichever!

Some folks do not treatment to use printable papers and relatively concentrate on locating their possess paper sources. Really do not ignore that you can also pick out to focus on loved ones themes and do a junk journal with pictures and papers from a relative or someone vital to you. These are wonderful techniques to embellish junk journals.

Up coming,

6 — You can use it to store paper treasures

To start with of all, brainstorm with me illustrations of paper treasures. Postcards and photos are paper treasures. What else? Forex. Postage stamps. Discover a selection of paper treasures and then investigate approaches you can tuck them into your junk journals. 

The following rationale to enjoy junk journals is 1 of my favorites:

7 — You can flip them into gluebooks

This is my best suggestion for what to do with a gluebook. We are likely to get hooked up to the junk journals we make. This experience grows when you love including to the written content of the pages.

The very last explanation to love junk journals is:

8 — Junk Journaling provides individuals jointly

It’s amazing how social media has been a large contributor to the level of popularity of junk journals mainly because it is what keeps people today related with just one another, even when they are on reverse coasts or in distinct nations around the world.

Talking of on the internet artists, Barbara of 49 Dragonflies is somebody who generates heaps of movies about junk journaling. I am on her YouTube podcast of most requested junk journal concerns, where by equally of us will answer concerns folks have about junk journaling. It arrives out following thirty day period in Might.

In the meantime, if you’d like to see a online video on my 8 motives to enjoy junk journals, you can see it listed here:

https://www.youtube.com/check out?v=W9tt5v5gvAQ