8 reasons to love junk journals

Tons of makers like the notion of creating a junk journal (they are a ton of perform), but they don’t know specifically why they want to generate a person. I’ll address 8 issues to like about junk journals that highlight how special these guides are.

Possibly you are familiar with all of them. And probably, if you haven’t viewed as all of these details, they’ll give you some thoughts or a renewed fascination in performing on junk journals.

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

A Junk Journal is a handmade book of recycled and located components and ephemera. The webpages can be used to create, draw, paint or history reminiscences, thoughts, tips, and inspiration.

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

1 — Junk Journals are certainly exclusive items of book artwork

Because there’s this sort of a big wide range in all the features made use of to make a junk journal, no two are particularly alike. Numerous of us have a range of artwork materials, papers, own ephemera, and other resources, and even if we have very similar elements, the remaining solution each and every of us provides is one of a kind.

Speaking of art supplies, here’s the second matter to really like about junk journals:

2 — Junk journals usually need loads of products

This implies that you can actively have interaction in applying up your artwork supplies and ephemera.

You can go via your stash of pattern paper and corresponding coloration inks. You can distress paper for your internet pages or tea-dye or espresso-dye paper. Pull out other blended media goods like paints and stencils. You can insert gildings like ribbons, material, or beads. Here’s an possibility to use up what you’ve bought.

If you are working with aged or identified items, it’s the suitable time to glimpse by your catch-all drawers in your home in which you’ve stashed absent —whatever you’ve been stashing away— receipts, notes, random photos, movie ticket stubs, and use them within your junk journals.

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

3 — You can observe upcycling creatively

Consider of this as a talent. How do you set up your components and identified bits in a satisfying way? That’s the obstacle that you can pick out to just take up when you are making a junk journal.

I’ll observe that this is in which heaps of persons can get tripped up and confused. You can get apprehensive, “Well, I never know how to do this. I want it to appear attractive and magnificent, but I’m afraid that if I test, I’m going to loathe it, and I’m likely to be so unhappy, and I’ll feel like a failure”.

Those are honest fears. I undoubtedly felt them when I was starting up out. If you obtain oneself in this position, you can remind on your own of two matters:

1. What you create is for your self. You do not even want to display any individual if you never want to, so you don’t will need to be self-aware about what you make.

2. When you are carried out producing your initial junk journals, it’s attainable you are not heading to like what you make (unlikely) but it’s feasible. But the expertise you will have obtained from the experience will enable so significantly in producing your upcoming a single. You’ll know what you could have accomplished in different ways. Don’t forget that this “creative upcycling” is a talent, so that signifies you have to perform at it.

If you are a little confused with all the choices and elements of making just one, then take into consideration my fourth explanation to really like junk journals:

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

If you like active, chunky levels you can do that, or you can maintain them pretty simple. You can imagine about what you want to highlight. Probably you want a good deal of the consideration on the go over, but want to hold the pages plain.

Remember, you can normally go again and include additional things about time. This is some thing that I nevertheless do. Years afterwards, I nonetheless go back again and get the job done on certain publications.

I want to converse about one thing right here — the principle of time, and our technique to working on jobs. We tend to have the expectation of developing art in a incredibly exact way and it goes some thing like this: You start out, you function proficiently just on that job till it’s done, and then you transfer on the some thing else. The emphasis is on the stop item. You truly feel completed only when you have created one thing completed.

There are 2 things to look at why this is not the great way to approach producing.

1. The journey is just as important (even much more so) than the vacation spot.

2. If you are so focused on completing and transferring on, you could possibly be closing you off from returning to it, which is some thing I individually enjoy doing.

Upcoming, the fifth purpose to appreciate junk journals is:

5 — You can decide on a topic that speaks to you

Themes are fantastic since they help you consider about the appear and come to feel of your generation. Some people like to invest in printable kits that contain webpages and more compact attractive bits. These digital kits are typically economical, ranging from $2 to $4 on Etsy, and you can glance for things like a Xmas concept, Beatrix Potter, Jane Austen, a pirate theme, Wonderwoman, or regardless of what!

Some people today don’t care to use printable papers and alternatively concentrate on locating their very own paper sources. Don’t overlook that you can also select to emphasis on relatives themes and do a junk journal with pictures and papers from a relative or someone significant to you. These are wonderful techniques to embellish junk journals.

Following,

6 — You can use it to shop paper treasures

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

The subsequent rationale to really like junk journals is a single of my favorites:

7 — You can switch them into gluebooks

This is my greatest recommendation for what to do with a gluebook. We tend to get attached to the junk journals we make. This experience grows when you delight in adding to the information of the webpages.

The past motive to enjoy junk journals is:

8 — Junk Journaling delivers men and women jointly

It’s remarkable how social media has been a big contributor to the popularity of junk journals since it is what keeps people today connected with just one a further, even when they’re on reverse coasts or in different countries.

Talking of online artists, Barbara of 49 Dragonflies is anyone who results in lots of video clips about junk journaling. I am on her YouTube podcast of most requested junk journal queries, the place both of those of us will respond to inquiries people have about junk journaling. It arrives out future thirty day period in May.

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

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