Junk Journal Ideas

One of my favorite things to make is Junk Journals. It combines my love of paper along with creativity and finding ways to use these items without just keeping them in a box or folder. Think of all the free address labels most of us receive after having donated to some nonprofit. Appealing magazine images. Ticket stubs. Funny memes. Advertising postcards with a bit of charm.

In this blog post, you will see some miscellaneous pages from three of my recent journals (2015-2020).

Old calendars are great. Pages from books. I have a couple oversized dictionaries which offer great background pages.

Junk Journals offer ways to create new ways of seeing things by experimenting with images, backgrounds, colors, fonts, etc and seeing what stands out. Even if new creation didn’t work out the way you wanted, or if it looks particularly unappealing, it still has a place in a Junk Journal. And its creation may be the genesis of a world-changing idea. Truly.

Junk Journals are a great way to practice calligraphy, mandalas, and other forms of writing and design.

Maybe your journal has a theme. Maybe you want to capture major headlines and news events for the year. Or, how about a journal of words and pictures of all the things that make you happy.

Maybe you’re creating a Junk Journal for a friend or relative. Then you would make sure to include things you know they like, maybe make some diary entries of things you did together (currently or in the past), or something they did that you know about (went to a certain movie, or read a specific book, or has collections of things you can find images of online – You get the idea).

There is no cause for defending anything in a junk journal. It is what it is.

Here’s a very short video I did of some of the journals featured here:

Junk Journal Video

I hope you’re inspired to start a Junk Journal and maybe you’ll share some images with us!

Junk Journals can also called Magpie Journals, Art Journals, Scrapbooks. What name do you call them?

Here’s a previous post on this blog about Junk Journals:

Junk Journals: An Overvie