How to Make a Junk Journal
Step 1: Create or Locate Your Journal
The diary itself is the part of the procedure that most intimidates people. There are many authors that bind their own pages together and cover them in exquisite leather to produce a lovely finished product. But for many people, like myself, doing that needs a lot of equipment and knowledge, which makes it scary to go in headfirst.
There are producers that have incredible instructions on how to bind and set pages if you’re up for genuinely creating a rubbish notebook from start. Even how to create a rubbish diary from an old book is demonstrated in this one.
However, if you’re like me and would like to move on, making a junk journal out of a blank notebook you already own is very simple. So go ahead and bind your own book pages or pull out that journal you’ve never used; we’ll meet again in Step Two for the next section.
Step Two: Gather Materials
We just need everything else now that you have your notebook pages to use! Gather scissors, glue or sticky tape (acid-free if you want it to last for many years), and any additional supplies you might want to experiment with, such as a hole-punch or paper clips.
The fun part comes next. Gather any leftover scraps of old books, sticky notes, stickers, stamps, ribbons, washi tape, and scraps of scrapbook paper from various projects. Anything you have in your home is fair game, literally. Keep in mind that since this is a garbage journal, you can be a little unusual. Use materials for your art project that you might not typically choose.
Images from old science books that I have purchased at used book sales are among my favorite items to utilize. I’ve cut out several beautiful layouts of various plant and animal species to decorate my trash journal. I also managed to snag a ton of festive tissue paper from the holidays (now with a nice texture from use) and received some strange looks from family members as I hid it in my purse rather than the trash (fun!).
Step Three: Choose a Theme and Plan Your Layout
Some designers design their entire garbage journal around a single theme; others work on it spread by spread; and yet others have no concept at all! Again, the choice is totally yours; the purpose of a junk journal is to give you the freedom to make something that is enjoyable, liberating, and exactly what you want it to be.
I actually combine my commonplace book and my junk journal for myself (and now I’ll get back to the writing part). In other words, I keep a book of quotes that I find interesting while reading and I add them to my junk journal.
My quotes are divided into categories, and the first page I worked on was in the category “inspiration.” Once I had chosen the quote I would include in my journal, I searched through my materials for others that I thought would work well with my theme and pulled those out.
Layout your page using your materials next. Before actually gluing or taping the majority of the pieces together, I advise laying them out to make sure you like the final product. Moving things around and experimenting with different arrangements is also simple.
One thing I’ve learned about creating junk notebooks is to not be afraid of layering. On a page, you don’t have to use only one paper piece and one embellishment. Add numerous sheets of paper and numerous pieces to a single page. This is especially advised if, like me, you didn’t bind your own journal pages when you first began out. Including background pages and many layers will give your journal a lot of personality and the appearance that you actually bound the pages yourself.
Step Four: Time to Glue Everything!
It’s time to secure everything in place once your plan is complete. I’m a little less organized than some people, and I just start pasting things down as I see them. Some people are really meticulous about noting where things go. Your method of approach is entirely up to you.
And don’t be hesitant to include impromptu adjustments. The fun of a junk journal is that it can be a little sloppy and wild, and once you get it all down, it’s totally okay to add stuff if you’d like. Here is where I add in the quotes I want to record, and I always make sure there is a small space available for me to write them in.
Although I kept the layering on this page rather light and modest, it’s not always the case.
Even though I’m using a pre-lined notebook, I wanted to make another page in my nature section look as though I had created it from scratch. So, to create a spread that was much more filled out, I added background pages and more lined paper on top of that.
It’s entirely up to you how much you want to add or produce in your rubbish diary. After all, that is what makes junk diaries so entertaining. You can include everything you want in them! (And after you finish with certain pages, don’t discard your pieces of paper! You can see that I tore several of the pages in the example above to give them a lovely ripped-edge appearance, but you can bet that I kept the remaining portions of those sheets so I might use them on another spread in the future. Save the trash!
You can make pressed-flower bookmarks if you want to perform some bookish crafts but aren’t quite ready to dig into producing a full notebook.
