Recently one of my favorite creators on TikTok (@chark13) has been sharing her journey with junk journaling, which has been a blast to watch. It prompted me to take a look at the collage journaling I’ve done over the past 11 months or so. I realized that every single spread in my current collage journal and a few from my old journal could be classified as junk journal spreads. I have spent a decent amount of money on paper, stickers, and other collage materials, but it has been fun to figure out how to incorporate some of the “junk” I come across in my daily life. Here’s sort of a flip-through of the junkiest pages I could find in both my old and new collage journals.
Starting with my current collage journal, the journal itself was a gift from one of my best friends, who brought it back from Ireland for me. So far it’s been a great little container for all of this, but I have yet to see how it performs when it gets thick and chunky. I can’t wait for the day when the magnetic closure doesn’t can’t hold everything in anymore.
One of my main sources of “junk” since I’ve been home is a local magazine that we have available at my dad’s store. They share a lot about healthy living, self-improvement, enjoying nature, and community building, which are topics I’m interested in and like to include in my spreads. These spreads are a few examples of ways I have used titles, prose, ads, and illustrations from this magazine in various ways within my journal.
Food and drink labels can be a great junk source as well. This is one I would like to use more often in future spreads. It could really be anything, like a sticker from a bottle of Martinelli’s sparkling cider or the label from a limited edition kombucha bottle or container of edibles. See below how I have incorporated all three of these items and a card from a deck of affirmations gifted to me by the same friend who gave me the journal.
Junk as a category also includes receipts, brochures, bookmarks, fortunes from Chinese restaurants, bags, and tons of other things you might normally throw away. In some of my spreads, I have included these things either as the focus of the collage or to accent and complete a page I was already creating.
Looking back into the journal where it all began, there are a few spreads that include some junk I picked up from various activities I did during my last semester of college. This is a sketchbook from Michael's. A lot of the pages feel pretty loose so I'm not sure how well it will hold up over time, but in terms of its performance while creating it worked really well for me.
Most of the materials I used in this first journal were purchased, but some junk did find its way into my spreads, mainly tickets from places I went.
I have also included a birthday note I got from the same friend mentioned above and some vintage photos I had bought from antique stores years ago that I didn’t know what to do with otherwise.
I feel extra inspired to try incorporating different types of junk into my collages since recently it’s mainly been coming from that one magazine (it just has a lot of great stuff in it; you really can’t blame me). Maybe I’ll get to come back in a couple of months and show you all sorts of new, even junkier spreads!
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