8 reasons to love junk journals

Tons of makers like the concept of producing a junk journal (they’re a whole lot of work), but they really do not know exclusively why they want to develop a single. I’ll include 8 items to appreciate about junk journals that emphasize how special these publications are.

Maybe you are common with all of them. And perhaps, if you have not viewed as all of these factors, they’ll give you some ideas or a renewed curiosity in working on junk journals.

1st, let’s immediately deal with what precisely is a junk journal.

A Junk Journal is a handmade e-book of recycled and uncovered elements and ephemera. The web pages can be utilized to publish, attract, paint or document recollections, ideas, tips, and inspiration.

Supplies for a junk journal are typically uncovered or recycled, so this provides us to the 1st point to really like about junk journals:

1 — Junk Journals are certainly exceptional pieces of book art

Because there’s this sort of a enormous range in all the aspects utilized to make a junk journal, no two are accurately alike. Several of us have a selection of art supplies, papers, personalized ephemera, and other resources, and even if we have similar products, the last item every single of us provides is distinctive.

Speaking of artwork materials, here’s the next factor to enjoy about junk journals:

2 — Junk journals usually require lots of products

This means that you can actively engage in applying up your art provides and ephemera.

You can go as a result of your stash of pattern paper and corresponding coloration inks. You can distress paper for your web pages or tea-dye or coffee-dye paper. Pull out other blended media merchandise like paints and stencils. You can include gildings like ribbons, material, or beads. Here’s an prospect to use up what you have acquired.

If you are working with previous or uncovered goods, it’s the right time to seem through your catch-all drawers in your property exactly where you’ve stashed absent —whatever you’ve been stashing away— receipts, notes, random pics, motion picture ticket stubs, and use them in your junk journals.

The third factor to really like about junk journals speaks straight to what you can do with all your uncovered bits:

3 — You can apply upcycling creatively

Feel of this as a talent. How do you prepare your components and located bits in a pleasing way? That is the challenge that you can select to consider up when you are building a junk journal.

I’ll be aware that this is the place lots of men and women can get tripped up and overcome. You can get apprehensive, “Well, I don’t know how to do this. I want it to glimpse lovely and wonderful, but I’m afraid that if I try out, I’m going to loathe it, and I’m likely to be so disappointed, and I’ll truly feel like a failure”.

All those are sincere fears. I surely felt them when I was commencing out. If you locate you in this situation, you can remind oneself of two issues:

1. What you develop is for your self. You don’t even will need to display any person if you don’t want to, so you do not will need to be self-conscious about what you make.

2. When you’re completed creating your initial junk journals, it is attainable you’re not likely to like what you make (not likely) but it’s doable. But the information you will have acquired from the encounter will support so significantly in creating your up coming just one. You will know what you could have done in different ways. Recall that this “creative upcycling” is a skill, so that suggests you have to function at it.

If you are a little overwhelmed with all the selections and elements of generating just one, then think about my fourth purpose to like junk journals:

4 — You can “dress them up” as a lot or as minimal as you’d like

If you like occupied, chunky levels you can do that, or you can hold them rather uncomplicated. You can consider about what you want to emphasize. Possibly you want a good deal of the attention on the cover, but want to hold the internet pages plain.

Don’t forget, you can often go again and incorporate far more issues around time. This is one thing that I continue to do. Decades later, I continue to go back and function on specific guides.

I want to discuss about anything below — the thought of time, and our solution to performing on tasks. We have a tendency to have the expectation of developing artwork in a very specific way and it goes a thing like this: You begin, you operate proficiently just on that task right until it is completed, and then you transfer on the some thing else. The emphasis is on the finish products. You come to feel attained only when you have manufactured one thing finished.

There are 2 factors to think about why this is not the best way to approach making.

1. The journey is just as essential (even extra so) than the desired destination.

2. If you are so centered on finishing and shifting on, you could possibly be closing on your own off from returning to it, which is something I personally love executing.

Upcoming, the fifth purpose to really like junk journals is:

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

Themes are good due to the fact they aid you assume about the seem and come to feel of your creation. Some people today like to invest in printable kits that include pages and scaled-down decorative bits. These digital kits are typically inexpensive, ranging from $2 to $4 on Etsy, and you can look for items like a Xmas topic, Beatrix Potter, Jane Austen, a pirate theme, Wonderwoman, or no matter what!

Some men and women really do not treatment to use printable papers and fairly focus on finding their very own paper resources. Really do not fail to remember that you can also select to concentrate on household themes and do a junk journal with photographs and papers from a relative or an individual critical to you. These are excellent ways to embellish junk journals.

Next,

6 — You can use it to shop paper treasures

1st of all, brainstorm with me examples of paper treasures. Postcards and photographs are paper treasures. What else? Forex. Postage stamps. Locate a collection of paper treasures and then examine means you can tuck them into your junk journals.

The up coming motive to really like junk journals is just one of my favorites:

7 — You can convert them into gluebooks

This is my ideal recommendation for what to do with a gluebook. We are inclined to get attached to the junk journals we make. This emotion grows when you take pleasure in adding to the content of the webpages.

The last motive to really like junk journals is:

8 — Junk Journaling provides folks collectively

It’s amazing how social media has been a huge contributor to the recognition of junk journals simply because it is what retains people linked with just one a further, even when they are on opposite coasts or in distinctive international locations.

Talking of on the web artists, Barbara of 49 Dragonflies is an individual who produces heaps of video clips about junk journaling. I am on her YouTube podcast of most requested junk journal questions, in which both of those of us will solution queries persons have about junk journaling. It comes out upcoming month in May possibly.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to see a video clip on my 8 good reasons to appreciate junk journals, you can see it listed here:

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